I find humor in the market manipulation

Every day some bad macro news comes out, they take the market down and resurrect it in the last hour.

Yesterday down 100 plus, ends up down slightly, today down 100 plus, going green.

There are lots of crosswinds in this market... Good news battling bad news... and vice-versa.

Take today for example.   Lower than expect GDP number for Q2, then comes a report saying purchasing managers are more bullish than they were last month. 

I don't think the  best analysts have a good idea where this market is headed.   What happens when we take the training-wheels off on this economy, and remove all of this Fed Stimulus...

My guess is  we see 9500 on the Dow before 11500...

Weekly looks like more up to me...11250 will be hard to push through though...if we can clear 10590 this week theres nothing in the way until 10900..daily looks like its coming down though and 10180 will be good support as it a TL and a few MAs..they run the market wether its good or bad news so if you think its going down we need bad news[data,#s] + a natural disaster ..

All in all though i agree and if we head up from here 11250 will be a good place to put the farm on a short and let it ride a few months..

Yea, so now we know how its being manipulated....what do you guys think next week will look like? I think it will start the week slow and low, but end the week higher than previous weeks' end.  This market isn't going to break 11000, right now this is looking like the range.

Well the issue is cheap money.

How the FED can allow banks to keep tapping the well and leveraging as they do on these low rates is absurd..that is what keeps this market up. I imagine the FED wants the market up because it is the real barometer of the economy.

  I think Friday was an very obvious example Wall. I watched it closely and they turned it on a dime.

Vermeer,

What are the suggested ZH theories?

I think ZH takes an interesting angle and then jumps off a cliff, if you read stuff on that site long you will turn into claycourt and a few others here..they go too far with their conspiracy and gloom/doom theories.

I will pm you regarding the articles that struck me as plausible, and which were not dismissed as nonsense by people in the business I know (and who know a lot lot more about the actual technical possibilities/requirements needed to do what is suggested.)

https://www.zerohedge.com/article/its-not-market-its-hft-crop-circle-crime-scene-further-evidence-quote-stuffing-manipulation-

Vermeer,

I actually (gulp) went over there and read about 15 threads/articles written today and the responses which all seemed the same. You have the groupies who think the world is ending and those who laugh at those gloomers..I saw it in nearly every single article written.

The conclusion I drew is that most of them have no hope and think the FED will keep the market up and that eventually their low rate approach will cause inflation..the problem is that inflation cannot exist without demand and I dont see demand out there to support inflation. I also dont see widespread deflation..in fact I see steady prices in consumer goods, in commodities, in food supplies etc, I dont see deflation in anything outside real estate.

Vermeer,

I believe that happens..I of course agree that the HFT group is out there and they are looking to make money period, how ever that is done does not matter..if they can find a big bid or offer to take advantage of, they will. I did HFT during the early part of the century and it is hardly providing liquidity, they are traders and computers that are looking to exploit and make a buck.

The problem is that you cannot disprove their intention..they COULD be intending to provide liquidity, or at least they could act like it and the SEC has ZERO chance at catching these guys and the reason for that is that the SEC is not staffed to man the Level II arena, the SEC needs to be 100 times larger than they are and to catch these guys you would have to take shots of the Level II screen over and over and over and prove that they are pulling bids and manipulating the market..that their intention is not to provide liquidity.

The other problem is that liquidity and HFT make money for the exchanges, so why would they want to stop them? They make a nibble on every trade done and most often they are charged data and use fees..so everyone makes money using these leaches.

As usual we end up right back at the reality of the markets..these free market circus participants will cheat, lie, steal from you if they can make a buck..and the ONLY way to stop them is to cash them out..to hit their bids/offers before they call pull them and force margin calls with a swift move in the wrong direction.

Until there is some serious fear in the market, HFT and liquidity traders arent going anywhere..

Your single best indicator for risk of  inflation/deflation comes out of unemployment numbers. 

Too much slack in the economy with some 8M Americans still unemployed our underemployed, tells us we have a long way to go. 
  Spending in the economy .... particularly consumer spending...  will be restrained,  and thus risk of inflation should be restrained for some time . ..Keep in mind consumer spending had represented 66-70% of the economy during the boom years...   

U.S. is way behind the curve when it comes recouping all lost jobs since this last boom-bust cycle started in 2001-2 and ended 2007-8.     Article in WSJ last week shows Germany has almost recouped all of their lost in the cycle.  
Conclusion is that it's still worse out here in U.S. than a lot of people realize.

WSC-

Yeah, I know, you think I like to be all gloomy and doomy.  Quite the contrary.  Just being realistic.

Vermeer is spot on with his stating that manipulating the market right now isn't too difficult.  Case in point the summer of 2000.  Then KABOOM.  See it exactly the same way right now.  Market will get run up the rest of the summer, little retail guy will throw in the towel on pessimism and pile on come September, then a massive and devastating sell-off (on top of a major geopolitical event, end of tax cuts, end of rate cuts, end of easy money) sending dow below 5000 by EOY '10.

Doesn't take an "economic guru" to deduce that the future couldn't be more dismal.

Condolences to all on their 401s, IRAs, and social security.

I agree with you Wallstreet, everyday the markets tank on the slightest bad news report.

Why dont they just come out with these reports once a month, instead of everyday having reports.

CC,

5k on the DOW by the end of the year?

Come on with that..you know I give you a hard time, but that is crazy for sure..

cd, it surely seems more news comes out more often, I am not sure the news is more frequent, just observed more closely...

Another 3 PM rescue..

yup...now, should I consider you a conspiracy nut Wall?

Ive always known the markets are manipulated, I havent taken it to the next level and make a psychotic conspiracy website..

Ramping the markets yet again..another day another set of futures manipulation.

Back to 10.7 given what we have economically is a bit of a head scratcher..


 

All done to draw in the little guy before the inevitable face ripping.

Wait 'til confession day on social security when it is declared caput. 

Hope everyone here is prepared.

there will be a gov't order of sorts that just changes the origin that the SS checks are printed from

,,,,,,,,,,directly from the FED 

We are being crushed by what has been assumed to be as much as 100T of (gov) liabilities staring us in our future faces

Does anyone really think the gov will default?
I hate to use the word 'austerity', but that's one thing we certainly don't produce in the states anymore

the only viable option is currency devaluation and monetizing of more bad debt. How often do you hear people bitch about the 1.25T of dead morts on the FED's "balance sheet"?

They've said as much, that the USD will be devalued by half in the next seven years. if that's their plan, then that will make SOME of the debts a bit more stomachable, but we still can't afford to pay what 'we' have promised

SS, not structurally sound, because of Baby Boomer demographics (especially when chased with the terrible job and debt situations younger generations are carrying)

Medicare/caid?? are you crazy, that's the biggest black hole of them all, and i don't see Uncle Sam getting stern with the elderly anytime soon.

Everything goes up from here,,,,,,,,,,,well except housing, that peaked and won't return to '06 peak prices in most markets, ever

CC there is no way that we see sub 6k by the end of the year, no way.

SS will be kept going for a decade or more, it can handle that much..so it wont be going under any time soon.