An extraordinary week in global financial markets, as confidence was rocked by fears of European governments defaulting, culminated on Thursday May 6 with chaotic trading in US equities and futures.
CME Group was forced to issue a statement confirming “that activity by Citigroup Global Markets in CME Group stock index futures markets does not appear to be irregular or unusual in light of market activity today”.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission said it would cooperate with the Securities and Exchange Commission and other regulators and exchanges to “review the unusual trading activity that took place briefly this afternoon”.
There were suspicions of a ‘fat finger’ trading error that might have caused vast sales of shares or contracts – and widespread concern that the global sell-off was triggering programme traders to sell assets at key defence levels, such as 1200 for the S&P 500 index.
Although the highest drama was...