6 days ago
At 10 AM, Stock Options Soar as Retail Traders Unleash New Bots
When people talk about algorithmic traders, it evokes images of rooms full of math PhDs creating complex models that place huge trades in milliseconds after economic or earnings data is released. But now, it's retail traders who are turning in droves to automated trading, building the kind of programs in their basements more associated with Wall Street banks than the Reddit thread r/wallstreetbets.
Using these systems, though, has a downside: they can result in predictable, herd-like behavior, with data from Cboe Global Markets showing trades clustered at certain times of day. There's a risk that more sophisticated market participants could exploit the predictability of small-volume traders at specific moments when retail demand for options spikes.
