I agree with everything you have said except... The regulators will not act in this situation.They appear to be in the pockets of the big banks.If they didn't stop this thing immediately after the "flash crash" then i'm not sure they ever will.The fact that there have been several mini "flash crashes" since is simply not on,yet in their eyes it is now a way of life. I just can't believe that they are that stupid and incompetant they are simply being paid off in some capacity.
But if it had been an a huge upward surge, you'd be saying "this is just a bull market; get over it."
Has the IQ of ET members actually been dropping over the last year? I didn't think it possible, but can't argue with the evidence. Overflow from Yahoo?
stockcharts.com incorporated the bad print in their data yesterday. beautiful chart if you are short!!!: http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=2985537#post2985537
No, he has a point. At that time of day the auction is just looking to close the trades made right before and at the close. What people really should be concerned with is why the F would they do any kind of work at that time? I understand the exchange is technically closed until 4:30, but you would think they would do something like this around 1am...
And again, nothing would've happened and none of the bulls here would've complained if it had been a long. You already have the Fed coming in 3 days a week, buying debt from big banks courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer. The banks, in turn, have been using sinking this into stocks to fuel the so-called rally. A few flash crashes are in order. We're basically in the Jurassic Market, where chaos will find its way into Bernanke's ill-advised theme park one way or another.
Lets be real F'ING honest here...here is how this would have read in the main stream media in both scenarios... ETF UP 9.6%: Stocks rallied near the close. The SEC, NYSE and ARCA all declared how this showed the strength of the economy and the growing rally. Al A$$hole from SomeBig Institution was quoted as saying, "This late rally will continue into tomorrow." ETF DOWN 9.6%: After a software glitch was discovered at an exchange, clearly erroneous trades were broken to protect the integrity of the markets. John Dingleberry from AnotherBigFirm was quoted as saying, "This just goes to show the integrity of the markets. We can expect this integrity to play into this secular bull market." -gastropod
It's another example of how broken the markets are. That was a real print, with a real, published imbalance. Real traders risked their capital to provide liquidity to offset the imbalance. The print went off, they were rewarded for taking the risk to stick their bids in there. Then comes the word- oops, someone important lost money, let's bust the trade. Profits from the guys that take the risk are taken away, losses from the idiots are forgiven. Sad thing is, this is a daily thing in the markets. Sadder still is that no one from the sec has a frickin' clue about how things work. Why the hell should traders provide liquidity if every time they get rewarded, the trade is busted and their profits are taken away? It's all such a sham, it's disgusting. The next flash crash will be worse, because every day incentive is removed to even be involved in the markets.