This Has To Be A Joke: SEC About To Blame Entire Flash Crash On Waddell And Reed’s E-Mini Trades

Tyler Durden
Zero Hedge
Oct 1, 2010

Bloomberg has just released something which if true, will wipe out every last ounce of credibility left in the market. As readers will recall, the initial scapegoat that CNBC and everyone else, who has no clue what really happens in the market decided to pin the flash crash on, was small Kansas-based trading firm Waddell & Reed, which traded a few extra contracts of E-Mini futures in the hours preceding the flash crash. Well, ladies and gentlemen, if this advance glance into what the SEC is about to disclose in its flash crash report is indeed valid, then the entire flash crash is about to be blamed on Waddell and Reed once again, with no mention of High Frequency Trading, or any of the other real culprits for the drop which wiped out $1 trillion in market cap, and the furthermore the report will have no policy recommendations. This is so insulting to the general intelligence of the average American investor who has by now seen the destructive influence of HFT in action so many times, that it will wipe out the last remaining shards of credibility left in US stocks. Will Mary Schapiro next blame every single mini flash crash which we have seen on almost daily basis over the past month on Waddell and Reed as well? Or is that reserved for E-Trade retail accounts? We will not pass judgment until we see the final report, but if true, this is immediate grounds for termination of the SEC head, and will require that everyone pull their money from the market asap, as it will definitely confirm that even our regulators have no clue just how broken the market truly is. It will also confirm that every single SEC staffer has been bribed, bought and corrupted beyond repair by the HFT lobby.

From Bloomberg: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-3 ... crash.html

U.S. regulators have concluded that Waddell & Reed Financial Inc.’s trading of Standard & Poor’s 500 Index futures spooked traders on May 6, turning an orderly selloff into a crash that erased $862 billion from the value of American equities in less than 20 minutes, according to two people with direct knowledge of the findings.

Waddell & Reed’s selling of the E-mini futures was part of a normal hedging strategy, according to a report from the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission that may be released as soon as today, said the people, who declined to be identified before the findings are made public. The Overland Park, Kansas-based company didn’t attempt to do anything nefarious, and its actions may not have prompted a retreat had there not been other concerns in the market, such as the European debt crisis, the people said.

Waddell & Reed will not be identified by name in the report, the people said. The document won’t make any policy recommendations, they said.

“I’m not sure it’s appropriate to comment on a report that doesn’t name us specifically, but it’s clear we were one of many traders that day,â€