Fun and Games Friday: Markets Erase Steep Losses, End with Gains

What passes for equity markets in America since 2008 are nothing like the vibrant, progressive institutions prevalent through the halcyon days of the 1990s and prior. Today's casinos are run by big banks and their trick algos, destroying any kind of price discovery in their quest for never-ending profits on the backs of weak companies and even sillier analysts.

Take Amazon (AMZN), for instance. On a day after reporting a loss when they were expected to show a gain for the quarter, along with missing on the revenue side and issuing skeptical guidance, the stock erased early losses and ended the day with a tidy gain. So much for fundamental analysis, price-earnings and other metrics which used to be the norm in real, functioning markets.

Today's casino has no correlation trades except those blessed by upturned-nose analysts from top firms who piece together whatever data they can cherry-pick to make their cases. It's really turned into a situation where it's every man, woman and snooty banker for him/herself.

So it was that the Dow erased all of a 140-point loss incurred in the morning (with all but Merck in negative territory) to finish the day with a modest gain. The NASDAQ was even more extreme, whipping down 20 points in the morning only to gain it all back and turn positive shortly before 2:00 pm EDT and post a 0.22% uptick. There was, as is the usual case, no shaking news or market-moving event, other than that one of the biggest thieves on the planet, Steve Cohen and his firm, SAC Capital, have come under the probing eye of the SEC. Cohen will likely settle before he is even charged and the firm will be liquidated, the money going into the coffers of the federal government, which, of course, needs the money since tax revenues are down severely and the budget process is an absolute mess.

Nothing new on Wall Street this Friday. Just more of the rampant theft and manipulation that has become the trademark of our corrupt, greed-infested markets. That and the reliance of Ben Bernanke's Fed putting a floor under the market is about all one can trust these days.

Good grief. If I hear Maria Bartiromo say, "it looks like it wants to go positive," one more time, there may soon be a busted flat screen left out on my front lawn for the trash man. Today's move was a bad joke. Just look at the A-D line.

Enjoy your weekend in the Hamptons, you rich crooked bums, and don't forget to BTFD.

For the rest of you, more silver, gold, tools, machinery and farm land.

Dow 15,558.83, +3.22 (0.02%)
NASDAQ 3,613.16, +7.98 (0.22%)
S&P 500 1,691.65, +1.40 (0.08%)
NYSE Composite 9,620.42, -14.64 (0.15%)
NASDAQ Volume 1,666,886,250
NYSE Volume 2,991,769,500
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ Advance - Decline: 2758-3710
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ New highs - New lows: 245-63
WTI crude oil: 104.68, -0.81
Gold: 1,321.50, -7.30
Silver: 19.80, -0.35