Document shows money manager sold a large order of contracts
MSNBC/Reuters, 14 May 2010
NEW YORK - A big mystery seller of futures contracts during the market meltdown last week was not a hedge fund or a high frequency trader as many have suspected, but money manager Waddell & Reed Financial Inc, according to a document obtained by Reuters.
Waddell sold on May 6 a large order of e-mini contracts during a 20-minute span in which U.S. equities markets plunged, briefly wiping out nearly $1 trillion in market capital, the internal document from Chicago Mercantile Exchange parent CME Group Inc said.
Regulators and exchange officials quickly focused on Waddell's sale of 75,000 e-mini contracts, which the document said "superficially appeared to be anomalous activity."
Waddell and Reed have been bugging me for the last 3 years to work for them as a "financial adviser" - they were one of the only firms that seemed to be actively hiring, along with the insurance companies. I knew there was something odd about it.
The fact that they are hiring could indicate that either they are lousy employers or that they are successful. If it is the latter, and they were part of the normal economy rather than the parasitical economy (aka Financial Services) then I would presume that their apparent success was because they were simply better than their rivals. However, in the parasitical economy, success is more often than not determined by how devious and underhand a company is willing to be, so you are right to consider it odd.