| This is what happens when the US Senate want to Audit the Federal Reserve. The Dow Jones industrial average (INDU) lost as much as 997.21 points in volatile trading. At 3:00 pm it was down 410 points, or 3.8%. The Dow's biggest one-day point selloff on a closing basis was Sept. 29, 2008, when it fell 777.68 Today, we have reach an apex in our quest to prevent the HFT "Black Monday" juggernaut , as absent the last minute intervention of still unknown powers, the market, for all intents and purposes, broke. What happened today was no fat finger, it was no panic selling by one major account: it was simply the impact of everyone in the HFT community going from port to starboard on the boat, at precisely the same time. And in doing so, these very actors, who in over a year have been complaining they are unfairly targeted because all they do is "provide liquidity", did anything but what they claim is their sworn duty. In fact, as Dennis Dick shows (see below) they were aggressive takers of liquidity at the peak of the meltdown, exacerbating the Dow drop as it slid 1000 points intraday. It is time for the SEC to do its job and not only ban flash trading as it said it would almost a year ago, but get rid of all the predatory aspects of high frequency trading, which are pretty much all of them. In 20 minutes the market showed that it is as broken as it was at the nadir of the market crash. Through its inactivity to investigate the market structure, the SEC has made things a ... |
