the futures prop 'community' in London is quite close knit in terms of gossip lol. Allegedly he had intraday limit of 2000 ES contracts and he regularly used them. Allegedly he cleared through a sub firm of the largest UK futures shop.
No. The Sikh community in Hounslow is tight. Despite the area being the mother of all shit-tips he will have many family and friends there. I've met a few very successful Indian guys running their own businesses who are multi-millionaires and choose to stay in Hounslow.
Hounslow neighbours saw nothing flashy Aliya Ram and Philip Stafford in London The registered address in west London of the company allegedly used by Navinder Singh Sarao US authorities probing the “flash crash” that rattled global stocks in 2010 have spent years trying to understand the factors behind the sudden US market plunge. On Tuesday they zeroed in on an unassuming interwar house in the suburban heart of a working class Indian and Bangladeshi community 17 miles west of the City, London’s financial heart. FirstFT is our new essential daily email briefing of the best stories from across the web There, they allege, Navinder Singh Sarao made millions gaming the market from a company registered at his parents’ Hounslow house. Neighbours say they were never alerted to the huge wealth the Department of Justice claims he was amassing until the police arrived to arrest him in the middle of the UK day at about 12.45 on Tuesday. The trader was unmarried and rarely seen, they said. Harmesh Johal, who lives a few doors down from Mr Sarao, said he had never met the 36-year-old, but expressed surprise “because the Saraos are a very good family”. “I’m not sure about the son though I’ve spoken to him once or twice or so, but he’s not interested really [in talking],” another neighbour said. “The parents are humble people, they go to the gurdwara [Sikh temple] every Sunday.” Other neighbours painted a starkly different picture from that in the DoJ’s criminal complaint, which says Mr Sarao set up companies in Nevis and Anguilla to shelter his assets from tax. “He drives that broken down green car, it belongs to his parents,” said a resident from across the road, who lives next door to Mr Sarao’s brother. “His mother works part-time in a pharmacy and his father is retired. They’re quite tight [for money] I’d say, they’re not going on holidays or anything like that.” “It’s a close-knit environment, to know someone who does something like that is surprising,” said an airport worker from the same street. Even in an age when high-speed trading groups have invested millions to shave microseconds off trades, individual traders such as Mr Sarao can still thrive on global markets. He drives that broken down green car, it belongs to his parents - Neighbour of Navinder Singh Sarao Continue reading Despite Mr Sarao’s claims of manual dexterity, the affidavit claimed that in the nine months before the flash crash, he had sought and received assistance from an independent software company in customising an off-the-shelf automated trading programme. The software allowed him to simultaneously place numerous orders at different price points and automatically cancel those orders as the market approached them and before they could be executed, the affidavit said. On the day of the flash crash, US authorities allege, this meant that a single trader from Hounslow accounted for between 20 and 29 per cent of the entire e-mini sellside order book on the world’s largest futures exchange. This article has been amended to correct Mr Sarao’s age
Mystery Trader Armed With Algorithms Rewrites Flash Crash by Silla BrushTom Schoenberg 3:52 AM BST April 22, 2015 From a modest stucco house in suburban west London, where jetliners roar overhead on their approach to Heathrow Airport, a small-time trader was about to play a hand in one of the most harrowing moments in Wall Street history. Navinder Singh Sarao was as anonymous as they come -- little more than a day trader by the standards of the Street. But on that spring day five years ago, U.S. authorities now say, Sarao helped send the Dow Jones Industrial Average on the wild, 1,000-point ride that the world came to know as the flash crash. By regulators’ account, he was responsible for a stunning one out of five sell orders during the frenzy. On Tuesday, he was arrested by Scotland Yard and charged in the U.S. with 22 criminal counts, including fraud and market manipulation. On Wednesday, Sarao appeared in London court, telling Judge Quentin Purdy that he will fight the U.S. extradition request. The news left many grasping for answers. Sarao, 36, has no record of having worked at a major financial firm in the U.S. or the U.K. At the time of the flash crash, Sarao was renting space from a proprietary-trading firm in the City of London and clearing his transactions through MF Global Holdings Ltd., the now-defunct firm headed by Jon Corzine, said a person with knowledge of the matter. One of Sarao’s neighbors in Hounslow, 11 miles from central London, said what neighbors so often say: He was quiet, kept to himself, never caused trouble. $40 Million That picture, according to U.S. authorities, belies a years-long history of lightning-quick computer trading that netted Sarao $40 million in illicit profits. Sarao couldn’t be reached for comment Tuesday and U.S. authorities said they didn’t know whether he had retained a lawyer. Sarao didn’t cause the flash crash single-handedly, authorities say. Nonetheless, Tuesday’s developments fly in the face of the prevailing narratives of what happened. Regulators initially concluded that a mutual fund company -- said to be Waddell & Reed Financial Inc. of Overland Park, Kansas -- played a leading role. Many in the industry countered that a confluence of several forces, including