Flaunting the fact that they rig the markets?

[Delawhere Jack]

Picked up an interesting tidbit from a commenter at ZH that goes by the name Crashisoptomistic. The S&P closed 2011 virtually unchange from the years open, within less than 10 cents in fact. 2011 close $1,257.60, off 0.003181% from the years open. Ok, that could be a coincidence, but then the poster mentions that the close on June 30th, the end of the first half, was up PRECISELY 5%. As in precise to three decimal places, 5.000%.

That is ODD.....

[barrytrot]

Check the last 10 years and you will see that is not the case. This is just statistical "luckiness". Whether the markets are controlled or not, the "last trade" of 500 securities would be impossible to simultaneously control without any variance.

Looking back on any historical numbers you can "imagine" various effects that are simply not really there.

NOTE: I'm not saying the markets aren't controlled, just that the fact that you can make math look "pretty" has nothing to do with that.

[Mossy]

IMO, Statistical artifact, like Barry says. "They" might like (ha. Probably do.) to point the market somewhere, but I suspect that trends are all they can control.

[barrytrot]

IMO, Statistical artifact, like Barry says. "They" might like (ha. Probably do.) to point the market somewhere, but I suspect that trends are all they can control.

And all they have to control.

In fact, if all they did was cause occasional spikes that would actually do the trick.

All those "stop loss" orders being triggered is like money-in-the-bank!