Nanex Research

Nanex ~ 06-Feb-2014 ~ Bipolar Fat Fingers in Carlyle Group

On February 6, 2014 at 14:44:30, the stock of The Carlyle Group LP (symbol CG, market cap $1.7 billion) must have fallen victim to a trader with fat fingers and bipolar disorder. In less than a second, prices rocketed from 33.66 up to 34.37, only to fall back down to 33.10 and finally recovering where they started less than 2 seconds later. This is that High Frequency Trading liquidity people keep complaining about.

1. CG trades color coded by reporting exchange and NBBO quote spread.


2. Zooming in to about 30 seconds of time.


3. Zooming in to about 5 second of time.
Note how the NBBO suddenly balloons from 5 cents to over 50 cents.


4. Over 1,000 orders - each one the best quote from that exchange.



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