> In July 2013, it was reported that Panther Energy Trading LLC was ordered to pay $4.5 million to U.S. and U.K. regulators on charges that the firm's high-frequency trading activities manipulated commodity markets. Panther's computer algorithms placed and quickly canceled bids and offers in futures contracts including oil, metals, interest rates and foreign currencies, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission said.[109] In October 2014, Panther's sole owner Michael Coscia was charged with six counts of commodities fraud and six counts of "spoofing". The indictment stated that Coscia devised a high-frequency trading strategy to create a false impression of the available liquidity in the market, "and to fraudulently induce other market participants to react to the deceptive market information he created".[110]
Panther was a one-man shop that did nothing but market manipulation. Yes, they used automation but for every Panther, there are 1000 manual traders being fined by CME for spoofing every year. Automation doesn't imply state of the art HFT. The Flash Crash spoofer was using a Trading Technologies system that any small trader can rent with a few scripts loaded in.
Look at real players with hundreds of employees. None of them make their money from market manipulation. It's all from low-latency arbitrage. If you're fast, you can make way, way more money doing legitimate trading than market manipulation.
> In July 2013, it was reported that Panther Energy Trading LLC was ordered to pay $4.5 million to U.S. and U.K. regulators on charges that the firm's high-frequency trading activities manipulated commodity markets. Panther's computer algorithms placed and quickly canceled bids and offers in futures contracts including oil, metals, interest rates and foreign currencies, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission said.[109] In October 2014, Panther's sole owner Michael Coscia was charged with six counts of commodities fraud and six counts of "spoofing". The indictment stated that Coscia devised a high-frequency trading strategy to create a false impression of the available liquidity in the market, "and to fraudulently induce other market participants to react to the deceptive market information he created".[110]
I guess it's HFT if it's executed fast enough.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-frequency_trading#Strateg...