For the past 3 years the market place has turned into a messy, temperamental and generally unpredictable in trading. Mr. Market, and his minions, has done everything he can to make the lives of the trader and investor alike miserable. In fact, last year was probably the worst years for traders not being able to pick out trends to accurately trade on. Oh sure we know that there was an extended bull run of unprecedented proportions, but hindsight is always 20-20 and some wondering why we didn’t see it.
For the supposedly informed group of financial analyst’s, which I think I am part of, most thought the 2011 bull run wasn’t supposed to happen or at least go on as long as it did. This is truly a case where too much knowledge is a hindrance, especially when dealing with complete idiots, crooks and robots all driving the bus at the same time. I hate being the passenger and driven around watching this malcontent bunch running red lights, driving on the sidewalk and speeding on black ice with wanton desire. Scary is the word I am looking for and an incomprehensible understanding of why it is allowed to continue.
The ‘Normal Way of doing Things Is Not Working’ in this ‘Plantation Economy’ if you have not noticed. In fact it has been a crap shoot in this Johnny-come-lately casino of faltering finances. However, there is a lot of money being made in this market; fortunes in fact. The bad news is that it isn’t you and me that’s making it.
When you have reprehensible greedy financiers, and sometimes criminal, running the business, which I refer to collectively as DaBoyz, you can be sure you are going to be cheated, squeezed or screwed. Sometimes all at the same moment as we have been on a daily basis. Charts have been of little use, technical facts never add up and financial numbers being reported are massaged for a ‘favorable’ slant. So if it isn’t the ‘Five-Fingered-Financiers’ working the midnight shift screwing things up for us the next morning, then its the algo machines (HFT) chomping away during the day caring less about trends, charts or other technical data.
Adding to that already bleak picture, is that one could never be sure of what the Fed, AKA Captain Ben Banana and his Keynesian Monkeys, were going to do next. On top of that you had the inept politicians in Europe trying in vain to calm investors nerves with lies and other disinformation. Across the Pond, here in the US, the same garbage was being feed to the sheeples. The bad part, was that they were eating it up while high on ‘Hopium’ from the Merkozy duo.
You have everyone and everything dabbling in political referendums, massaging and falsifying data while creating a real mess in the market place. I say this all the time, but you can’t have the water clear up until you get the pigs out of the creek. And we REALLY need to get the ‘pigs’ out of this market place creek so we can get back to ‘normal’.
It is nice to know I share similar thoughts with good financial analysis’s when they come out and say some of the the same things I have been writing about, albeit in proper prose of course. Jeff Miller is probably one of the most accurate financial bloggers and author on the web today. He wrote recently in his “Dash of Insight” an article which should be read by all.
“Most of [investors] feel more confident about their personal circumstances, but they are worried about everything else. When it comes to the stock market, the fear is palpable.
I love Art Cashin. . . . . He really does have the pulse of the NYSE floor. When Art says that the normal yardsticks are not working, we should all pay attention.” (Read Article)
While Jeff covers more of the ‘real-world’ negative nuances, my complaints have been with the ‘Five-Fingered-Financiers’ working the midnight shift, the algo machines and DaBoyz jacking things around to suit their fancy. It really hasn’t mattered what you think is going to happen because of your superior and astute reading of the tea-leaves, it doesn’t and you will be wrong even if you are right!
The charts don’t mean anything anymore, technical analysis lately has been a lesson of futility and some of the prognosticating analysts are completely insane spouting blubbering forecast’s that borderline on fortunetelling. (Cramer comes to mind.)
I can’t do much about the European politicians, but the US market place and its crooked controllers should be cleaned up. The SEC needs to step in and do something before it gets any worse. The manipulation issues at hand are out of hand and destabilizing the market which many investors have their fortunes.
“. . . the SEC still has NO IDEA what liquidity is, and continues to refuse to take ANY action against High Frequency Trading, to press criminal charges against ANY banker, or for that matter, to do anything that may jeopardize its staffers future careers as 7th assistant general council at assorted bailed out Wall Street firms.”
Another small part of the problem is that we have little participation in the market place, indicated by anemic market volume. I wrote a piece the other day,”Oh Where, Oh Where Has All The Mattress Money Gone?“, questioning if we will ever see the day when the ‘real’ investors come back to invest in the markets. Maybe someday they will, but it will be in a galaxy far, far away as the move says. Yes, we may see a return, but a safe bet is that it won’t for years to come if the powers at hand do nothing and allow the continued abuse and manipulation of the market place to persist unabated.
We need to have the investors back, but right now we need to see this ‘New Normal’ go away and bring back sensibility, responsibility and remove irresponsibility. But now, maybe, just maybe, the inept politicians we have been damning are starting to see the light and will bring back some semblance of a ‘stable’ market place by paying attention to what is really going on and doing something about it. Sanity is within reach I think, but I remain cautious learning the rules of the ‘New Normal’ until then.
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Written by Gary
