Insane volume on DOW

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ancona

Praying Mantis
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Today's volume of 67,537,123 shares handled has to be some kind of record low handle. Anyone have the answer to this?
 
Wow......crickets.

Where is everybody?

I guess it has becoem so boring in the markets that no one even bothers to watch anymore. 'Can't say I blame you.........

When I tune in at various times, and I look at one minute charts just for the hell of it, I am constantly amazed that the "regulators" don't ever pick up on the crazy stupid patterns. It's sort of like a weird dream, where you are running as fast as you can, but getting nowhere. We go up......we go down.....we go back up. At 3:30 or so, we either drive straight up or we drive straight down, all at the pleasure of the algobots.

WTF?
 
Well, I was out getting a couple vehicles inspected and taking my kitty to the vet for a new splint and suture removal. So...I wasn't here this afternoon.

Yeah, this low volume sucks. Even I can manipulate this tiny a market.
 
Thanks SV, ZH is an awesome resource for those seeking unpolished truthful, if sarcastic information about the financial and political world. That said, I am amazed that retail participation has not only evaporated completely, it seems to have taken some institutional players along with it. Mom and Pop afe totally out of the game, and I suspect that many have pulled their hard saved cash out of retail funds as a direct result of recent developments, wherin it was judged to be legal for a bankrupt fund to take SEGREGATED funds/assets/gold and cash from account holders to repay the BANKS who were owed money on credit lines. In what universe would anyone with half a brain EVER put money in to this system again? If there is zero chance of being made whole on a fucking CASH position, or a FULLY PAID PM stack that is simply being held in a custodial account or vault, then what pray tell is the point of it all?

I sincerely want to see some mainstream coverage of this development, since it may mean that without some kind of massive paradigm shift, the only entities that will be willing to participate in the ponzi will be the ponzi schemers themselves. That sounds [to me] a whole lot like GAME OVER.
 
So......86 million handles today. This is fuukin crazy man. all the organic traders must be on extended vacation.
 
very few trade setups over the past few weeks.

I'm guessing the Knight algos going offline has something to do with it. Plus, we still haven't recovered from MF Global so....
 
What? No trade setups? Gheesh, since June 1 we've had 4-5 days of rip, a diddle, 4-5 days of drop, a diddle, repeat over and over and over, it's been a trader's wet dream!

But by the time everyone sees that kinda pattern, it usually goes away, so forget I said anything, just go look at a chart and weep.
http://www.google.com/finance?q=INDEXDJX:.DJI,INDEXSP:.INX,INDEXNASDAQ:.IXIC&hl=en

At the risk of sounding either prescient, or utterly stupid, I closed a large short on FacePlant today, very green, just ahead of the lockup expiring. Events everyone expects often turn out to have been front run and you don't get what "Everyone expects". We'll see - the money is back in the bank, and shiny is cheap these days.
I've learned not to keep "too good to be true" trades open longer than necessary. It always turns out to be too good to be true, better to take the money and run (Steve Miller).
 
DC.. You need volatility in order to trade intraday. There hasn't been any volatility. The entire market is trading like an ADR
 
I trade for however long the little few percent runs go. Lately that's been one day to confirm (waiting) then 3-4 days in a trade.
 
Well the stock market has not been an attractive environment for me, even though it is up over the past few weeks. On the whole I have been a net seller of stocks for a long time.

And the ONE speculation I did make (3 weeks or so ago) was buying a small position in Molycorp (MCP), which went down HARD right after I bought it (of course).

Hey! If you guys send me some money, I'll give you 48 hours notice of what I will do so you can front-run me by taking the other side of my bet... (j/k)
 
Volume has been scary low anyway, but now it is about 35% below where it was already low. When I see sub-100mm share days, I have to wonder what the hell is going on. Volume before the big crash was around [an average] 400 mm shares a day on the Dow, now we have regular sub 90mm share days with the other day coming in at an all time low 67mm handles. To me, this means that ever smaller players can move the market with their buys. The fewer shares moving through the market has to mean that fewer shares bought or sold can move the market in a fashion similar to huge volume sales or buys did six years ago. That is the scary part. If some algo or program goes haywire, they really don't have to do that much to wipe out the market. Just yank the bid for half an hour and down she goes. If it happens at 3:31, the rules say they will simply let it fall.
 
Algos are 60-70% of volume, and Knight...stopped trading fast for awhile. Other algos have been reigned in a little as well. Meanwhile, the churners out there are slowing down. No one who uses a broker with their commisions wants quick trading, and retail online isn't doing so hot just now - loss of faith. Tell them enough obvious lies and sooner or later....

And as Peter Tchir points out, a lot of the algo volume isn't real. Suppose an algo (for whatever reason) wants a million shares of something. To keep the price from going up while they buy a bunch of 100 share lots - they also sell some...maybe 20% of that - making for about 1.4 mil volume when the real number is 1 mil.
 
74 mm shares handled today.....the insanity continues unabated. In addition, the market is looking really toppy now, like it's waiting for something to happen.
 
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