The manipulations are more obvious now, futures are played with in conjunction with stock trades to drive in prices in a desired direction, market fundamentals, logic, and an semblance of ethics be damned,
One can achieve a comfortable margin of safety by working with other hedge funds to go long or short the identical stocks and futures in concert.
Today it’s clear that the market transactions may have less to do with an asset’s actual valuation in a normal trading environment than with its desired valuation in a manipulated one.
It’s a true tail wagging the dog phenomenon that enriches well-placed gamblers at the expense of everyone else.
I’m not trading much now. The manipulations are so obvious (and unrelated to reality) that it seems pointless to try to understand what’s happening, much less place an intelligent trade.
