By Liz Moyer and Brett Philbin
TD Ameritrade Holding Corp. (AMTD), E*Trade Financial Corp.
(ETFC) and Vanguard Group Inc. are among the financial institutions
that have stopped trading with Knight Capital Group Inc. (KCG) one
day after a glitch cost the company $440 million and raised fresh
questions about the reliability of highly automated equity
trading.
Knight Capital shares plunged 63% to $2.58 a share Thursday
after the firm announced the cost of the glitch and admitted it was
exploring ways to secure outside financing or potential deals.
The trading trouble was blamed on a software issue at Knight
that caused wild price swings in dozens of stocks Wednesday. Knight
is one of the biggest actors in the U.S. markets, particularly
among the firms that handle orders from retail investors.
Knight is one of a half-dozen firms that dominate trading of
retail orders, a business called wholesale market-making.
Its competitors in wholesaling include Citigroup Inc. (C),
Citadel LLC, UBS AG (UBS, UBSN.VX) and E*Trade Financial. Goldman
Sachs Group Inc. (GS), Cantor Fitzgerald & Co. and hedge fund
Two Sigma also have been trying to break in.
The decision by firms not to trade through Knight Thursday
indicates a concern for the firm's stability, said Sang Lee, a
co-founder of consulting firm Aite Group. Trades sent through
Knight would settle in three days, potentially leaving them hanging
over the weekend. "It's conservative clients staying away," Mr. Lee
said.
In a statement Thursday, Knight said its broker-dealer
subsidiaries are in compliance with requirements to hold
capital.
TD Ameritrade said Thursday it wasn't routing customer orders
through Knight Capital and was testing its systems after
Wednesday's glitch, a company spokeswoman said.
The Omaha, Neb., online brokerage will route orders to Knight in
the future though, as long as the company remains in good standing
with the equities exchanges, she said.
TD Ameritrade routed approximately 4% of its total customer
orders to Knight Capital as of June 30, according to a regulatory
filing.
E*Trade also wasn't routing customer orders through Knight and
will be assessing the situation on a daily basis, according to a
person familiar with the situation. A regulatory filing showed the
firm sent 14% of its NYSE-listed trades through Knight.
A spokesman for Vanguard Group, the country's largest
mutual-fund company, said the firm is rerouting trades through
other vendors "given the issues" at Knight Capital.
In a June 30 regulatory filing, Vanguard disclosed it sent 26%
of trades in NYSE Euronext-listed securities through Knight Capital
Americas, and 24% of trades of Nasdaq-listed securities through
Knight as of the end of the second quarter.
Sterne Agee & Leach Inc. also is routing its trades away
from Knight, a spokeswoman confirmed Thursday.
The Birmingham, Ala., brokerage, with 140,000 customers in 50
states, said it used to route through Knight but was now routing
elsewhere. Sterne routed 84% of trades of securities listed on NYSE
through Knight Capital Americas as of the end of the second
quarter, according to a filing. It routed another 7% through Knight
Direct EMS, an electronic-trading system.
In trading securities listed on Nasdaq OMX, Sterne routed 77%
through Knight Capital Americas as of the end of June, and 12%
through Knight Direct EMS, according to the filing.
Sterne said it didn't have any exposure at Knight Wednesday.
It is relatively easy for firms to reprogram their computers to
change the routing to other trading firms, Mr. Lee from Aite Group
said.
Earlier Thursday, J.J. Kinahan, TD Ameritrade's chief
derivatives strategist, said the company was "monitoring the
situation," adding that this latest technology issue suggests "we
[as an industry] couldn't have generated more bad public-relations
events in the last six months had we set out to do so."
A series of tumultuous market events, including BATS Global
Markets Inc.'s botched initial public offering, Facebook Inc.'s
(FB) chaotic market debut and Knight's software problems have
severely damaged a fragile retail investor psyche so far this
year.
--Kirsten Grind contributed to this article.
Write to Liz Moyer at liz.moyer@dowjones.com and Brett Philbin
at Brett.Philbin@dowjones.com
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