Dont you mean 9 central KD?

Corrected - thanks.

Good ticker Karl.

These incidents really do illustrate that the free-market and capitalism are dead, dead as Julius Ceaser.

The entire premise of the stock market is that people could participate in the gains from profitable companies.

Now we see that the majority of shares being traded are in "Zombie" companies, companies that really have no hope of profits.

They've ruined our entire free market, capitalistic system.

Just sent an email to the sec to investigage!!!

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Citi-share....

"NEW YORK (AP) -- Citigroup Inc. said Thursday that shareholders approved a plan to increase the number of outstanding shares so it can complete a debt exchange program that gives the government a minority stake in the banking giant.

...After the exchange is completed, Citi will have about 22.88 billion shares of common stock outstanding. The government will hold about 7.69 billion shares."

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They've ruined our entire free market, capitalistic system.

If it were capitalism, they wouldn't have been able to ruin it. It took myriad state interventions, and failure to perform valid state functions (investigate and prosecute fraud), to ruin it.

These irregular stock moves and volumes are most likely related to the CDS market. As you know posted collateral linked to CDS is highly dependent on stock and stock future price. If you want to keep these companies 'sound', you have to control the CDS market. In order to control the CDS market, you have to control the equity and futures market.

Again, this is another instance of the tail wagging the dog. You can't have financial reform until you have derivative market reform.

Arm: Agreed, but either way there is no capitalism left, except at the mom and pop level.

KD,
I don't get what the issue is. So what if C has a high volume. It has a huge float and few are planning on holding for the long term. So what. This in of itself is not illegal or dishonest.

There's no reason to halt these securities from trading.

Kid-

Pro trader friend tells me it's illegal for anyone to 'create' volume by trading stocks back and forth. FYI.

Kidhorn,

Try this: The SPX (and other indices) are calculated using statistics from listed companies. These companies are effectively insolvent, and should've been delisted a long time ago, removing them from the index. Share volume is also part of these calcs. So, by keeping ****ty companies in the indices, and also letting them trade at ridiculous volume, you keep the indices artificially high, thereby making the Green Shoots Brigade look good, and also getting more suckers to buy into equities.

In short: You know about these games even less than I do.

Gen, you rail against the corruption of our government and their blind eyes. What can we as "peons" do. I am happy to send out faxes and emails, make phone calls, go to Tea Parties, etc... but it is disheartening to see the blatant corruption and fraud. I just want to punch somebody!

I just wish they would get rid of the penalty to withdraw 401k's. Before, they are all vaporized!!!!!!!! SCUM BAGS!!!!

Mayor and Kid: Mayor has it right. It is unlawful to manipulate stock prices (in either direction.)

By the way, the FSA over in England is looking into the practice of manipulating prices by using "phantom" orders placed into the book for the purpose of influencing direction rather than to gain an execution at the bid (or offered) price. This is a major part of the HFT bull**** and its illegal here too, but our regulators don't give a ****.

...and I told said trader friend months ago I thought they were creating what I called 'churn' to instill confidence in financials when they were still near their lows. There's no doubt in my mind they're doing this (and doing it illegally). But I have to say...anyone dumb enough to fall for it gets what they deserve. This is all one giant:

[****sandwich]

Curb:

Yes, the withdrawal hit is big; but:

1) You can stop contributing; and redirect the funds towards more liquid places that you can hold on to.

2) Unless you are liquidating the account, you can pull out small amounts ratably over time without penalty; in effect reversing your periodic contributions.

3) Even if you choose to liquidate the account; you are paying the income tax, yes, but it is likely to be an income tax rate as low as you will ever see for the remainder of your lifetime, and the 10% penalty is far less than you are likely to lose in principal if you believe we are going to tank. In fact, if the VIX ramps up, 10% might be just one really bad day.

Don't ever let the tax effect stand in the way of a good business decision.

If 401(k) withdrawal works for you, you have a place to put it so that you're confident you won't just spend it all, and it let's you sleep at night, do it.

Ya know...back during the Tech Bubble, I ws always so incensed at the pumping of tech stocks with 3-digit P/E's - especially since they paid no dividend. An entire generation of "investors" (there's a LAUGH), has been taught that stock ownership has nothing to do with owning a company and sharing in its success. it's just PURE GAMBLING. IOW, the lesosn I learned is that people today are dumb enough to buy XYZ simply because they think more people will buy XYZ afterwards pushing the price up. So it surprises me NOT that J6P (aka MOGULS haha) are pouring their $$$ into FRE, C, AIG etc. I personally know of THREE people that have owned all of those over the past month or two. And many here on TF do the same thing. Every time I hear people say AAPl shouldn't pay a divvy (when they could easily pay a nice 3% one simply on the interest on ther 33 bil in cash), I cringe.

Three things to consider about those who subscribe to the greater fool theory:

1. There are a lot of them;

2. They consider themselves brilliant; and

3. They can vote.

If you were a politician, would you do ANYTHING to hasten their ruin, no matter how inevitable that ruin is?

"1) You can stop contributing; and redirect the funds towards more liquid places that you can hold on to."

This is the direction I went. My company dropped the 401K match for this year entirely. I am stashing the money in a local credit union until it is needed for my home purchase. I would rather pay cash for a home and not carry any debt vs the 16.5K in the 401. I figure,the same as Lucky,these will be the lowest income tax rates we ever see...

Almost all of my 401K money is parked in a MM fund right now...
I do own some Ford and some stock in my current employer(long term plays).

Chris

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If this is not stopped we are going to wake up one morning to a lock-limit down market crash when this so-called "market liquidity support" is withdrawn as the boys with the computers come to end of the rope where they can steal a fraction of a penny from each trader who buys into this frenzied froth-driven fraudulent nonsense.

What is going to cause them to come to the end of their rope? Other than a regulator starting to regulate, why would they stop?

Sooner or later

Anti,

When either their HFT program malfunctions (I suspect it has already once or twice) or there literally is no bid left in the market on the retail / institutional side.

I honestly believe that we are going to wake one morning with the SPX down 100 to 200 pts at the open and there will be no escape from that point...like a ****ing black hole of liquidity.

KD, why can't you go on CNBC and just hammer this one point re: the volume in these **** stocks as an indicator of market manipulation


hammer it over and over and over and over until anyone with a brain has to say "ok, you're right. it's all a ****ing game"

none of the BIMBOS on CeeNiceBoobsCentral will get it
maybe then grandma and J6P will take their money out and stop feeding the beast

Karl says the retail investor will be left holding the bag (paying the bill).

I equate that to war reparations like post WWI Germany. The extent and scale of that slavery will be enormous. We're headed for serfdom.

This is a cold war between banks and somehow they get to use the population of the United States as soldiers?!?!?

We can't have a revolution because we don't elect bankers!!!