The work of the eight-person team composed of market-data provider Nanex LLC attracted almost everyone from art gallery owners to regulators due to the illustrative charts they have produced from trading activities. However, most traders are furious about Nanex for falsely insinuating conclusions that are unwarranted and had caused creation of conspiracy theories, said a Bloomberg report.
According to Nanex founder Eric Scott Hunsader, information the company used to create illustrations were purely based on trading activity in the financial markets. Moreover, Hunsader claimed that the market feeds indicated the exploitation of of market rules by high-frequency trading firms in order to turn a profit in an otherwise unregulated environment. Bloomberg said that although some in the financial industry view Nanex's charts as propaganda, the interpretations of the market-data provider had made the public aware of the modern stock market's fundamental fairness.
Using the William Golding novel as reference, Hunsader said, "You ever see ‘Lord of the Flies' or read that book? When you don't have a parent around, things fall apart."
Nanex said it was able to detect suspicious trading before the US government released its jobs report on October 22. Nanex identified on October 16 a buy order of over USD400 million before the European exchanges were opened. E-mini S&P 500 futures orders were shortly canceled prior to the start of selling on the trading bourse, Nanex said.
Nanex also released a report titled "Einstein and The Great Fed Robbery," of which it indicated that some trading firms had inside information about the decision of the US Federal Reserve prior to the government agency's announcement that it will not be reducing its USD85 billion monthly bond-purchasing program, and was able to make bets totaling over USD1 billion in its milliseconds-long head start. Due to the Nanex's report released two days after the Fed's announcement, the central bank started a review and resolved to tighten how it releases statements.
Founder and chief executive officer Manoj Narang of HFT firm Tradeworx Inc, among others, are not fans of Nanex's work. Narang said, "The conclusions that they form generally have a paranoid or conspiracist sort of bent to them. Stirring the pot like that and dabbling in all of these conspiracy theories, and having those things get a serious airing, undermines investor confidence. And for no real reason."
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