Nanex Research
Nanex ~ 07-Dec-2012 ~ Spinning Time into Gold
On December 7, 2012, approximately 600 milliseconds before the release of the Jobs Report
someone aggressively bought gold futures clearing out all sell orders and sending the
price $5 higher. A half second later, even more aggressive selling took the price immediately
down $10. We checked other symbols for activity when gold first rocketed higher, and
only found Silver futures and a small amount in Yen currency.
Was the Jobs news leaked? Did someone try to fool other algorithms that the news was
leaked? Or is this just a stupid algorithm that misread the text?
1. Gold futures depth of book.
2. Gold Feb 2013 futures contract. Squares are trades, shade is bid/ask spread,
chart shows about 2 seconds of time.
About 600 milliseconds before the 8:30 Jobs Report, aggressive buying clears sell orders
out $5 higher. A half second later, even more aggressive selling took the price immediately
down $10.
3. ES March 2013 futures (eMini) 5 millisecond interval chart. Squares
are trades, shade is bid/ask spread, chart shows about 2 seconds of time.
This chart aligns in time with Gold above. Note there is no activity for at least 50ms
after Gold first explodes.
4. Silver
Futures moves at the same time as Gold futures.
5. SPY for the same time period as charts above.
6. GLD - an ETF based on gold. The trading is probably arbitrage in reaction
to the move in gold futures.
7. A longer view of Gold, showing the impact of trading around the Jobs news.
8. A longer term view of trading in GLD
9. GLD - showing bids and asks color coded by exchange.
10. ES futures on a longer time scale.
11. SPY on a longer time scale showing trades color coded by exchange.
12. SPY on a longer time scale showing bids and asks color coded by exchange.
13. Silver futures on a longer time scale.
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