Depression

Impending Crash?

08-31-2009 • The Market Ticker

You have to wonder when you see statistics like this (through 9:30 this morning): Remove SPY, ETFC and LEHMQ (none of which trade on the NYSE) from the list and you get 606 million shares. How many shares have traded in total with one hour in? 1.491 billion. Forty percent of the volume is comprised of four used dogfood stocks, just as we've seen for the last couple of weeks - all people passing shares back and forth among each other, many of it being "computer HFT games." The other used dog-food stocks (LEHMQ and ETFC) are really no better; they just don't trade on the NYSE. Lehman is particularly ridiculous as that's a formally-bankrupt company! Fannie and Freddie are two of the most outrageous abuses I've seen in a long time, second only to AIG. All three of these should be delisted as their equity value is quite literally bupkis. This just goes to illustrate - the market is currently being levitated on literal trash. Again to