Latest Market Glitch Shows 'Trading Out of Control'

Wednesday morning's stock snafu had a familiar ring to it — mysterious volume in trades that simply could not have been made by a human comes surging out of nowhere, causing brief but acute market mayhem.

By now, many players on trading floors have gotten used to the disruptions that can come from the highly automated new world of high-frequency trading.

But that doesn't mean they like it.

"This algorithmic trading is kind of out of control," Phil Silverman, managing partner at Kingsview Capital, said as officials at the New York Stock Exchange tried to make sense of what happened. "It seriously hurts investor confidence."

By mid-afternoon, no one still quite knew exactly why about 150 stocks experienced a blinding surge in market volume, causing momentary disruptions in the prices of nine Dow components and a slew of others across various categories.

The NYSE said in the afternoon that it would cancel trades in six different stocks affected by the glitch, including Wizzard Software, China Cord Blood, E-House Holdings, American Reprographics and Quicksilver Resources. Trades executed at 30 percent higher or lower than the opening price will be canceled, the NYSE said.

Nearly 40 issues spiked more than 10 percent between the lows and highs, although prices of most of these issues stabilized in afternoon trading. Following are the 10 issues that gyrated the most in terms of percentage change between the day's low and the day's high price — Wizzard Software, China Cord Blood, E House, American Reprographics, Rare Element, Navidea Biopharm, Almaden Minerals, Quicksilver, Radioshack and Nordic American Tanker. Some of these shares trade on NYSE MKT, formerly NYSE Amex.

Authorities involved in reviewing the matter said Knight Capital, a trading outfit that employs algorithms used in high-frequency trading, said it experienced "technology issues" with its market-making procedures.

Ultimately, the broader market reacted little to the disruption, which was limited by circuit breakers and mechanisms at the NYSE to help contain the damage of HFT mistakes.

Traders, though, have grown weary of the problems and say the high-speed environment has changed the market in a bad way.

"When markets would have a big move, when things were really crazy, I would go out into the street and talk to people and they knew. Now, you get these big moves and people just don't care anymore," Silverman says. "They don't want to be a part of it, the high-frequency thing. The algorithmic situation needs to be looked at. We need to understand it better."

Firms create algorithms to buy and sell stocks according to formulas and market conditions. The high-speed robots trade with each other, seeking in transactions that can take microseconds to capitalize sometimes on fractions of a penny in stock moves.

While proponents say the rapid trading helps create liquidity and price discovery, regular investors have been fleeing the market, in part due to macro worries and in part because they don't feel they can compete in the automated trading world.

Dave Lutz, the managing director of U.S. trading at Stifel Nicolaus in Baltimore, cautions investors not to over-react to events like the Knight mistake.

"A lot of people seem to think it was human error. At the end of the day it wasn't necessarily a failure of systems," he said. "It's not a reason for people to lose confidence in the markets."

Still, had a human presence been involved somebody at least could have flagged the Knight trades as improper and perhaps stopped them before they hit the market.

But Lutz counters that the mistake was nowhere on par with the May 6, 2010 Flash Crash, where an error caused the Dow to lose nearly 1,000 points in a few minutes, or any of the other recent trading fiascoes.

"On the surface, it doesn't seem like it's any of that," he said. "It seems like it was simple human errors, and that's been happening since they've been trading underneath the maple tree."

Source: CNBC

'End of capitalism': Bolivia to expel Coca-Cola in wake of 2012 Mayan 'apocalypse'

In a symbolic rejection of US capitalism, Bolivia announced it will expel the Coca-Cola Company from the country at the end of the Mayan calendar. This will mark the end of capitalism and usher in a new era of equality, the Bolivian govt says.

“December 21 of 2012 will be the end of egoism and division. December 21 should be the end of Coca-Cola,” Bolivian foreign minister David Choquehuanca decreed, with bombast worthy of a viral marketing campaign.

The coming ‘end’ of the Mayan lunar calendar on December 21 of this year has sparked widespread doomsaying of an impending apocalypse. But Choquehuanca argued differently, claiming it will be the end of days for capitalism, not the planet.

“The planets will align for the first time in 26,000 years and this is the end of capitalism and the beginning of communitarianism,” said Choquehuanca as quoted by Venezuelan newspaper El Periodiquito.

