The Key to manipulating the equity market….reduce the volume

The top brokerage (a.k.a. TARP banks) Cheetos eating, Red Bull drinking algorithmic gamer traders kicked some serious booty during the prior week. Not only was it “manipulative options expiration week,” the volume was anemic compared to prior weeks.

S & P 500 (yes Scarlett you can manipulate trading on a basket of 500 stocks):

Week ending 2/19/10
4,040,725 average daily volume (8.24% less than prior week)
1,109.17 close (up 3.13% from prior week)

Week ending 2/12/10
4,403,416 average daily volume (13.4% less than prior week)
1,075.51 close (up 0.874% from prior week)

Week ending 2/5/10
5,082,238 average daily volume
1,066.19 close (down 0.0072% from prior week)

Week ending 1/29/10
5,079,534 average daily volume
1,073.87 close (down 1.666% from prior week)

The S & P 500 closed up 35.3 points or 3.3% from the January 29th close. At the same time, the average daily volume dropped 1,038,809 shares or 20.5%. The cheerleader crew on CNBC does not offer this reality check analysis as their parent company (GE) trained them well on managing data.

The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man

understands what will sell.

Confucius

“The man who is admired for the ingenuity of his larceny is almost always

rediscovering some earlier form of fraud. The basic forms are all known,

have all been practiced. The manners of capitalism improve.

The morals may not.”

John Kenneth Galbraith