high-frequency trading, was probably behind the crash. By all accounts, the flash crash was more than a mere technical glitch. It raised fundamental questions about how vulnerable today’s complex financial markets are to the high-speed, computer-driven trading that has come to dominate the marketplace. Whistle-blower Tip Little is known about Sarao and his trades, beyond what is contained in acomplaint filed by the U.S. Department of Justice. A related civil suit filed by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission provides a few additional glimpses into his supposed activities. The case stemmed from a whistle-blower who brought “powerful, original analysis” to the CFTC’s attention, said Shayne Stevenson, a Seattle lawyer representing the whistle-blower. According to U.S. authorities, Sarao spent the past six years thumbing his nose at regulators while using software designed to manipulate markets. In addition to fraud and manipulation, he was charged with spoofing -- an illegal practice that involves placing orders with the intent to cancel before they’re executed. In May 2010, Sarao’s actions created imbalances in the derivatives market that then spilled over to stock markets, exacerbating the flash crash, according to the CFTC. Introverted Trader “We do believe and intend to show that his conduct was at least significantly responsible for the order imbalance that in turn was one of the conditions that led to the flash crash,” Aitan Goelman, the CFTC’s director of enforcement, told reporters Tuesday. When he was trading, Sarao kept to himself, often tuning out noise and distractions with headphones, according to a person who knew him. Sarao’s computer screen almost always flashed futures data tied to the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index and his interactions were typically limited to workers installing new trading algorithms, said the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. When he started his allegedly manipulative trading in 2009, Sarao used off-the-shelf software that he later asked to be modified so he could rapidly place and cancel orders automatically. At one point, he asked the software developer for the code, explaining that he wanted to play around with creating new versions, according to regulators. Canceling Orders In the year leading up to the flash crash, Sarao popped up on regulators’ radar. Exchanges in the U.S. and Europe saw he was routinely placing and then quickly canceling large volumes of orders, according to an FBI affidavit unsealed Tuesday by a federal court in Illinois. The CME Group Inc., which operates an exchange for one of the most common derivatives tied to the S&P 500, contacted Sarao about his trades after concluding that some of his activities appeared to have had a significant impact on opening prices. Sarao explained some of his conduct to the CME in a March 2010 e-mail, as “just showing a friend of mine what occurs on the bid side of the market almost 24 hours a day, by the high-frequency geeks.” He then questioned whether CME’s actions regarding his activity meant “the mass manipulation of high frequency nerds is going to end,” according to the FBI affidavit. Spoofing Markets On May 6, 2010, the day of the flash crash, CME sent Sarao another message. All orders to CME’s electronic exchange were to be “entered in good faith for the purpose of executing bona fide transactions,” CME said, according to the FBI affidavit. That same day, Sarao and his firm, Nav Sarao Futures Limited Plc, used “layering” and “spoofing” algorithms to trade thousands of futures S&P 500 E-mini contracts. The orders amounted to about $200 million worth of bets that the market would fall, a trade that represented between 20 percent and 29 percent of all sell orders at the time. The orders were then replaced or modified 19,000 times before being canceled in the afternoon. The imbalance on the exchange due to Sarao’s orders “contributed to market conditions” that saw the derivatives contract plunge and later also the stock market, according to the CFTC. The crash spooked investors, became front-page news around the world and left regulators wondering how it happened. About three weeks later, Sarao told his broker that he had just called the CME and told them to “kiss my ass,” the affidavit said. No one put an end to Sarao’s trading for another five years. Among the nearly two dozen charges, one is tied to trades from March 2014. Wire fraud is punishable in the U.S. by maximum prison term of 20 years, commodities fraud by a sentence of as long as 25 years, and commodities manipulation and spoofing by terms of as long as 10 years or a $1 million fine.
Its good that actions have been taken but people expect a faster and better action 2010 issue and 2015 actions there is a enough gap in between those 2 years for a person to hide and became invincible to society.
Amusing article from the FT alphaville boys (and girl) Picture the scene in the London borough of Hounslow on Tuesday lunchtime, as police moved in to arrest one Navinder Singh Sarao, holed up in a humble end-of-terrace. There’ll have been prior discussion of the possible need for a special forces sniper overwatch. Someone will have remarked on the security implications of having a man like this, with a Muslim-sounding name (even though it’s not traditionally a Muslim name), apparently living so close to one of the world’s major transportation hubs, airliners passing just a few hundred feet overhead every 90 seconds or so on their way to Heathrow. Because Sarao stands accused of declaring Jihad on the S&P Futures market, the Apple Pie of American finance. More at the link http://ftalphaville.ft.com/2015/04/22/2127319/saving-trader-sarao/ (Possibly registration, but not payment required)