Vortex

The U.S. stock market is now in jeopardy of moving into double dip territory, 400 point swings are now the new normal and we seem to be in some sort of bear market vortex. The shear volume of transactions can be attributed to the process of high frequency trading which accounts for 50-65% of volume daily. These individuals start and end the day with no real ownership of stocks, they simply leverage and sell, skimming off profits as they go. This phenomena started about four years ago when some of the most talented mathematical geniuses of our time were hired fresh out of MIT and were labeled as quants, after the term quantitative trading. Given massive amounts of capitol by mostly hedge funds they sought out prime headquarters situated as close to wall street servers as possible. In addition ultra low latency software was implemented to increase transaction speeds, and what you are left with is market volatility and economic damage. In my opinion it will not be long before such stopgap measures will be re-installed such as a ban on short selling altogether or via up-tick regulations or both. If you believe this cannot occur I remind you that it has occurred recently in the E.U. and if my memory serves me right we recently sold the NYSE, to a European entity called Deutsche Borse. Only time will tell how this calamity plays out now.