The minister encouraged the people of Bolivia to drink Mocochinche, a peach-flavored soft drink, as an alternative to Coca-Cola. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez followed suit, encouraging his country to ditch the American beverage for fruit juice produced in Venezuela.

­

McFailure

Last year, Bolivia became the second Latin American country not to have a single McDonald’s. The fast food giant finally gave up on Bolivia after being unable to turn a profit in the country for over a decade.

Following this failure, the monolithic multinational released a documentary titled ‘Why McDonald’s failed in Bolivia.’ Referencing surveys, sociologists, nutritionists and historians, the company came to the conclusion it was not their food that was the issue, but a culturally driven boycott.

Bolivian President Evo Morales has a reputation for controversial policies similar to the Coca-Cola ban. Morales pledged last month to legalize the consumption of coca leaves, one of the main ingredients of cocaine.

“Neither the US nor capitalist countries have a good reason to maintain the ban on coca leaf consumption,” said Morales.

The coca leaf was declared an illegal narcotic by the UN in 1961, along with cocaine, opium and morphine. The consumption of coca leaves is a centuries-old tradition in Bolivia, strongly rooted in the beliefs of various indigenous groups.

Source: RT

Internet Giants Combine Forces Creating New Lobby to Control Capitol Hill

The titans of the Internet, including Google, eBay, Amazon and Facebook, are combining forces under the blanket of a newly formed lobby group that wants to influence lawmakers on how they can manipulate the Internet, as well as how important they truly are.

In September of this year, the lobby groups called the Internet Association, will be based in Washington, DC, and headed by Michael Beckerman, former adviser of the Energy and Commerce Committee within the House of Representatives.

The Internet Association’s goal is to control the perspective of elected officials on Internet technologies, their uses and cooperation with various federal agencies. Their website claims they are “dedicated to advancing public policy solutions to strengthen and protect an open, innovative and free Internet.”

Beckerman explains:

The Internet isn’t just Silicon Valley anymore. The Internet has moved to Main Street. Our top priority is to ensure that elected leaders in Washington understand the profound impacts on the Internet and Internet companies on jobs, economic growth, and freedom.

Through the influence of money and pressure, this lobby seeks to have an over-reaching effect on the Internet as a whole. In conjunction with major corporations in the tech industry, and by remaining focused on subversive control over the internet, the Internet Association will lead the way toward Big Brother becoming a very necessary part of our lives.

Google - Internet monster and collector of information for the National Security Agency (NSA) - announced back in March that they will use a new feature to spy on Android and smartphone customers that will allow background noise to assist Google in identifying location, and therefore track unsuspecting Americans better.

They also altered their privacy policies to better gather intelligence on Internet users. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission gained greater oversight over Google’s handling of personal information as part of a settlement reached last year. Google submitted to the agreement after exposing its users email contacts when it launched a now-defunct social networking service called Buzz in 2010.

Internet services, like Skype, have begun working with law enforcement to assist in exposing political dissidents, protesters and other terrorist types identified by the FBI.

Skype has completely opened their online chats and customer information to law enforcement in an effort to conduct surveillance regardless of whether or not a warrant has been obtained.

Since Microsoft purchased Skype in 2011, their willingness to cooperate with federal surveillance initiatives has grown exponentially. Online chats are monitored under the guise of stopping hackers from controlling the Internet.

Microsoft claims to be aware of their role in spying on Americans, and is conducting such surveillance with secrecy while working with local and international law enforcement agencies.

Authorities wanted access to Skype because, they claimed, and that the encryption programs made it hard to track pre-determined terrorists groups, hackers, jihadis, drug lords. Although this is simply a ruse to gain access to Skype conversations that were previously off-limits.

Since Skype has been traditionally used by the same people the FBI claims are dangerous terrorists (those who pay in cash, have tattoos and own guns), their new owners, Microsoft, are more than willing to comply with government agencies to spy on their customers in the name of safety.

Lauren Weinstien, co-founder of People for Internet Responsibility, explains:

The issue is, to what extent are our communications being purpose-built to make surveillance easy? When you make it easy to do, law enforcement is going to want to use it more and more. If you build it, they will come.’

