Goldman Sachs Principal Transactions Update: 60% Decline

The most recent, presumably correct, data has been released by the NYSE: Goldman (GS) total principal program trading has declined by 60% from 1,336 million shares in the prior week to 571 million in the current. The end of the Russell rebalancing likely played a major role in the decline as overall NYSE program trading volume was also impacted by a comparable margin. Yet what was odd is that last week's Russell indexing action was the lowest volume rebalancing event in years.

Nonetheless, even with the material decline in overall program trading, it still accounted for 38% of the NYSE weekly volume, 12% higher than the running 52 week average. With the ever increasing dominance (I plan on summarizing the most recent three months' PT action early next week) of program trading, is it any wonder why all of a sudden even the MSM is expressing such persistent interest into not only peripheral personnel scandals associated with program trading but the core issues as well.

Comments

[Rollerball:]

MSM will denigrate "program trading", while the mere mention of "front-running" will be taboo. 'Nothing to see sheeple, move along!'

Jul 10 10:44 AM

[Big Al45:]

Let alone the skimming feature incorporated into Goldman's code.


On Jul 10 10:44 AM Rollerball wrote:

> MSM will denigrate "program trading", while the mere mention of "front-running"
> will be taboo. 'Nothing to see sheeple, move along!'

Jul 10 01:39 PM

[John Galt:]

My guess is that the Goldman PT code is a giant arbitrage machine that front runs shares at select times in a "can't lose" scheme that takes a little at a time over and over and over again.

If that really is the case and they are one big casino taking "Vig" on the entire market, I don't like it one bit.

Jul 10 02:35 PM

[Maxe Paul:]

My guess is the national sport at GS is "hitting stops". Being in Australia i can tell you that some amazing moves happen in the S&P futures whilst you people in the US are asleep!

Jul 10 03:22 PM

[Bill S. Friend:]

Basically the "fix" is in and the average investor gets fleeced. Everything is legal and copastetic so long as the market moves as the fed wishes. Higher when the banks need to refi their debt, or to facilitate some huge unwind from the last scheme that nearly broke the market for instance...
The ending of this will be ugly.

Jul 11 08:47 AM

[TinyTim:]

"The ending of this will be ugly."

And it ought to be for GS.
It seems pretty obvious that all the bad press lately for a "media averse firm" is a prelude to them getting ripped up.
I wonder if this scenario is included in TBTF.

Jul 11 06:08 PM