Bro cashed out way too much

[u/be_you_tiful-]

A man working from his parents' house in West London made tens of millions of dollars trading futures from a bedroom filled with stuffed toys. His name is Navinder Singh Sarao, and he's on the autism spectrum.

There was no Wall Street trading floor. Sarao worked out of the family home in Hounslow, using a customized trading program on an ordinary desktop computer, and by most accounts he lived a pretty quiet life.

Then came May 6, 2010. In a matter of minutes, US stock markets plunged, and nearly $1 trillion in value briefly vanished before prices bounced back. It became known as the Flash Crash.

Years later, US authorities said Sarao's spoofing helped make it worse. Prosecutors said he placed large sell orders he never intended to fill, then canceled them, which pushed prices down so he could profit from the swings. They said his strategy was running on the day of the crash, and that he made more than $40 million from this kind of trading over several years.

Sarao fought extradition from the UK for years. He eventually pleaded guilty to wire fraud and spoofing in the US. His lawyers pointed to his autism, and the judge sentenced him to time served followed by home confinement rather than more prison time, citing his cooperation with prosecutors.

[u/Cold-Crab74]

So it's a problem when he does it but when the president does it it's fine.

[u/octipice → u/[deleted]]

You're glossing over the incredibly important implications of prices in HFT being influenced by trades that haven't been executed yet.

HFT is essentially a way for large investment firms to steal money from retail traders (or anyone not doing HFT) by being able to see what is about to happen in the market and make moves before everyone else can. It is a literal crystal ball and should be illegal.

Instead what is illegal is using HFT to make ot so other HFTs see a "false future" in their crystal balls instead of the actual one. To be clear this is a "crime" that only results in using the advantage that HFTs have over everyone else to take money off of them, while HFT in general is used to constantly take money off of the rest of us.

HFT is one of the biggest scams in the world where the ultra wealthy are leeching money off of all of us and providing nothing of value in return. HFT never should've been legal in the first place.

[u/melkatron → u/[deleted]]

...isn't that exactly what the few HFT-enabled brokerage firms have?

[u/321aholiab → u/melkatron]

Nice one comrade