Stocks Falling Again

[dakota112]

So much for the great economic recovery touted by Obama. The collapse is near.

[junker]

dec 21, 2012...getting closer and closer....the Mayans are starting to look smarter and smarter.....

[frogger]

dec 21, 2012...getting closer and closer....the Mayans are starting to look smarter and smarter.....

The Mayans? Doubtful.

The hype? Very likely.

Remember Y2K?

Things are happening, things are changing, but it has nothing to do with the Mayan "myth". You've got to look much deeper than pop culture to find out what is really going on.

[banca rotta]

The Mayans? Doubtful.

The hype? Very likely.

Remember Y2K?

Things are happening, things are changing, but it has nothing to do with the Mayan "myth". You've got to look much deeper than pop culture to find out what is really going on.

I agree. Yes we WILL see a major collapse either in 2012 or before (I think it will be before 2012) but it's due to 25 years of excess borrowing and spending from govts, corporations and individuals.

Most of the excesses were wasted on items that don't provide any sustainable economic growth.

Today for example we "created" almost 300k jobs in April but it's stimulas money being borrowed, printed and spent on more useless crap! I am glad people are back to work but it's all temporary just like Gg Bush's recovery was temporary.

Now the media is feeding us garbage that the stock market crash was a computer error. I give up with these people.

[WhatMoney]

Now the media is feeding us garbage that the stock market crash was a computer error. I give up with these people.

The sudden 1000 point DJIA drop in minutes, followed by the similar fast recovery that occurred Thursday, was some kind of system or design defect in program trading. That sudden drop and recovery had nothing to do with economic conditions. The general drop in the markets this week are related to economic uncertainty (Greece for example) and the fact the US markets were highly overbought, but not the downspike the press is talking about.

My guess as to what happened Thursday afternoon - There were a series of large sell orders in Dow Industrial/S&P 500 stocks as a few large players decided to lighten up - this has been going on for several days, causing minor declines in the indexes. Most (90%) trading in the large markets are controlled and executed by computers (program trading). These programs trigger on price levels (and all the derivative functions of price and volume).

It would only take one program set (or wrongly set) to massively enter a basket of sell orders in an already declining market to trigger most of the other hundreds of institutional programs to sell. You get a snowballing effect of programs all trying to sell at the same time. When you get all sell signals the price declines automatically tick by tick until buyers move in. But there are not enough buyers to support the price when a massive group of programmed sell orders take over. This is why the exchanges cannot find any one "bad" trade. The programs sell hundreds of major stocks and millions of shares simultaneously. There is a waterfall effect in all prices once the other programs trigger. Hence the exponential decline in time Thursday as one sell program triggers another. It took circuit breakers and some human intervention to recover the prices.

Because these programs are highly proprietary it's unlikely the exchange investigators will ever pinpoint which program started the decline. But this wasn't a human caused event - it was the machines responding to each other. It has happened before - 1987 for example, before there were the circuit breakers in effect. Computers are much faster now - humans are obsolete with modern program trading (call "high frequency trading" - should be called Ultra high frequency trading.)

[fltoo]

It's the fat finger syndrome, lol. The b and m are only separated by the n.

[dakota112]

I only hope our country does not fall into the despair seen in Greece this week. The wealthy will get by no matter but the middle and lower class folks will scramble to survive when our currency fully devalues and we default on our debt. It won't be pretty.

[WhatMoney]

the real story...

[SeattleBK]

The stock market going down has zero to do with Obama.

It goes up, and it goes down. That's just the way it is.

I have stock, that I had back around the time, I filed for bankruptcy which has now doubled.


During that time, Obama had just been elected, and a lot of people got really scared and sold all of their stock for half of it's value. I held on to mine.

At the time, it was good it was so low because I didn't require hardly any exemptions.

If you give him credit for going down, you should give him credit for the 50% profit I've made since he has been elected.

As for the economy, we will see. Somethings have gotten better and some stocks have risen as a result. My son had stock for whole foods which was $25 a share during the election and it is now $42 a share. So, business is improving for some industries.

The revenue for some companies is way up.

[MSbklawyer]

A lot of people expect the stock market to crash up; similar to what the Zimbabwe stock market did after Mugabe took over and the country quit being Rhodesia and became Zimbabwe. The stocks held their value because the fundamentals did not change. But the prices of the stocks soared in Zimbabwe currency because the government was printing money by the truckloads and causing hyper price inflation.