

$34 Billion Asset Manager Says Market Prices Are Manipulated - jakarta
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/34-billion-asset-manager-says-market-prices-are-manipulated-accuses-nyse-intellectual-proper

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TGJ
I'm pretty sure I read about this from this HN before. Take for example the
story of the 15 year old that found out how to drum up stocks and turn a
profit and the SEC barely does anything when they find out because they don't
want the public to learn about the practices on Wall Street.

<http://www.cs.brown.edu/~rbb/risd/Lebed.html>

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jrockway
That's a pretty dishonest characterization of the article. It _is_ a case of
the government taking a settlement because they are afraid of losing in court,
but everyone knows that stock prices are artificial and that the media can
manipulate them.

That's why I don't get the recent anti-speculation sentiment. The stock market
was never about value-investing, it's about speculation. Everything is
speculation -- when you put money in a CD, you are speculating that the bank
is not going to become insolvent and lose your money (and that the insurer is
also not going to become insolvent). That's why you get the interest rate
premium over treasury bonds. Now, you may argue that you're less likely to
lose money in your savings account than in betting that Google will drop to $1
a share, and you're right... but it's all about degrees. Every decision you
make is speculation. The market is all speculation, either people speculating,
or people's algorithms speculating. Nothing more.

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mistermann
Really? So all the explicit rules and regulations about disclosure, etc that
participants in the stock market must adhere to are not actually binding?
Everything is just a big crapshoot?

Sadly, your assessment is just about bang on of how it actually is. What
people are complaining about is that it is advertised as something else.

After the whole Bre-x scandal, there are now _very_ strict rules on stating
mineral resources. However, you can adhere to those rules, get money from
investors to fully develop a mine and mill, and then sell the company for ten
cents on on the dollar to a cayman islands based company, and the regulators
won't bat an eye, even when you do most of the legwork for them.

You seem to talk as if the markets have always been rigged. It was not always
like this. Of course there were always indiscretions here and there, but the
way it is now is just ridiculous.

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jrockway
_So all the explicit rules and regulations about disclosure, etc that
participants in the stock market must adhere to are not actually binding?
Everything is just a big crapshoot?_

Yup. Because although the disclosures are correct, nobody reads them. They
invest with their gut or their own metrics.

(Someone who posts to HN regularly likes to claim that certain shapes in the
EURJPY graph mean the whole world economy is going to collapse, for example.)

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rrhyne
Zero Hedge has been my main source of financial news for almost a year.
They've been out in front of some big stories that shine a light through some
dark spaces.

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rjett
Really? Zerohedge certainly does paint an alternate reality from most other
sources, but most of the time the writing seems so manic and chock-full of
conspiracy theories that it's hard to take seriously. Zerohedge gained
traction in an environment of fear and panic and Tyler Durden, whoever he is,
plays that trump card very well.

For anyone who's interested: <http://nymag.com/guides/money/2009/59457/>

~~~
mistermann
Tyler at zerohedge is certainly prolific in his posting and definitely lacks
the editorial oversight found elsewhere (thankfully), but most of what he
posts is relevant and worth considering.

If you think what he discusses is purely "conspiracy theories", presumably
because it doesn't jive with the official sanctioned arbiters of information,
I have to ask, how weird does it have to get before you'll start to consider
that perhaps the official sources aren't telling the truth.

For example:, the ratings agencies, who are supposed to give unbiased
information, do anything but.

Or....the formula for calculating unemployed workers. This had changed
drastically in the last decade, yet we are constantly presented with the
current numbers compared to historic numbers, when they are using entirely
different formulas.

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c00p3r
There are much more enjoyable readings on ZH. =) It is one of them:
[http://www.zerohedge.com/article/welcome-insane-
asylum-%E2%8...](http://www.zerohedge.com/article/welcome-insane-
asylum-%E2%80%93-our-collective-psychosis-chapter-one)

