Dislikedthink about it, @ big fundemental times MOST traders never put money in the market - so how do we get all this action ... huh?
answer - its a virtual programme, someone pushing buttons - truth is harder to believe than anything elseIgnored
I have some very limited access to major i-banks' dealing desks information. The way I understand it is that volume is genearlly very thin before such events, as you also mentioned that most traders would not put money in. Then in such thin volume, big spikes can be easily generated by some orders early put in the market at the time of the release. And then some of the big banks could easily jump in to sweep it up. Euro's rise on 2/11 was also on virtually no volume.
For example, last night's FOMC, both JPM and GS were doing a bit of directionless trades in ES in the first few minutes, even though normally ES is heavily programme-driven. After the spike high, GS dumped it to the low, and then stepped in to buy it up. GS is habitual to buy at the lows since I started to look at this. Its presence in the pit and order flows in the books are rather intimidating to others, as I was told. Few would dare to trade against them. I guess it's not far-fetched to say that GS can easily 'make the market' if it wants/needs, and so goes all the conspiracy theories re GS etc. yadah, yadah.....
What sort of virtual programme did you mean?