Chris, we certainly agree on rampant manipulation. Friday was a textbook perfect example. Unfortunately I am not heading down the path of technical analysis as fast as maybe I should; which means I wasn’t aware of a pattern breaking down. I do know that in lay terms it was setting up to be an awful accelerating sell-off into the close. Somebody seemed to be defending key levels on several stocks I am very short.
Ultimately the trading systems you are talking about get at the heart of the manipulation. When that fails the system fails. I hope/fear we are getting quickly to the point where the markets cannot be defended, at least in so obvious a fashion and we get a *needed* correction.
Stock prices are highly manipulable, but credit markets aren’t, or at least aren’t any more. Thats why they are locked up. People with real money don’t want to play because they’ve been lied to. First by the non-bank credit creation, now by the FED and the banks. Until a crash occurs and the crap comes to light nothing will unlock those markets. All of which implies that the stock market is pretty much guaranteed to go down.
The major crashes are always credit driven. In a fiat system they always will be. The powers that be will paper things over until they can’t.
