the real story is the breakout in crude. now that crude is loose (again) and gas prices start to rise, you know its going to get ugly with the consumer. at the end of the day, good ol' benny is to blame for all of this.
Told ya!!! Little bit of manipulation and some bot trading and this makes for a perfect day for the dow to touch 11k. Relax and collect risk free money and thank bubble ben bernanke.
What I notice is that a lot of the posters here are expecting a direct, constant correlation between variables: crude goes up so market should go down, unemployment goes up so market should go down, etc. What you guys are failing to understand is that's not how the market works: it's never worked that way sans around 2000 and the tech bubble. During the tech bubble market dynamics was the exception, not the rule. Today's behavior is more normal than it has been in a long time. And let me stop you right there: before you tell me "what, manipulation is normal?" or "ok krazy, bots haven't been around that long and HFT is normal?" you're totally missing the point and are not being clever in the least. There have always been participants that cause the market to react differently, bots and HFT are not really new(25 years old now for bots, sub pennying the past decade-ish). Quit bitching and adjust. The market doesn't reflect economic reality, it never has. The market reflects the perceptions of it's participants.
Todays behavior is more normal than it has been in a long time?? I needed a good laugh today, thanks. Sure is normal, You keep thinking that, that's what everyone thought when they placing $1000 price targets on Qualcom and thinking that csco and msft were going to be the first tech plays to have trillion dollar market caps back just 10 years ago. That housing prices were going to advance 20% a year for the next 100 years, that peak oil was just around the corner and of course the subprime mortgage crisis was contained. This isn't a normal market, you may think it is because its working in everyone favor but in reality its far from normal. By the way maybe bots and hft have been around for the last 25 years but they haven't really come to show until about 2005. Volumes over the last 5 or 6 years have risen over a 100% due to HFT strategies, not only that but they make up almost 60% of the trading volume on the exchanges. Tell me what kind of game they are playing with the markets, its not a normal market with bots running the show, of course will have to wait until the next global collapse in the markets to finally see whats going on behind closed doors and how the game is really played.
It's where you use related items to spin together a stawman position that, to the uneducated and inexperienced, makes sense and sounds legit. Essentially using logical fallacies to support a position.
There is likely not time for higher crude prices to show up at the gas pump before election day! And there are always little tricks like selling oil from the "strategic" --wink, wink-- reserve, or changing the weighting of gasoline futures in various commodity indexes. Both those worked nicely during the Bush presidency to drop prices at the pump before an election. The important thing, when approaching an important election, is to keep gas prices from rising dramatically, and better still if you can make them fall, as happened when Goldman changed the weighting of gasoline futures in the GSCI soon after Hank Paulson went from Goldman Sachs to the Treasury Department. Just a coincidence, i'm sure. Gas prices will rise, but after the election, not before.