More on the PPT
A letter to RR from dowtheoryletters.com
Sounds phony to me....but who knows?
"I work at one of Wall Street's top 3 firms as a senior trader on an equity
futures desk. We execute orders for large institutional clients, often via
"basket" orders directly in the equity market, or via the futures market.
About a year ago, our desk began getting orders from a new client to execute
abnormally large orders in the equity futures markets. These orders had
several interesting characteristics. First, they were not daily or even
weekly, but every few months only. Second, the senior manager of our entire
department takes these orders directly, then walks over and quietly relays
them to our desk. No one except our manager is permitted to speak to the
client. After the first few tickets, I asked if I could meet or at least
speak to the client, since we were writing some unusually large tickets and
making a lot of money off them. I was told "no" very firmly and without
explanation, which is highly unusual since I am a senior member of the desk
and usually meet new clients before anyone else does. Also, this client has
no name or even a letter code, which some clients use when they want to
maintain anonymity. At the end of the day, our manager goes into our order
management system and personally moves the client executions out of our desk
accounts. This is highly unusual and has never happened with any other
client in the many years I've been working there. One last unusual thing is
that this client's orders are never price-sensitive; we are given a market
order to execute without any regard to price, and the orders are notable for
their size. Each time they have moved the market significantly.
Every instinct I've developed as a trader on Wall Street for the past decade
tells me that this is not a "regular" client such as a hedge fund or a
mutual fund. The fact that this client is only active every few months, and
at levels in the market that Wall Street views as important technically
(almost always near the bottom of a range) tells me that it may be
appropriate to talk about the possibility that it is government
intervention. I have no idea if intervention in the equity markets is legal
or not...I do know it happens in Japan openly. But if it is in fact
happening here, there are several important implications beyond just
supporting the stock market that should be debated publicly.
The desk at our firm that handles insider trades has been executing many
more sell orders than buy orders recently; when we get a large buy program
to execute, it certainly makes it easier for those insiders to sell. Is the
public's money being used indirectly by the government to buy stocks while
corporate insiders are selling? How many of these insiders are from
companies with Enron-like problems that have yet to be discovered?
Another issue that is relevant is the timing of these orders in relation to
current events. Can they be used to boost the stock market just prior to an
election, for example? After a president's speech? During a war? Who IS the
secret client on the other end of the phone, what are his motivations, and
what are his limits? If this client is who my instincts tell me it may be, I
think it is imperative that these types of questions start to be debated in
the public domain." |
