… then markets are so skittish and high frequency trading (HFT) so instantaneous that further such catastrophes are bound to happen.
Except that’s not really what happened
Today, we have reach an apex in our quest to prevent the HFT “Black Monday” juggernaut , as absent the last minute intervention of still unknown powers, the market, for all intents and purposes, broke. What happened today was no fat finger, it was no panic selling by one major account: it was simply the impact of everyone in the HFT community going from port to starboard on the boat, at precisely the same time. And in doing so, these very actors, who in over a year have been complaining they are unfairly targeted because all they do is “provide liquidity”, did anything but what they claim is their sworn duty.
Our financial markets are gamed, controlled by a few, and as is obvious after today, broken. We need real regulation. We need it now. Clearly the markets can not and will not control themselves. They are incapable of it because, as with HFT, their time span is a few seconds, they care only about short-term profits, and don’t care who are what they damage in the process.
It’s way past time for Obama to stop protecting these amoral thugs.
After today investors will have little if any faith left in the US capital markets, assuming they had any to begin with. We need to purge the equity market structure of all liquidity-taking parasitic players. We must start today with High Frequency Trading.
I heard it was caused by events in Greece. Yeah, right. When unemployment is hitting historic highs, how can the Dow be trading as high as 11,500? It’s a joke. Kind of like all those billboards you see on the way to Vegas showing folks who won millions at the slot machines: maybe they did, but you won’t. But hope makes you put another twenty in the slot…