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Comment by dcolkitt | Hacker News Reader

The electronic order book at the CME is completely anonymous. Unless the CME provided the de-anonymized dataset, there's no way for a third party to know that two separate trades were initiated by the same person. None. Nada. Zero.

The fact that the Vanity Fair article is just making the assertion that separate trades belong to the same person without explaining how they know this is pretty strong evidence that the journalist is just making shit up. Or at least is being hoodwinked by a supposed expert who is just making shit up.

I'd be like me claiming that every single slot machine jackpot in Vegas last Tuesday was won by the same person. Then when I get challenged to provide evidence of it, saying "no, you provide evidence that it wasn't."

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Even if they got the exchange's order-book they'd probably just see a bunch of orders from some guys named Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan. So many of these trades are routed or entered by brokers or other large firms.

Due to regulations like MIFID you can’t hide trades behind a brokerage all the parties involved in the trade including the actual individuals (as in their passports or other government identifications) are recorded for each trade and reported to the regulators.

You can’t have a broker issuing orders on your exchange without knowing who they are for and who were the individuals involved in requesting and approving the trade.

JPM has also a responsibility in ensuring the trades it issues through its brokers aren’t tainted with insider trading.

Ah you're probably right. My mistake, I had left the industry before MIFID II took effect, I was unaware.

Even without it I’m not sure that a dark pool is even possible on Globex or any of the large exchanges, these are usually reserved for smaller exchanges that are set up as an alternative trading system.

CME is also pretty pedantic in regards to who can trade on its platform.

Overall looking at the historical trade data there doesn’t seem to be any unusual trading patterns in the trades that VF reported as suspicious either in volume or position.

As far as the last minute trade goes this is very common not only on Fridays but at the end of every trading day where traders push a large number of trades just before the bell hits it’s pretty common practice it’s pretty much like taking out the trash.

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