For 10 minutes yesterday, the market was like a BMW stalled on the BQE

[arendt]

That is, it was stripped by vandals before the tow-truck arrived.

In the 1980s, the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway was a synonym for "urban war zone" - a battlefield strewn with the looted husks of cars. If you want a feeling for it, watch the scene in the movie "Grand Canyon" where Kevin Cline's BMW stalls out in East LA.

I am making a rare post here because I saw some of that vandalism first-hand yesterday. A friend of mine (nice guy, straight arrow) likes to dabble in the market. When he saw the market start to tank, he immediately went to his day-trading account and fired off some {leveraged buy, then sell on a percent rise} trade. He literally made thousands of dollars in five minutes - as a multi-task to the other things he was doing.

I mean, no offense to the guy, but "do you have a conscience?". That money came out of someone else's hide. And, yes, I know, that someone else could have been a hedge fund. But, it could just has easily have been just some "dumb money" from some mutual fund for Main Street suckers. His attitude was that someone else's screw up was his opportunity to make a quick buck; and if he didn't grab it, someone else would. Is this what we have come to? That, if we come across someone who has been hit on the head, our reaction is to grab the cash out of his wallet before he comes to?

This guy was just one piranha in the pack, taking his little nibble. Oh, and BTW, what was the "value add" to the economy on this trade? About the same as the value added by fencing of a set of mag wheels stripped off a high-end car.

The behavior of people in this country disgusts me.

[marmar]

1. "do you have a conscience?"

This IS Wall Street we're talking about.

[Art_from_Ark]

10. Gordon Gecko is alive and well

[T Wolf]

2. I have a very rich relative who lives for this shit. He views the "market" as a casino

where the winners and losers balance out, as long as he is on the winning end.

Conscience - it does not exist within these cretins.

Until the games and schemes they create to skim profits out of the system are made illegal, we will continue to be raped by the insiders - and their toadies.

Yes, the people (not just their behavior) of this country are disgusting. Money uber alles is their credo - "collateral damage" be damned.

[Statistical]

3. "do you have a conscience?"

Shows a misunderstanding of how markets work.

He placed a trade = willingess to buy something.

Nobody was forced to sell it to him. If his offer wasn't good enough nobody WOULD have sold it to him.

He took a risk. If he placed the buy and it went through and the decline was real (like say a dirt bomb had gone off in LA) it would have kept declining and he would have lost funds.

Ultimately at price x he decided the market had more upside than down and at exact same time someone else decide the market had more downside than up. That person felt cash was better investment than stock at that point.

Nobody was robbed. They weren't robbed anymore than you are "robbed" when you buy something or sell something in real world.

[arendt]

6. You have a misunderstanding that Wall St today is an honest game.

This bungee jump market was caused by computer trading, high-frequency trading to be specific. And
HFT is a known crooked game, a closed game, a racket.

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/207472-Computerized-Front-Running-and-Financial-Fraud

People who profit from it are accessories after the fact, IMHO. Of course, that makes just about everyone
in the market a crook. But, such dubious ethics are exactly the kind of behavior that authoritarians love.
If everyone's ethics are dubious, than anyone can be arrested for some crime at the whim of the police.

But to return to the main point, you take a narrow focus on the legality of this one trade, and miss the
big picture that the whole market is as crooked as a dog's hind leg at this point in time. The game is rigged,
and the bulk of the profits made during this bungee jump were made by HFT computers. My friend even
said "hedge funds love volatility." It makes you wonder just who pushed the market off the jump platform
and why, now that the "fat finger" canard has been debunked.

Everyone who has no other choice than to keep his money in this crooked market was robbed of whatever
money was extracted by HFT trades and individual day traders. This 500 points in ten minutes swing stuff
has nothing to do with corporate value or honest markets. Its just high tech robbery. Of course, you might
argue that anyone with the money to buy a supercomputer, and the clout to get it placed on the trading
floor can play. Yeah, and everyone has the right to sleep under a bridge.

I'd love to hear your opinion of HFT and its role in this incident.

[arendt]

9. Here's another DU thread that makes the exact same point

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=114x78468

[Odin2005]

4. No your friend obviously doesn't have a conscience.

Wall Street is sociopath heaven.

[dotymed]

5. I tried to "rec" this post. It was too late.

It is so telling that this post received absolutely 0 recommendations. This criminality was seen as a "smart business choice." Capitalism has rotted this world to its core. I envision my childrens futures. I am a bad parent because taught them to live by the "golden rule." What easy prey they will make...

[fasttense]

7. You are so right.

And you understand that this is a rigged game. The part about what one poster said:

"He took a risk. If he placed the buy and it went through and the decline was real (like say a dirt bomb had gone off in LA) it would have kept declining and he would have lost funds."

That's not true. He took no risk, he wasn't going to lose. The US government is bankrolling him with our tax dollars. It's a rigged game, you can't win a rigged game.

But Max Kieser had an interesting take on this mini-panic. It was Goldman Sachs telling law makers not to vote for a bill that would make Wall Street banks more accountable. The too big to fail bill that failed the other day. Max thinks the bill failed because of the mini-panic and the mini-panic was deliberately caused by Goldman and their computerized gambling tricks. It was Wall Street reminding Congress that too big to fail is also too big to control.

[notesdev]

8. How many dollars does 30 pieces of silver make?