HFT trading is now upwards of 60% of all trading, and it's not liquidity, okay?
Most stocks are owned by the rich, as the diagram shows. So, that's why the oligarchs are losing their cool. Their scamming is affecting their stock portfolios and they should have realised that long ago, and bought gold.
Everybody else who can, is leaving the market because of
fraud, cheating, secret government loans, visible government loans, QE1,2, & next,
main street being boarded up, unemployment being 20% in most countries.
the poor and homeless: have nothing to lose by their socks. no stocks
the working poor: stocks mean stocking shelves at the local giganto-box
the middle class: taking stock of their dwindling purchasing power
moderately wealthy: have stockbrokers on call, who are divesting rapidly
wealthy: light their cigars with stock certificates while on the beach, "offshore"
brokers: programmed their computers to work for them while they work on politicians
if they trade at all it is for their account to incur fees.
politicians: trading on insider information, except they never thought gold would win
the lower 90% know this is a stacked game; the odds are stacked against us.
So, nobody is singing their tune in the world of the bottom 90%.
They get a much better reaction in Washington than this:
[stockbrokers performing, but nobody in the audience likes them]
UPDATE: right on cue, a great review by Karl Denninger (part)
Real People Say "Screw You" To The Markets
The Market Ticker ® - Commentary on The Capital Markets
Posted 2011-08-26 10:11
by Karl Denninger
Nobody is talking about this. That's 27 - twenty-seven contracts - on the bid at 1146.75. During the trading day. There's less than a thousand up and down the stack through the entire visible portion.
This is a tiny fraction of normal liquidity and those sub-100 numbers are more-akin to what you expect in the middle of the night when everyone's sleeping!
All that's left is the computers. The humans have gone home. True liquidity and participation has ended. The people have given up. This is not an isolated incident - as I write this I'm seeing it literally minute-by-minute, and it's been very common all month. A few minutes ago I saw seven contracts on the bid at the money. Seven - at 9:57 (ET) in the morning.
The fraud, the phony bids and offers and the high-frequency ripoffs have driven everyone away.
Go ahead politicians, tell us how important "Wall Street" is to the economy and to you. Let the thieves and liars continue to pollute the markets and screw everyone. Volatility is as high as it is precisely because people are tired of getting buttraped and after a few instances of it they simply say "screw this", take their money and go home.
They don't need the markets, the markets need them, and they're gone.
With no depth in the market huge moves become commonplace and are essentially impossible to trade.
I've never seen the market this illiquid during the day as it has been the last few weeks. It's ridiculously bad and getting worse. When you see two-digit bids and offers during the trading day in the stack you may as well be playing with a loaded six-shooter pointed at your own head - you can't possibly trade ahead of these jackasses and they can and will steal your money,******your stops and then reverse the market right out from under you before you can react. All you do is churn your account and waste your capital.
Don't even try to "invest" in this market folks, and if you decide to trade, realize that you're playing in a rigged casino and the entire force of the government is not only behind rigging the casino but explicitly endorses and permits the rigging to go on and continue, despite being fully-aware of it.
Remember, "Wall Street is Main Street" to them - and if that means your retirement and investments get destroyed that's just fine provided that big buildings in downtown Manhatten continue to be infested by the thieves guild that pumps tithes into campaign coffers.
