It seems to me...investors are "playing" with the market...

[Roxy66]

I think it will eventually come out that there have been major illegal practices occuring. I hope the Dem majority holds investigations when they have a large majority.

[Curtland1015]

1. I'm sure there are SOME illegal shennanigans going on...

...but a lot of it is just likely "Sell! The news is bad!", then "Buy, everything is so cheap!", then "Sell! The news is bad!", etc, etc...

[DemocratSinceBirth]

2. Occam's Razor

Retail sales reports were awful...The economy is unofficially in recession...All it will take to make it official are the backwards looking reports of two consecutive quarters of negative growth...The stock market is an anticipatory mechanism...

[On the Road]

3. Any Feeling for What the Illegal Practices Might be?

Insider trading is common. It's almost provable by looking at stock movement immediately before major announcements. Someone is trading on knowledge that is not public yet.

On the other hand, I don't see anything out of bounds in recent market fluctuations. There has been no other month in my lifetime with such an immediate threat to the entire economy and such uncertainty about the outcome.

Markets always overcompensate, especially in bad times -- they crowd the exits and then crowd the entrances. The wild swings in either direction reflect the news pretty well.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

4. Insider Trading Is Insider Trading

But decliners are outnmbering gainers 30-1

[On the Road]

6. Here's What I'm Seeing Today:

Wed Oct 15  11:30AM

                       NYSE        Amex          Nasdaq 
Up Volume         36,326,180     2,642,300    153,413,540 
Down Volume      460,473,053    10,940,381    686,237,135
Ratio 	                13-1	       4-1	      4-1

Advancing Issues         320           211            540 
Declining Issues       2,731           698          2,038 
Ratio	                 9-1	        3-1	      4-1

Seems about like what you might expect. The 11% snapback rally was clealy overdone and occured on very light volume. It was clearly unsustainable. More bad economic news on retail is out. Looks like the beginning of a recession, and no one know how well the banking measures are going to work.

Volume breadth is greater than Advance-Decline ratio, which is bearish.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

7. Do You Forsee A Massive Sell Off For The Last Hour?

~

[On the Road]

8. I Don't Think Anyone Knows

although that's been pretty common lately. To react to this volatile market successfully, you almost have to be a day trader watching the tape constantly.

I took about a 10% haircut recently on my smaller 401k despite (or because of) efforts to predict the daily swings. Put 20% double-short on the S&P yesterday (SDS), which so far is up 7%. We'll see what happens.

[doc03]

5. I read a book written by a Wall Street guru a few years

back. I remember one statement in it "There is more money stolen on Wall Street every day than in a whole year at gun point and it's all perfectly legal."

[Ichingcarpenter]

9. Thom Hartman has a guy on right now saying the same thing

'something on failure to deliver' scam.