Posted on 03/31/2014 12:26:58 PM PDT by C19fan
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at cbsnews.com ...
Saw them talking about this on FOX this morning too.
The consensus was yes but tough noogies.
Is the pope catholic?
Duh.
All this is no where near as important as the central bank bubble, though.
From a long lost Day Trader....”The Masses Lose their A**es”
NYSE: A well developed con job
That’s kinda the whole base philosophy of stocks.
Manipulation, timing, luck, and even a little actual reality for show.
My chances would be better at a casino.
There is a distinction between small stock investors who buy and hold for long term gains, and small traders, who aim to make many small, quick gains and must compete with the market distorting manipulations of large traders. Cautious small investors can do well, sometimes remarkably well.
I don’t think it’s really rigged. The HFT traders do make profits. In effect, they skim a bit, and I think the practical effect of this is to widen the bid-ask spread a bit. The market is still a lot more fair than 30 or 40 years ago when there was a mandatory bid-ask spread quoted in fractions of a dollar, and the brokers pocketed the difference. Now, the brokers and market makers are dealing in penny spreads... and yeah, the HFT guys pick up some... but regular investors are a lot better off than they used to be.
Don’t forget about the stimulas money that banks get for negligible interest rates to use for free in the stock market to make billions . When it all comes crashing down it won’t be pretty.
Long term buy and hold with dollar cost averaging has left me with more net worth than if I had put the money in the bank or CDs all these years.
Yes, the past 13 years have been pretty miserable as a buy and holder, but so have banks and CDs.
And yes, the market is rigged, which is where the big profits are. It is there for the big corporate guys to rob the small investor, like in 2008-2009, when so many small investors sold short, pulling out their money when the market was way down.
People that stayed all in when the market was down came out fine. In my case, I got all out at around the peak and stayed out, so I am fine too.
But yes, the market is rigged and plenty of small investors get greedy too late to make good profits and scare too easily after big sell offs. They are basically buying high and selling low and transfer their money to the big corporate guys.
How so? If it trends up... or down... in a predictable manner... you can make a fortune anticipating it. I don't believe you can, though.
Can there be any doubt ?????????????????
Yes.
Yeah it's wired for some. Just look at Congressmen's net worth before and after they leave DC.
Much more fair then when Joe Kennedy made a fortune kitting stocks.
Where do you think our trade deficit dollars end up? Our government penalizes the heck out of any foreign entity wishing to invest in a US business start up or real estate. Yet that same foreign entity can purchase stock online without being hit with all the regulation.
When you put Goldman Sachs in charge of our monetary system, you can expect them to rig the game in their favor.
The HFTs function as toll booths. They do their best to get a little bit out of each trade by front running it. Could be a nickle collected over billions of trades a year.
Front running means their computer program has ways of anticipating a trade. So the HFTs buy that stock and sell it to you for a few pennies more than you would have paid otherwise. This takes place in a fraction of a second.
Do this a millions of times a day and you are rich
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.