Mark Gillett, Skype chief development officer, has vehemently denied that they were making their program more surveillance based to assist federal and local agencies in spying on citizens. However they have been making their bandwidth connections stronger so that information can be transferred more readily, as well as proxy interceptions and file transfers.

Skype operates every communication in conjunction with outside agency surveillance requests. Those once-encrypted calls are now open to interpretation by law enforcement.

Facebook has been used by the US government to track of the world’s terrorist and terrorism, according to Rose Gottemoeller, Undersecretary of State for Arms Control.

An ordinary citizen becoming more involved is a great benefit to the US government in their mission to use the false flag of terrorism to sway public opinion. Gottemoeller says using social media as a crowd-sourcing tool is an effective in helping the U.S. and other governments “understand what’s going on with a nuclear facility in a certain country, for example, or what’s going on with the production of chemicals at a chemical plant.”

Gottemoeller envisions utilizing social media users as an effective way to keep atomic bombs out of the hands of terrorists, as well as the control of governments and regimes.

The manipulation of the Internet will only get worse as time goes on; politicians remain cooperative to the powers-that-be, and the people continue to support the technologies that enslave us all. Silently, Big Brother looms over our shoulders, listening, watching and judging us at every turn.

The technology we have grown dependent on will be the chains that bind us to the control grid.

Source: Activist Post

The Amazon’s Chernobyl: Ecuadorian Court Orders Chevron to Pay $19 Billion for Environmental Damages

An Ecuadorian court recently demanded Chevron to pay $19 billion in environmental damages. This includes $900 million for the Amazon Defense Front—a coalition of plaintiffs in this decade-long legal battle—and an additional $8.6 billion because Chevron refused to apologize. Ouch!

Instead of paying up, Chevron is putting up its usual dirty fight.

Its lawyers plan to appeal, and called the region’s legal system “illegitimate” and the reparations “unenforceable in any court that observes the rule of law.”

Those are strong words from a company that, between 1964 and 1990, had such poor waste management practices that 1,400 locals died. Needless to say, it’s not called “the Amazon’s Chernobyl” for nothing.

During those years, Chevron dumped billions of gallons of waste oil and water into open pits, thereby polluting fishing grounds, devastating crops, killing farm animals, and raising the rate of cancer among residents.

Texaco (later bought by California-based Chevron) acknowledged the damage enough to promise $40 million to clean up after themselves, but they don’t seem happy about the updated number:  $19 billion.


Fraud and Misconduct

“Rather than accept responsibility, Chevron has launched a campaign of warfare against the Ecuadorean courts and the impoverished victims of its unfortunate practices,” said Pablo Fajardo, now celebrated lawyer and winner of the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2008 for his dedication to the case.

Chevron boasted $19 billion in earnings in 2010 and is predictably reluctant to let a cent of it go. In 2011, they claimed to have undercover investigators with evidence of improper association between the judges and plaintiffs. “We intend to see that the perpetrators of this fraud are held accountable for their misconduct,” they said in February 2011.

The plaintiffs—and activists worldwide—hope the same justice is meted out to Big Oil, and the justice better come soon.

Source: Activist Post

Green Plants Reduce City Street Pollution Up to Eight Times More Than Previously Believed

Photo credit: Michael Fiegle

Via ScienceDaily:

Trees, bushes and other greenery growing in the concrete-and-glass canyons of cities can reduce levels of two of the most worrisome air pollutants by eight times more than previously believed, a new study has found. A report on the research appears in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology.

Thomas Pugh and colleagues explain that concentrations of nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) and microscopic particulate matter (PM) — both of which can be harmful to human health — exceed safe levels on the streets of many cities. Past research suggested that trees and other green plants can improve urban air quality by removing those pollutants from the air. However, the improvement seemed to be small, a reduction of less than 5 percent. The new study sought a better understanding of the effects of green plants in the sometimes stagnant air of city streets, which the authors term “urban street canyons.”

The study concluded that judicious placement of grass, climbing ivy and other plants in urban canyons can reduce the concentration at street level of NO₂ by as much as 40 percent and PM by 60 percent, much more than previously believed. The authors even suggest building plant-covered “green billboards” in these urban canyons to increase the amount of foliage. Trees were also shown to be effective, but only if care is taken to avoid trapping pollutants beneath their crowns.

