We get a glimpse into the latest leading unemployment indicators courtesy of Fox Biz’ which notifies that Morgan Stanley in addition to previously reported job cuts, will also be shutting another 300 branch offices and cutting as many as 1,200 jobs over the next year in an attempt to reduce overhead. The primary reason for this: “there has been a significant slowdown in small investors turning to brokers to execute orders; many investors are sitting on cash because they are fearful of the recent volatility in the markets. Because of the declining retail order flow, every major brokerage firm will have to cut staff, Morgan even more so because of the overlap from the Smith Barney acquisition.”
I used to trade stocks and options consistently and often but have virtually stopped. Why? Because the market doesn’t run on fundamentals now, or even on technicals. Rather, it’s a bunch of bots spewing millions of trades a day based on who knows, with a long-term trade being three seconds. Plus, the bots often have access to order information the rest of us don’t, thus the game is quite obviously rigged and fixed. So, why bother?