Bank Of England "Hijacked" Audio Feed Was Used To Secretly Leak Confidential Information To Hedge Funds
Over the past few years there had been numerous allegations in both the trading community and among the media that critical UK data releases were being mysteriously leaked ahead of time. Back in 2017, Reuters reported that "unusual sterling moves often precede UK data releases", explaining that "on eight occasions over the past 12 months, the pound has moved against the dollar in the minutes before the release of the retail sales numbers, correctly anticipating the direction the currency took once the figures were published" adding that "this has been true even when the retail sales data have gone against the Reuters poll market consensus, leading to speculation among traders about the possibility of leaks of the information before its official publication."
One such example took place on Feb. 17, 2017 when sterling fell by around 20 ticks to $1.2440 in the space of around 15 seconds, around three minutes before the release of the numbers for January. When the figures were published by the ONS, they showed sales had been much weaker than economists had expected, sending sterling down further.
A similar pattern was found to have occurred in seven of the other 12 months for which Reuters analyzed trading data. The moves in sterling were most notable in January, November, October, July and April as well as in February. In five of those months, the official figures were significantly weaker or stronger than forecasts by economists.
Foreign exchange traders posted messages on Twitter saying they believed that the data had been leaked ahead of time, a regular refrain after the monthly retail sales figures.
David Woolcock, chair of the committee of professionalism at the Association Cambiste Internationale Financial Markets Association, a body representing foreign exchange dealers, said his review of the analysis suggested either that some investors were very good at predicting what the data would show, or that it was being leaked.
“Looking at the charts shown to me by Thomson Reuters it seems evident that either a very close correlation in private/public data has been discovered that is allowing traders to pre-position ahead of publication or a leak of the numbers is occurring,” he said.
A separate analysis by the Wall Street Journal of 207 releases of British inflation, industrial production and labor market data, showed that on 59.5% of occasions British government bond futures moved ahead of the data in what proved to be the right direction, confirming that someone was indeed leaking - and trading on - market-moving information ahead of its scheduled release time. Alexander Kurov, an associate professor of finance at West Virginia University who conducted the analysis for the Wall Street Journal, told the newspaper it was “very unlikely that we are looking at a random pattern.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/bank-england-hijacked-audio-feed-was-used-secretly-leak-confidential-information-hedge