04/17/2012 Live Update

[TraderGirl]

after hours on spy....

[TraderJoe]

WOW, I hope it goes on down.

[SWalsh]

I just took a short nap and awoke in a start. I dreamed that I turned on the tube and CL was down around 20 dollars/barrel and this was being attributed to the Clown-in-Chief's good cop-bad cop routine (those "evil" speculators --- and u have to spray a bit of sspittle when u say "evil" ) The talking heads and chirping birds were prognisticating that 'everyone' had to sell stocks to meet their margin calls (u know the drill) and I looked and the dow was down like 500+ points.



I shook myself and said "its only a dream" ...

I'm watching John Batchelor's page for his Sunday podcast to post. This is what I recall and why the HFT activity has slowed:

Exchanges would fold now without HFTs AND the stock market is an
integral part of the economy and they can't let that happen. 13 of 14
exchanges are completely automated. They think that there could also
be Russian involvement at some times in some stocks. Exchanges are no
longer member owned, but rather for-profit and they are paying HFTs to
stay and trade their exchange. And they are working on marketing
anti-HFT software to mutual funds. A firm is doing so already:

http://www.efinancialnews.com/story/201 ... -hft-venue

They think that someone grabbed in an insider-trading case has been
offering up information about manipulation of prices and the SEC and
FBI have hired some former HFT traders to start working with them to
understand what they are looking for. The analysts was quite worried about
The Law of Unintended Consequences.

[snakehead]

2 million last sell on SPY
Big boys placing bets on a gap down

Cool. My sell order for the rest of my IWM filled at EOD.