Is the Batman stock market heist possible? | Hacker News Reader

Is the Batman stock market heist possible?

extremetech.com

33 pointsmaxko8743 comments

For the tl;dr - Some hyperbole plus proof that the author doesn't understand very much about how an exchange such the NYSE or LSE works, how the financial system around them works or physical security and thus he comes the conclusion that it would be possible.

In real life though, it just wouldn't be possible.

1) Cutting all the connections to the exchange wouldn't be so easy. You're going to have multiple connections with different physical routes out of the building to minimize the chance that the exchange goes down due to a misplaced backhoe.

2) Assuming you did cut the connections, that alone would almost certainly trip the exchange's circuit breakers and halt trading. Even if the servers located at the exchange itself didn't halt trading, all the outside entities would lose contact and so you wouldn't get any trade confirmations back.

3) Even if you could execute the trades (somehow) clearing firms would almost certainly refuse to honor the trades as being legit, and if no one else is accepting that a trade got made, then for all intents and purposes it didn't happen.

tl;dr for my bit - No.

One of the more amusing lines of the movie is when Alfred says that they may be able to eventually prove fraud and get the money back. The trade was executed in the middle of a televised hostage situation and subsequent high-speed chase... why would it take more than thirty seconds to convince someone it was not legitimate and reverse it?

I suppose the implication was that the greedy counter parties would refuse to write-off the trades and the corrupt brokerages and regulators would let them stand.

Still, when you put it like that it sounds funny.

I assumed Bane had found the best hackers in the world with inside knowledge of the system, as a supervillian would, and had them write something that would obfuscate the origin of the trades in the "paper" trail. Basically anyone who lost money that day would blame the break-in, some of them probably did just as stupid stuff as it looked like Wayne did. So how would they know Wayne's complaint was legitimate?

What didn't make sense to me was that they were able to continue the program's execution after the outside connection was cut off—if they didn't need to physically be there the whole time, why'd they need to go in guns blazing? Heck, even if they need to be there, why not just slip the program to someone on the inside along with a hefty bribe or threat or both? Other than to give Batman someone to chase for plot purposes, that is...

I'm surprised how much more discussion that plot point generated than the magic identity eraser, though.

I had figured they needed to be there in person to get past the fingerprint scanner.

Also, Bane's plan centers around presenting himself as a champion of the people -- I had figured he went in guns blazing for the psychological value of the thing (not to mention the possibility of drawing Wayne/Batman out of hiding). Exchange security just being compromised probably wouldn't be a big enough deal for most people (the police officer outside who makes the comment about his money being in his mattress certainly doesn't seem to care!)

It's pretty hard to obfuscate the paper trail when there needs to be a counterparty and the trade needs to be attributed to one person. There's also rather a lot of work that's gone into verifying that a trade has come from the person it claims to have come from.

1. if there was a hostage situation inside the exchange. they'd stop trading for all securities pretty much instantaneously. nobody's trades after the start of the hostage situation would be honored.

2. the exchange's data centers aren't even on wall street! most of the data centers are in weehawken, nj. breaking into the NYSE would be about as effective as breaking into a bank of america.

Fox said that, not Alfred.

Well... never let the truth get in the way of a good story...

> 1) Cutting all the connections to the exchange wouldn't be so easy.

Is "the exchange" in the same building as the trading floor?

I don't know either way, but would be surprised if the exchange and the trading floor were in the same building.

I'd be surprised because the trading floor must be in Manhattan for social reasons (because people go there) while the exhange can be "anywhere". Given the price of space in Manhattan....

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9219668/In_fortified_...

This would suggest that the NYSE datacenter is not in the same building as the trading floor. And, I would assume that there are more than one of these such datacenters.

The NYSE datacenter is in Mahwah New Jersey: http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2011/06/30/nyses...

> Given the price of space in Manhattan....

...HFT guys pay very expensive colo rates to be in a datacenter that is milliseconds closer to wherever the time is stamped on a trade.

> HFT guys pay very expensive colo rates to be in a datacenter that is milliseconds closer to wherever the time is stamped on a trade

Yes, but that doesn't constrain the location of the exchange. The exchange (and all of the HFT colos) could be in Texas and the trading floor in NYC. (There's no reason to do HFT from the trading floor.)

Speed-of-light limitations say that yes, the best HFT will happen close to the trading floor.

EDIT: Okay, close to NYSE's datacenter, which is still in New York, I believe.

I believe their new datacenter is in New Jersey now. They still have a Manhatten Datacenter but that is not where the trades are matched.

> Speed-of-light limitations say that yes, the best HFT will happen close to the trading floor.

Why?

HFT needs to be close to where transactions happen, but that's not the trading floor.

The trading floor is just a place where a bunch of people with a bunch of screens connected to the "place where transactions happen" gather each trading period.

The trading floor can't be where transactions happen because it's got people in it, not machines.

Damn, there goes my business model.

The Atlantic covered this in July http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/07/banes-pl...

