Knight Capital is picking itself up again, this time after taking a punch from Hurricane Sandy. Saijel Kishan and Nina Mehta of Bloomberg report that yesterday Fidelity Investments [profile] and other large retail brokers shifted their trading from Knight to ther market makers after power failure temporarily knocked out Knight's stock trading.

The Boston Business Journal also reported on Knight's troubles and Fidelity's reaction.

A spokeswoman for Jersey City, New Jersey-based Knight told the wire service that "power went down at about 11:45am" at Knight's headquarters, shutting down its equity trading. Knight also separately stated that it had redirected electronic fixed income and foreign exchange clients, too.

"Due to a building emergency (power issues), Knight Capital Americas is asking you to seek an alternate destination for the order handling and execution of your OTC, Options and Listed orders until further notice," the memo read. "All computer interfaces with Knight will be shut down with no new orders, both by phone or electronic, being accepted at this time."

The spokeswoman said that systems are back up and that Knight is now open for "all equities" trading.

The article makes no mention of the power outage's impact, if any, on Knight's market making in the ETF business. Three months ago Knight nearly collapsed and ETF spreads skyrocketed after Knight lost $440 million thanks to a software glitch.

A Fidelity spokesman told Bloomberg that the Boston Behemoth redirected orders to Citadel and Goldman Sachs. TD Ameritrade also rerouted trades. 

Edited by: Neil Anderson, Managing Editor


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