DOES THE GOVERNMENT MANIPULATE STOCK PRICES?
by ilene - February 26th, 2010 10:19 pm
Excellent article by Pragcap – I highly recommend reading. – Ilene
DOES THE GOVERNMENT MANIPULATE STOCK PRICES?
Courtesy of The Pragmatic Capitalist
There has been a lot of chatter over the last year about the government’s involvement in the equity markets. Yesterday’s market action was certainly odd. Several large institutions were active buyers of enormous blocks of the S&P on no news. The volume shot through the roof from out of nowhere. It was not an unusual occurrence. We have seen it repeatedly over the course of the last 12 months (see here for more). Of course, this whole discussion has a very conspiratorial aspect to it, but I think it’s less nefarious than many presume (depending on your definition of nefarious when it come to pseudo-government intervention in markets).
The usual argument with regards to government intervention in the equity markets is pretty simple. The government, or the “President’s Working Group” (aka, the Plunge Protection Team) purchases securities in big blocks and jams prices higher. Jamming, gunning, carpet bombing (whatever you want to call it) is quite simple. In any market there are down times in terms of volume. If you have the firepower (the capital) and the desire you can knock out just about every asking price on the board. Have a look at just about any Russell 2,000 stock at around noon as the volume slows to a drizzle and ask yourself what you could do with $10,000,000? Of course, the same goes for the downside. You can hit the bids and literally knock them off the board in an illiquid market (exactly what we saw in Fall of 2008 with fund redemptions).
Anyone who has ever traded in size has seen this in action. It’s like taking a machine gun to a medieval battle or sending the U.S. Army to Baghdad (not that anyone would ever do such a thing). The point is, you can slice through prices like a hot knife through butter, create a certain sentiment in the 
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW.