Posted on 03/31/2014 8:56:49 PM PDT by Ray76
This month marks the fifth anniversary of the current bull market on Wall Street, making it one of the longest and strongest in history. Yet U.S. stock ownership is at a record low and less than half of Americans trust banks and financial services. And in the last two weeks, the New York attorney general and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission in Washington have both launched investigations into high-frequency computerized stock trading that now controls more than half the market.
The probes were announced just ahead of a much anticipated book on the subject by best-selling author Michael Lewis called "Flash Boys."
(Excerpt) Read more at cbsnews.com ...
Note "date"
Alright, all you market critics. If you are not in the market, where are you investing for growth?
Hmm. Does QE exist?
Absolute lies, for 120 years. Catch your breath, or be dined upon.
Denninger, ZH, and the Market/gold bugs on here have been screaming this for close to SIX years and now this clown comes along and the MSM is all OH MY GOD, REALLY???
WTF... :-|
It is ILLEGAL to place and pull market orders without the intent to execute. HFT does this for a good 30-70% of any given total days activities.
Here's how I buy I stock.
I research the financials, I study the charts, then I study the sector, then I assess general market sentiment.
I set the price I'm willing to pay.
I set the number of shares I want to buy.
I send a “limit” order.
If I can't get filled at my price or my share count, my order is cancelled.
The high speed traders can't touch me.
If they artificially raise the price, then, at some point in time, the price may come back down, and I'll buy then.
If the stock stays above the price I'm willing to pay, then I look for new stocks to buy.
Any mutual fund, any hedge fund, any institutional buyer can do EXACTLY the same thing I do.
Or.....
Buyers and sellers can use “limit” orders.
If you don't get your exact price, or, if you don't get your exact share count, your order is cancelled.
End of story.
High speed traders are completely irrelevant in a world of
“limit” orders.
The skimmers see your trade and act upon it before your trade occurs. Your trade goes through their system. Read the article.
Is CBS believable?
They can’t “act” on my trade.
They have two choices.
They can fill my “limit” order - exactly at my terms.
Or, they can ignore it.
There is no “third” choice.
By act I mean act upon having knowledge of your trade and place a trade before your trade. Read the article to see what was happening to trades.
Had a call from a business acquaintance who told me about a penny stock that was lightly traded and how we and some friends could set up a pump and dump scheme. I also know other folks in the same business that he approached with the same scam. I did not bite mainly cause I didn’t figure I would like prison food and didn’t want to be the last holder of the stock. This was in the ‘90’s when pump and dumps were all the rage. All markets are rigged where there is a lot of money involved, years ago the Mob was even involved. Nothing new under the sun.
Ray, have you ever traded a stock?
The only way high speed traders can affect the price you pay is if you use a “Market” order.
I have no idea why anyone would ever use a “Market” order.
If you use a “Limit” order, your order MUST be filled at the exact terms you specify, or it cannot be filled at all.
Ordinary people deal in a few hundreds, maybe a thousand or so shares. So that's a few bucks. Big deal.
Broker fees, market fees, etc. far exceed these amounts.
You're going to make money when a stock you buy goes up, like say, 50% or maybe it doubles, splits, etc.
These pennies won't hurt you as much as sell-offs, bad company earnings, etc.
Aren’t you discounting the cost of a cancelled order?
I used to make a little money reading the charts and combining it with reading up on sectors, news events, and common sense. Sometimes I could pick up on something before the mutual funds and big traders saw a trend.
I think it was about the time of the Enron meltdown, the beginning of the George 2 presidency, that it all got cloudy.
Now there's not much to find. Emerging companies are smart not to go public with very low stock prices because of the big trader and venture trading manipulations. Companies are going toward being closely held or staying private, unless or until they can do what Zuckerberg did and maximize the potential and go public for billions.
Here's what I've noticed. I don't buy or sell hardly anything anymore. But if I want to get in there, I offer a little more (penny per share or so) than "asking" for a purchase, and put in a "sell" for a little bit less.
That and those charts looking like they aren't moving in normal mathematical ways has me not at all surprised about this news.
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