Stacked Deck

[Homersays]

The individual investor is playing against the house and the house consists of6000 hedge funds which daily account for 40 - 50% of the volume and on some days well in excess of 50%. They drive stocks down at a blink of the eye and bring them back just as fast. The deck is stacked against the small investor who sees his shares gobbled up when their stop loss orders are triggered. In fact, if you consider the amount of daily voulme attributed to institutional activity, it is likely the public only accounts for as little as 10% of volume or even less. That is the game and that is why more and more investors are placing their capital in Mutual Funds. The stock market is nothing more than legalized gambling and the deck is stacked against the small investor. The house rules. Jim Cramer's Mad Money is a perfect example of how far the dignity and respectability of Wall Street has plummeted. Good luck with your trading suckers.

[Websman]

You sound little bitter Homer. Did you lose your life savings in the market?

[Homersays]

You sound little bitter Homer. Did you lose your life savings in the market?

ROFL You should be as forunate as me.

[stenzrob]

ROFL You should be as forunate as me.

So then, what is your point? You're doing great, but complaining about it? I don't get it.

[Websman]

ROFL You should be as forunate as me.

Really??? You're more fortunate than me??? Hahaha! Now that's a good one!

[Websman]

So Homer...

Why so bitter? You should have a positive attitude.

[Homersays]

So then, what is your point? You're doing great, but complaining about it? I don't get it.

Just trying to educate you. There is no fool like a young fool.

[Websman]

Homer, Have you ever tried the VTP?

[Lyehopper]

Just trying to educate you. There is no fool like a young fool.

DUDE! Are you one of them there.... whatcha-call-em?.... homersexuals?

[stenzrob]

Just trying to educate you. There is no fool like a young fool.

It's much too late for me to be a young fool.

[Homersays]

It's much too late for me to be a young fool.

Okay. Then there is no fool like an old fool. lol

[Homersays]

Another opinion:


By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch
Last Update: 7:10 PM ET Jun 19, 2006


LOS ANGELES (MarketWatch) -- Sayonara. Rest in peace. Main Street investors had their brief moment in the sun, 15 minutes of fame. Now it's back to the dust bin of history. The Wall Street juggernaut's in control, and America's 95 million investors are relegated to a footnote in market history, like a museum piece no longer popular, packed away, out of sight, deep in the archive vaults.
But please, this can be a Zen moment, if you become truly aware of your cosmological "nothingness" you will ascend to a highly evolved state of enlightenment and perpetual nirvana. For now, of course, you will whine and grit your teeth as you continue adjusting to the transition between your ego's feelings of power during the 1990s dot-com insanity (when 100% annual returns made financial geniuses of all) and today's stock market (which is still below it's 2000 peak).
But once past the initial shock, once you grasp the reality that the market may never favor little investors again, then you can accept your fate with true Zen inscrutability, reveling in your new evolved state as a humbled non-entity in the blissful state of nothingness.

[IIC]

You're right Homer...I'm gonna cash everything in tomorrow...Go to Vegas and put it all on 00....I'll either end up rich or end up in rags.

Hey Dave...Can your Casino Hostess arrange to have my limit raised...It's only one spin of the wheel...Thx...Doug(IIC)

[Homersays]

June 20, 2006 -- I swear that this is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but: I came face to face with the Plunge Protection Team and lived to tell about it.
As I explained in my two previous columns on the Plunge Protection Team (June 8 and June 13), a former Federal Reserve governor in 1989 proposed that the U.S. government be allowed to rig the stock market in case of emergency.

"The stock market is certainly not too big for the Fed to handle," said Robert Heller, who suggested that the government secretly buy stock index futures to save Wall Street and the economy from catastrophe.

Heller's plan hung like a fairy godmother over the market (in other words, you want to believe but really can't) until the Washington Post naively wrote about the Plunge Protection Team in 1997.



The PPT, the Post said, was started in 1987 and had met secretly until - at the height of the last stock market bubble - dozens of participants suddenly started spilling the beans. How convenient, no?

My brush with the Plunge Protection Team occurred on Sept. 18, 2001. Yeah, that day!

You'll remember that the stock market had been closed for a week because terrorists had attacked the World Trade Center.

I was stuck in New Jersey when I placed a call to a top financial executive with close ties to the Federal Reserve and who also happens to have spent much of his life in public service. Let's call my source Fred.

As I recall, my intention was to ask Fred some lame question like: "Can the U.S. economy survive this?" Fred was also stuck somewhere else and couldn't be reached, so I posed my stupid questions to others as I pumped out columns that were dutifully upbeat and patriotic for a week.

I forgot about Fred altogether until he returned my phone call on Sept. 18, explaining that he had been stranded out of the country.

By the time Fred had gotten back to me, the stock market had already opened and prices were sharply lower even though the Federal Reserve had made a not-so-surprising reduction in interest rates that morning.

Fred was annoyed, mostly with Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, who Fred felt hadn't emphasized the rate cut enough when addressing the nervous public (and the financial markets) that morning.

Now I was annoyed, so I blurted out that Fred should wise up. I can't remember exactly what I said but it was something like "Hey, wake up. Nobody cares about the interest rate cut. Someone has to step in front of this market and save it."

Then I remember referring Fred to the proposal made in 1989 by Heller.

And when it didn't look like Fred was going to be able to get a copy of Heller's Oct. 1989 article in the Wall Street Journal I faxed it over to him. Fred's secretary never acknowledged receiving the fax, but she did call me up later in the day to make sure something Fred had promised me had arrived.

The stock market rallied late in the day on Oct. 18. I don't know if Fred had anything to do with it or whether the rally was just spontaneous.

These days, things seem different with Big Mouth Ben Bernanke now at the helm of the Fed; there's the possibility of a crisis any day.

Remember, Bernanke once proposed running the printing press and dropping currency from helicopters as an economic plan. And lately Bernanke wasn't astute enough to demur when asked about his concern about rising prices, probably because he's trying to overcome his reputation as an inflation slacker.

With a guy like Ben around, it's nice to know that Fred is, too.

[DSteckler]

<< I forgot about Fred altogether until he returned my phone call on Sept. 18, explaining that he had been stranded out of the country.
.
.
.

The stock market rallied late in the day on Oct. 18. >>

So was it Sept. 18 or Oct. 18?

Or is this a work of fiction?