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As long as execution "speed," not execution "price," is the master of our electronic equity markets, no one should lament the mind-bending volatility. As long as computerized algorithms price intraday downdrafts after the opening, TV talking heads will express their dismay. As long as there are very few orders on a centralized book and Dodd-Frank has killed the traditional risk-taking market makers and big trading desks, there will continue to be no counter side liquidity in our markets, and dramatic flash meltdowns will continue causing the public to lose confidence in our markets. And that is the real problem. Throughout...

David Scutt, Business Insider Australia August 26, 2015Chinese stocks have finished Thursday’s morning session sharply higher. At the mid-session the benchmark Shanghai Composite index is up by 1.55% following three days of savage losses. Despite the gain, the index is still down 15.26% for the week. All sectors are currently trading higher with industrials, up 2.8%, topping the list. (snip)

On Wednesday we witnessed the third largest single day point gain for the Dow Jones Industrial Average ever. That sounds like great news until you realize that the two largest were in October 2008 – right in the middle of the last financial crisis. This is a perfect example of what I wrote about yesterday. Every time the market crashes, there are huge up days, huge down days and giant waves of market momentum. Even though the Dow was up 619 points on Wednesday, overall we are still down more than 2,000 points from the peak of the market....

Oh yes, remember the banks cleaned up their balance sheets and closed all those pesky derivative trades.... Right? "NEW YORK – This spring, traders and analysts working deep in the global swaps markets began picking up peculiar readings: Hundreds of billions of dollars of trades by U.S. banks had seemingly vanished." “We saw strange things in the data,” said Chris Barnes, a former swaps trader now with ClarusFT, a London-based data firm." Except.... they didn't vanish. They went overseas, but are still there. Just remember, it was CDS and IR products that blew up the world last time, and you...

The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index and the Dow Jones industrial average closed up nearly 4 percent, with the Dow gaining more than 600 points.

Myles Udland August 26, 2015The rally stuck. After markets surged early on Wednesday, the market started to give up its gains and a replay of Tuesday's action — when the Dow gained more than 400 points but closed down 200 — seemed in the cards. But in the final hour of trading stocks rocketed higher, finishing near their highest levels of the day. On a points basis, this was third-largest daily gain for the Dow ever, while the S&P 500 had its best day since November 2011. But the main story of markets in recent weeks — which is that...

Bob BryanAugust 26, 2015The stock market has been on a wild ride the past few days, but if you look beyond that, the US economy is doing just fine. There are numerous explanations for the sell-off in the markets, but none of them are because of the American economy. Unemployment is still down around its pre-recession levels, the housing market is still improving with more being built and increasing values, consumer confidence is very healthy, and gross domestic product is still growing. None of that has changed. In trying to explain the chaos, most analysts have noted that, for the...

David Scutt, Business Insider Australia August 26, 2015Despite further monetary policy easing from the People's Bank of China and restrictions on some forms of futures trading, Chinese stocks fell yet again on Wednesday. Whatever word you choose to describe it — chaotic, wild, skittish, or others — the movements during the session were ridiculously rapid. Stocks opened higher, then tanked, then roared higher again before sliding into the close. It's truly head-spinning stuff, but increasingly familiar for those who have been watching closely. (snip)

China’s stuttering economy might come more strongly into view from the Rocky Mountains at this week’s Jackson Hole meeting of central bankers following the chaos in the stock markets. Many economists still expect the Federal Reserve to stay the course and start raising interest rates this year. Despite the wild see-sawing of US stocks after China’s “Black Monday” meltdown, the bet is on the central bank to move soon and start weaning the US off rates that have stayed near zero since 2008. The annual policy conference in the Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, starting onon Thursday, has traditionally...

Myles Udland August 26, 2015 For the second day in a row, US stock futures are surging. Near 7:15 a.m. ET, Dow futures were up 300 points, S&P 500 futures were up 39 points, and Nasdaq futures were up 84 points. Wednesday morning's rally in US futures follows an ugly day on Tuesday, which saw stocks rally sharply early in the day before a huge sell-off in the final hour of trading. All told, the Dow fell more than 600 points from its peak on Tuesday to the market close. On Tuesday, all three major US indexes closed in the...