The authors acknowledge funding from the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Sustainable Urban Environment program.

Read more at ScienceDaily:

Who 'likes' my Virtual Bagels?

For the past week, I've been running a very successful small business via Facebook. It is called VirtualBagel and more than 3,000 people from around the world have decided they "like" it - despite the fact that it does, well, absolutely nothing. But in running this non-existent firm I have learned quite a bit about the value of those "likes" prized by so many big brands, and the usefulness of Facebook's advertising.

When social media consultant Michael Tinmouth told me of his concerns about the returns his small business clients were getting from advertising on Facebook, I decided I needed to mount an experiment. Could I persuade Facebook users to click on adverts for an imaginary business and like it?

The idea for VirtualBagel was born from something my oldest son came up with many years ago, as he watched a picture download very slowly from the internet onto our first computer: "What if we could download doughnuts too?" So my business was going to be called VirtualDoughnut - until I realised I needed a copyright-free photo, and I had only bagels, not doughnuts to hand.

I set up a page, with very basic information: "We send you bagels via the internet - just download and enjoy." The fuller description talked of a dream of delivering virtual bagels over the internet to a world of virtual eaters. But nothing more.

Next, I created my first advert, which is a fairly simple process. You choose your objective - mine was to reach people who were most likely to "like" my page - how much you want to spend - I opted for $10 (about £6.50) - and where you want it seen.

I chose the United States, the UK, Russia, India, Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. I narrowed it down slightly by targeting under 45-year-olds interested in cookery and consumer electronics, but was told that would still give me a potential audience of 112 million customers.

Then I pressed the button and waited. Within minutes people were starting to "like" my meaningless site, and within 24 hours I had 1,600 likes - and had spent my $10. Where were they from?

It seemed VirtualBagel was hugely popular in Egypt, Indonesia and the Philippines, but just about nobody in the US or the UK had any interest. And amongst my likers were some interesting characters, notably Ahmed Ronaldo. He was from Cairo - the city where my page is still most liked - but seemed to work at Real Madrid, and his profile consisted of nothing but pictures of Cristiano Ronaldo.

What was more interesting was what else he liked besides VirtualBagel - more than 3,000 pages, ranging from a retailer called Titchy Kitch London to Mr H Menswear to Pets World. What exactly was going on?

Over the next few days, I tinkered with my advert, removing a number of countries so that I was just targeting the US, the UK and India. The "likes" continued to mount, though very few came from the US or UK. After four days, my page was "liked" by nearly 3,000 people.

Then for one final day, I decided to advertise solely to UK Facebook users. The results were frankly disappointing - new "likes" slowed to a trickle. After spending a total of $60 (£40) VirtualBagel had built an audience in Egypt and India, but was not making an impact in the lucrative UK or US markets.

Then I sat down to analyse the results, with the aid of Facebook's adverts manager page. I'm a newcomer to the arcane world of online advertising metrics but one thing leaped out. When my advert was broadly targeted the click-through rate - the number of clicks on the advert divided by the number of times it was shown - was 0.55%. That had generated nearly 3,000 "likes" over four days.

But when I restricted the advert to UK users, the click through rate fell to 0.059% - about a 10th as many. And in the one day that advert ran, I achieved just 17 "likes" for my $10.

So, it seems that Facebook adverts can be very effective in generating interest in your business from certain countries but not in the US or the UK. And I think my experiment raises a lot of questions.

Who are these people in some countries who are clicking in an apparently random way on thousands of Facebook adverts and earning the network a small fee each time?

Is Facebook worried that there seem to be a number of fake profiles in certain countries generating fake "likes" and so devaluing the worth of its advertising system?

Is the network being as active as it should be in addressing a problem which is generating lots of revenue for its bottom line?

Now Facebook, it is important to say, feels my experiment is worthless because I have simply failed to target my advert in a way which delivers useful results. The company also says it sees no significant issue with fake profiles and is acting to discourage the practice.

The question you may ask is why does any of this matter? Well, Facebook has just arrived on the stock market with a valuation of $100bn, which was entirely based on the promise that advertising revenue will continue to grow from last year's $4bn.

So if advertisers - big or small - start losing confidence in what the Facebook platform has to offer, then that will be very serious indeed for the company's future prospects.

Source: BBC