
German stock trading platform Xetra down, all securities affected - ciceryadam
https://thestarphoenix.com/pmn/business-pmn/german-stock-trading-platform-xetra-down-all-securities-affected/
======
Rockslide
Trading has continued hours ago, probably even before this article was even
published.

In a first statement, they blamed algo-traders which created (and within
milliseconds deleted) a ton of pointless orders, like buying Wirecard for
0,05EUR (which is ~1/100th of the current price). Yes, they explicitly called
out orders on Wirecard. So basically... Denial of Service by bot-traders.

~~~
snarf21
This is such an easy problem to solve. All orders must stand for at least 1
minute before they can be cancelled. It stops all this crazy nonsense to try
to move the price and arbitrage the pennies.

~~~
logicchains
That's not a solution, it would mean most market makers instantly left your
exchange, or just quote really widely (providing a worse spread, so people
wishing to trade have to pay a worse price), because holding your orders in
the market for a minute is incredibly dangerous given how much the value of
the underlying product could move at any time, especially when it's correlated
with something traded on another exchange.

~~~
bebna
That is why I call that gambling and not investing.

~~~
logicchains
Why do you call it gambling? The market maker doesn't want to take a position
on the stock, that's why he tries to get out quickly if it starts moving. He
just wants to provide liquidity (be willing to buy and sell to anyone at any
time, so that buyers don't need to wait for a matching seller to come along),
and collect a small fee for that in the form of a spread.

~~~
gowld
But who are the customers?

Why do investors need orders filled instantly?

It seems the only customers of this service are day-trading troublemakers.

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ysleepy
Really interested in reading a technical post-mortem for that.

~~~
pnako
They used to run on OpenVMS. I don't know if that's still the case.

~~~
andylynch
Pretty sure it’s Linux now. One thing I like about t7 is they offer private
exchange simulation environmentS in the cloud you can spin up and test
against.

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mratsim
Germany's Financial Authority is having a bad week.

~~~
corty
Deutsche Boerse AG runs the XETRA system and is a private, publicly traded
company. While they are of course overseen by the financial authorities, the
German stock exchanges are private institutions.

~~~
Hermel
Interestingly, "public" has a different meaning in English than in German in
the context of a company.

In English, a public company is a company whose shares can be freely traded by
the public.

In German, a public company is a company that is owned to the government.
Companies that are listed on the stock market are called "kotiert".

This could hint at a cultural difference, with the Germans more strongly
identifying with the government ("if it belongs to the government, it belongs
to everyone"), whereas the English speaking countries might tend to identify
more strongly with the economy ("if everyone owns or at least could own some
shares of it, it belongs to everyone").

~~~
danielh
I'm not a financial expert, but I think "börsennotiert" (listed on the stock
exchange) is much more common than "kotiert", at least in Germany.

~~~
FabHK
I believe "kotiert" is a charming Swiss-German word (one of many, like "Velo"
instead of "Fahrrad" for bike).

~~~
romanixromanix
Yes. See glossary of SIX Swiss Exchange: [https://www.six-
group.com/exchanges/knowhow/glossary_de.html...](https://www.six-
group.com/exchanges/knowhow/glossary_de.html?id=Kotierung)

------
minxomat
This also affects trading platforms that match xetra price spreads during
normal trading hours, such as LUS which is used by HSBC for Trade Republic
(the German Robin Hood).

------
GillBates666
Charge some some small fee per transaction to pay for something worthwhile in
society and that will limit the profitability of these billions of micro
transactions as well.

All these big finance companies should just be public utilities. They provide
little to no benefit to society. They create nothing. They siphon so much
money. The cost of the instability/fragility they create is sent downstream to
the taxpayer. What society purposely sign up for this?

~~~
gpderetta
Most exchanges have per trade fees, although many do offer rebates for market
makers or liquidity providers.

~~~
phendrenad2
Really interested to learn those two terms - "market maker", "liquidity
provider". I think I kinda understand the second one (traders who are bringing
money from outside the market). Does anyone know where I can read more about
this kind of thing?

~~~
Misdicorl
A market maker is an entity which isn't interested in the underlying assets
_at all_. Their goal is to always end with a 0 asset, all cash balance sheet
(over some small time interval). Their goal is to buy X at $100 and sell it at
$100.01 a million times a day.

`Liquidity providing` is the side of the trade which had a `resting order` on
the order book which traded against a new order (the liquidity taker). Various
exchanges have various different fee schedules for your designation as a
market maker, how much volume you do, whether you are taking or supplying
liquidity, and what kind of order you are placing.

------
baxtr
In other articles about that I read that this is related to a software
component called "System T7". There was a very similar incident in April
related to that component.

~~~
ciceryadam
The T7 trading system is used by the following exchanges for derivatives
trading: Eurex, European Energy Exchange (EEX), Powernext.

Source: [https://www.eurexchange.com/exchange-
en/technology/t7](https://www.eurexchange.com/exchange-en/technology/t7)

Are those down as well?

~~~
andylynch
Yes, they were at least partly :- [https://www.eurexchange.com/exchange-
en/trading/production-n...](https://www.eurexchange.com/exchange-
en/trading/production-newsboard) (but not Powernext - they are still on a
different platform )

~~~
twic
According to the comment IDs, you beat me to the punch by 4 comments. Looks
like i need to upgrade my HN commenting stack to use an FPGA ...

~~~
rsecora
Or do as the "Flash Boys": use a microwave link with direct path, and post
from the network card, avoiding the kernel stack...

I've enjoy your humorous reference.

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dna_polymerase
What's the game plan in this scenario, will all orders be invalidated or what
happens to them? I'd imagine it would really mess up market makers and others.

~~~
andylynch
It does. Most orders were cancelled and maybe trades too.

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somerandomboi
It was just a technical issue, right?

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oars
My guess is that it's Kubernetes-related issue.

~~~
stingraycharles
That seems oddly specific without detail. Why do you think it's related to
Kubernetes?

~~~
mratsim
I think it was a jibe at Kubernetes and "cloud" in general.

