What can one lone trader at home achieve?

[DimPrawn]

British trader Nav Sarao charged with triggering global markets flash crash in 2010 - Telegraph

A British man helped to trigger a £500bn US stock market crash by manipulating financial markets on a massive scale from a suburban London semi, US prosecutors have claimed.

Mr Sarao, 37, who ran his own one-man day trading company, was arrested at his parents home in Hounslow, west London, earlier today at the request of American prosecutors.

He now faces extradition to the US after separate criminal and civil charges were filed against him for illegally manipulating the markets.

He has been charged with one count of wire fraud, 10 counts of commodities fraud, 10 counts of commodities manipulation, and one count of “spoofing,” a practice of bidding or offering with the intent to cancel the bid or offer before execution.

[BrilloPad]

Makes one proud to be British.

When I first read it I thought it might be the NTRT poster SantaClaus.....

[Scruff]

CUK member trading whilst on the bench...?

[centurian]

HFT trader arrested.

That should be enough to get AtW out of his squirrel hibernation hole and posting away shortly...

[DimPrawn]

[mudskipper]

Sounds straightforward enough - where do I sign up?

[centurian]

Doing it is easy - getting away with it is harder.

Although come to think of it, when was the last time you heard of the FCA actually prosecuting anyone for it - and if they do, what is the punishment - a few months suspended sentence and a fine of a few hundred grand.

His mistake was doing the trades in the US - where they come down hard on it. Modus operandi over there is that prosecutors will offer a plea bargain of ~2-5 years, or go to trail where they will push for >50 years.

Expect a sudden diagnosis of Asperger's syndrome.

[vetran]

so he was doing this regularly and no one spotted it and stopped him?

seems like they need to sort themselves out.

[d000hg]

so he was doing this regularly and no one spotted it and stopped him?

seems like they need to sort themselves out.

Presumably one uses multiple accounts/identities, etc?

[pjclarke]

In that year, the firm generated trading revenues of £9.07m, but the company produced a pre-tax loss of £5.7m, in part due to more than £14m of administrative expenses and costs including a £2m outflow on an unnamed capital expenditure item.

In the previous year, the company, of which Mr Sarao is the sole director, generated trading revenues of £10.5m, but posted a pre-tax loss of £28.1m due to £38.6m of expenses and costs, for which little detail is given

The guy's a one man band day trader, operating out of his spare bedroom. How can he have multi million admin costs and £2m on capex?

I'm doing something wrong, I just claim for train fare and a new lappy every couple of years ....