Naughty Nokkie Noo

I was just putting the finishing touches to an article on whether or not Reuters and EBS had lost their ‘control’ on price discovery, when a contact called to tell me that EUR/NOK trading had ground to a halt on most platforms as a result of what he called a “rogue” order. Apparently, an offer to sell €1 million at 8.5420 was put on Reuters, which at the time was a couple of big figures below the market. However, it apparently came from an institution whose credit is so bad that nobody could lift it. The result was that it screwed up most other banks’ pricing streams – I hear Barclays was one of the exceptions. As a result, prices went ridiculously wide for quite some time. For the moment, Thomson Reuters (as we must now call it) isn’t shedding much light on the issue. “We are currently pulling together the results of our investigation, which we wish to share with clients before we share with others,” it says. At least it should take some comfort that it still clearly exerts a huge degree of control over EUR/NOK pricing.