1. The exchange would likely reverse/cancel the trades 2. Puts protect the buyer (Bruce Wayne) against losses (resulting from prices lower than the strike price)

The NYSE can reverse erroneous trades. It may be possible to execute the trades, but none of the effects shown would happen.

Well in the movie the said that they can reverse transactions, but it will take time to prove

They can be reversed in real life as well - it happens on occasion.

In the case of the film, it would be exceptionally unlikely that the trades would be honoured anyway.

It's been a long time since I worked in anything close to the financial industry, but when I did, trades could be reversed any time up until settlement date which IIRC was seven days after trade date. I think under some circumstances they could even be reversed after settlement.

Edit: I was wrong, settlement used to be five days, it's now three days (T+3) and has been for some time.

It varies between products as to what the default settlement period is. However, from my experience (which was in exchange traded options), companies would only have until the close of business to reverse (or bust) bad trades made on the exchange - any they'd have to meet certain criteria to do so, the bulk of which was, I think, that the trade had to have executed at a price which was more than a certain percent away from the current market price.

Spoilers:

In the context of the plot that would be fine. It only had to be an issue for Bruce for a day or two for them to move forward with their plan. Which was to show his incredibly bad decision making and to make him powerless to stop them from taking over his company. To reverse the outcome of all that would have been a far more difficult thing to accomplish than to reverse fraudulent stock trades.

I always felt he had his money back by the end of the movie.

but why would anyone believe bruce made those trades to begin with? It was made extremely obvious (by the armed break-in and subsequent car chase) that the trades were fraudulent.

That's all true, I would think that the heavily armed event would immediately disqualify all trades during that time. That is, if people understood that they were conducting the trades in the first place. That is the weak point of the plot but like I said, it only had to work long enough for the takeover to happen. It wasn't like the plan was to takeover the company for years to come, just a few days to move forward with the plan to get access to the reactor. I think it's unlikely but plausible. But hey, it's a movie.

But for the Bruce part, that's easy because part of the Bruce persona is basically a dumb playboy that's rich despite himself. He has people who take care of him and if he does something on his own then it often results in something bad. Remember that he supposedly burned down his own house during a drunken rage at his birthday party after kicking everybody out.

They were all done while there was a bunch of armed men in control of the exchange, I don't think there would be any doubt at all that any trades made within that time frame would be considered suspicious and not honoured. It would be unlikely he'd be out any money anyway since the clearing firms would probably refuse to clear the trades.

(If you're not familiar with what a clearing firm does - they're essentially a middleman who ensures that a trade actually gets completed (settled) and at the same time reduces your operational risk by protecting you against the risk of a counterparty either not-honoring a trade, or going bankrupt before the trade is completed.)

Spoilers? Still in the theaters..

... then don't read the article?

No this a huge plot point plastered on the frontpage. Not cool.

I guess Bain hijacks the stock market or something. Thanks for ruining that.

I've also learned some other points from irresponsible headlines.

It is "Bane". And no, this is not a hugely significant plot point.

Better go see it then to avoid further spoilers! I saw it with a housemate two weeks ago on a weekday, the theater was nearly empty. But I agree with the other comment that it's not a major plot point by itself.

It's one of the first scenes of the movie. It is not a "huge" plot point.

A) it's not a huge plot point, it's pretty early in the movie, and B) I don't think that Hacker News should have to worry about spoilers.

It's a pretty minor plot point, actually. It's kind of like "Lex Luther uses kryptonite to disable Superman"

This just in! Spoiler aren't that bad: http://boingboing.net/2012/08/08/spoilers-are-actually-kind-...

Bane coerces a trader ... to bet all of Wayne Enterprises’ stock on bad futures

Couldn't he just short the future himself?

Futures are promises to deliver an asset at a certain price (on a certain date). Presumably Bane just offered futures at stupid prices.

Incidentally, being 'short' on a future means you are the one promising the delivery.

Completely possible, but the method used is wrong, instead what you'd want to do is flood the market with sell orders for stock that doesn't exist. If you do it for a prolonged period of time it will destroy the value of the companies' stock.

Talk to the CEO of Overstock about how it works.

Alternatively, talk to the Porsche family about how to turn the tables and have the bank eat the losses instead of your stock.

> sell orders for stock that doesn't exist

naked shorting is only possible if you are a market maker. if you don't have a locate, you can't short the stock.

also, how are you going to put up the margin required to short that much stock?

> If you do it for a prolonged period of time it will destroy the value of the companies' stock

which is something that doesn't affect bruce wayne, because it doesn't matter if the market price of his equity has dropped, he still has the same percentage share of the company, which means he'd still retain ownership.

Another question: Would the market even be able to absorb so many out-of-market puts? One of the fundamentals of every exchange is that ever buyer needs to be connected with a seller. When you're that far out-of-market, would enough people have even been willing to trade with you that you could have completed the trades?

It's sad that with all of the world's information accessible to everyone, the author has to write an article instead of just using Google to answer his basic questions.

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