Igor Oystacher, the co-founder of 3Red Trading LLC accused of manipulating markets by rapidly placing trades he never intended to execute, has exceptional reasoning skills -- in the 99th percentile -- that gave him the capacity to quickly follow through on orders, his lawyers said.
Oystacher was sued in October by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which accused him of spoofing, saying that he canceled orders within a second of entering them -- a sign he could be illegally entering orders to create a false impression of demand, and then canceling them. Outlining his defense for the first time in an April 1 court filing, lawyers said that Oystacher, a competitive speed chess player, has exceptional reaction-time skills and a customized computer mouse that make him faster than most humans at executing trades.