If you want to understand what’s going on in the stock market and what you should do with your own investments, don’t assume the past three trading days have been rational. And don’t talk about a market “correction.” Doing that will rot your brain. And don’t panic. Although this is an ugly market, this isn’t anything like the 2008-09 meltdown that wiped out millions of homeowners’ equity and put the world’s financial markets at risk. This is a stock market decline that, as we’ll see in a bit, has a serious impact on only a relatively small number of Americans....

If you have not been preparing for what is coming, you need to get off your sofa and you need to start prepping right now. Just remember what happened back in 2008. That crisis took most people totally by surprise. Millions of Americans lost their jobs, and because most of them were living paycheck to paycheck, all of a sudden most of them couldn’t pay the rent or the mortgage either. Large numbers of families that were once living a comfortable middle class lifestyle suddenly found themselves destitute. Well, this coming crisis is going to be even worse by...

Myles Udland August 25, 2015 Stocks had another brutal day on Tuesday, closing in the red after a furious rally early in the day was completely erased in the final hour of trading. On Tuesday morning, the Dow was up as many as 420 points in a big bounce after Monday's 588-point loss. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq were also up nearly 3% early on Tuesday. The market, however, couldn't hold onto its gains in a disappointing close, and when all was said and done, the Dow finished about 600 points off its highs while the S&P had its biggest...

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 204.91 points, or 1.29 percent, at 15,666.44, with Merck plunging 5.2 percent as the greatest laggard and Apple and Walt Disney the only advancers. The Dow transports also reversed intraday gains to close down 1.7 percent, solidly in correction territory. The S&P 500 closed down 25.6 points, or 1.35 percent, at 1,867.61, with utilities plunging more than 3 percent to lead all 10 sectors lower. The Nasdaq closed down 19.76 points. or 0.44 percent, at 4,506.49.

Crashing markets and floundering economies amplify voter anxiety — just like they did in 2008, when they helped propel into the White House a one-term US senator and “community organizer.” So, is it really so crazy to think that voters might elect as president in 2016 a real estate developer with little policy experience but lots of experience in land speculation, building casinos and reality TV? After months of believing Donald Trump was a flash in the pan, I’m willing to concede that The Donald could become the GOP nominee — and possibly the next president of the United States....

Shanghai Comp skids 7.63% to end at 8-month low See Kit Tang | @SeeKit_T The mayhem in Chinese equity markets showed no signs of abating on Tuesday, with the benchmark Shanghai Composite index accelerating its downfall in the final hour of trading to settle below the key 3,000 mark. Japan's Nikkei 225 index was the second-biggest laggard in the region, closing down 4 percent, after turning negative in the afternoon trading session. Earlier in the session, the Tokyo bourse had staged a comeback, alongside most of the other regional stock indices, on the back of bargain hunting in beaten-down stocks...

Back in July, after a dramatic unwind in the half dozen or so backdoor margin lending channels that had helped drive Chinese stocks to nosebleed levels triggered a terrifying 30% decline (vaporizing billions in paper profits in the process), the Politburo predictably stepped in to rescue the market. However, when it started to become clear that a succession of declarations, directives, policy rate cuts, and even threats weren’t going to be enough to alleviate the pressure on equities, Beijing looked to take back the narrative by banning the use of certain undesirable phrases. ... And so, with every attempt to...

U.S. stock index futures pointed to a sharply higher open on Tuesday, recovering from the plunge seen in global stocks on Monday as mayhem in Chinese markets and interest rate fears dominated markets. Dow futures were up around 450 points in premarket trading, implying a 320 point bounce at the open and shrugging off deeper selling in China. Equity markets in China fell further in the final hour of trading on Tuesday, with the Shanghai Composite (Shanghai Stock Exchange: .SSEC) settling below the key 3,000 mark, to end the day down 7.6 percent. Read More More selling may be ahead,...

The stock market timers with the best track records are treating the market’s carnage as a buying opportunity — while the timers with the worst records are not. That’s good news on the theory that the best performers are more likely to be right than the worst ones. The news becomes even better in light of the consistency which the best timers are more bullish than the worst ones: Regardless of the time period over which I measure performance, the best timers on balance are stepping up to the plate — not just in their own right, but also in...