^this. people need to get their fucking heads out of their asses if they think this was anything then a mistake.
Just heard on cnn there trying to flip it in there favor. "if you want to place your future in the stock market vote republican" or something like that.
No mistake. At 1400 EST, I was watching the crowd in front of the Greek Parliament building, live, on an internet feed, as the result of a posting at a discussion forum I frequent. We were discussing the bottles being thrown, then the "bravery" of individual protestors who were entering the neutral zone and taunting police. Greek gubmint had passed the austerity measures, but not by enough margin to preclude a second vote. Police held a double, linear line across the front of Parliament, then along a detached salient across a major intersection at right angles to the line near the building on the police left flank. Crowd was mostly grouped in front of Parliament, with a smaller number facing the police line across the intersection. Police reserve was mounted on motorcycles, well down the block behind the salient across the intersection. At or around 1415, two groups of protestors, center and left of their own lines advanced on the police and began beating them with sticks. Dow dropped from 10,600 to 10,500 at this time. As one, the police abandoned their lines and swarmed towards the protestors, who outnumbered police at least 10 to 1, more like 100 to 1. Protestors broke and ran, mostly across the street away from Parliament. There they stacked up against a wall protecting the sidewalk from a drop into a large plaza below. There was only one staircase from the sidewalk down to the plaza level. Had police continued the offensive at this point, it could well have been a bloodbath, for police. The crowd was cornered, with nowhere to run. Wisely the police backed off to form a phalanx on their original side of the street. The webcam panned and zoomed to show other minor clashes between police and protestors, all "won" by police. A few fires were started, minor vandalism, but largely the crowd dispersed. It was at this point that the Dow crossed 10,500, and I believe stoploss orders and computer trading programs kicked in, driving the Dow below 9900 in about 7 minutes. I have four PC screens here, and two videos, so I had all this up at once, in realtime. When the Dow passed below 10,000, I further believe that three things happened: 1. Programs to halt trading were discussed, perhaps in the early stages of execution. 2. Police clearly scattered the protestors, largely without major damage or injury. 3. As the Dow passed 10,000 on the way down, limit orders and differing computer programs kicked in for major buy orders. As the riot was either over and "won", or at least the face to face confrontation was ...resolved...(for the moment), the auto-buys outweighed lingering sells, the Dow recovered to around 10,500, and backed and filled till close. The downspike and recovery took no more than 15 minutes, 10,500 to 9900 and back to 10,500 again, all in perfect space-time co-incidence with the riot. This is supported by the graphs. Now... Asian markets are just opening. New Zealand is currently down 3.4% from 3.3% a few minutes ago. The Malaysian market is...apparantly closed, showing 0.00 on Yahoo, even though they were quoting and down .3% a few minutes ago. The other Asian markets are either delayed (on my feed) or not open yet. Asia will do what it will do as this news disseminates, better yet, as more investors get a grip on what really happened. The "official" spin will not help the markets price this all in. Asia's close will affect Europe's open. Events in greece will have a major effect, or not, positive or negative. Europe's midday stats, plus Greek events, will affect the US open. All three major markets will be under pressure to position for...whatever happens in Greece over the two day weekend, while the markets are closed. Events in Greece over the weekend will NOT be reflected in trading, with the markets closed, leading to possibly extreme pressures, direction unknown, Monday morning. The video will play incessantly overnight, adding to the noise generated by gubmint spin. Investors will go to bed nervous, and wake up to more of the same tomorrow morning. Greek union bosses will stew over their apparant "beatdown" overnight, and tomorrow, fold up and quit, or come out organized and...swinging. That's all I got right now...except...two things: 1. Greek civilians think they will starve if the austerity measures pass, while Greek gubmint KNOWS they will default on 5/19 without the IMF bailout. The spring is taut, and all that potential energy has been merely re-directed by this...abortive...skirmish. The fundamental forces underlying all this have NOT dissipated. 2. My gut says the majority will position conservatively for the weekend, since nobody knows what will happen. Tomorrow's events in Greece, and elsewhere, particularly Germany and maybe France, possibly the US if Obama sucks it up and actually DOES something besides read a teleprompter will...leverage...because of the upcoming two day market holiday. If fast paced developments are underway AT closing tomorrow, in Asia, Europe, or the US close, the effect, whatever said effect IS, will likely be magnified.
Anytime. Got to tell you though, it is damn frustrating to have sat thru this, minute by minute, in multi-screen realtime, live video feed from Greece beside DJIA quotes, knowing damn well what happened, and why, and then listen to supposed experts claiming mistaken trades, computer glitches, and just about every other damn thing, when the reality is as plain as the nose on your face. Its not so much the inaccuracy...they will trade on that error and it will only hurt them. No, it's knowing that this systemic vulnerability exists, that it may in fact be triggered again today, for similar reasons, and not enough people can see it or understand it to make any real difference. It's also knowing that some major equities fell all the way to zero, and regulators and major traders are looking in thew wrong directions. There's a problem here, and so much is on the table right now, this may never get the look it deserves, until next time. Next time may be too late. If this all collapses because of long term errors in judgement, on a grand scale, well, that's the nature of a cause and effect universe. But if it should have just flirted with disaster, and a systemic flaw pushed an otherwise salvageable situation over the edge, thats plain and simple waste. I'd hate to see the next Dark Age begin due to preventable systemic error.
fat finger my asss !!! If it was a fat finger, then why before any equity market was free falling, 5-10 minutes before the currency market was taking such a dump? EURJPY started free falling 5-10 minutes before everything started glitch my ass
A mistake in every single market that was open then? The 700 pip spike in the Yen was a mistake? Government bonds rallying huge was mistaken trades? This was simply a mini October 1987 rerun. Too many stops, not enough buyers, the only difference was that HFT exaggerated the speed of the decline. Basically the problem was no trading curbs or human intervention once the market became disorderly. IMO the result will be regulators introduce price limits and temporary trading curbs once they get triggered e.g. 30 mins stop trading once a security is down 20%+, let people get their bearings, then do a pre-open and re-open just like the normal start of trading. That way everyone has time to react, instead of seeing a stock go from down 10% to trading at 0.01 in a millisecond.