The story of what triggered almost $10m (€7m, £6m) of losses on the Brent oil market on Tuesday is still being pieced together, but one thing is clear: Steven Noel Perkins, the broker accused by bosses at PVM Oil Associates of “unauthorised trading”, made his trade at a very unusual time.
Trading from his UK home at about 2am on Tuesday, it was the most illiquid time of day in the Brent futures market – a gap left between New York and Singapore hours, in which only a handful of Tokyo-based traders are active.
Traders say that at that time liquidity is very thin and much of the volume is automatically generated by computers, following prefixed trading orders. One trader said that Mr Perkins was, in effect, trading against the machines.
With a few keystrokes, using a home computer equipped with remote access to the InterContinental Exchange Europe, the marketplace for Brent oil, he bought oil futures equal to about 9m barrels, propelling prices to $73.50 a barrel, the highest of the year.
With computer trading chasing the rally, contracts for more than 16m barrels changed hands in one hour, far more than the traditional 0.5m for that time of the day.
Finalmente acho que entendi o que chamam de "mercados eficientes"!
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