People always blame the MM's when the stock price does not move the direction they want it to -- when the price falls or fails to rise, all the buyers complain that the MM's are forcing the price down. When the price moves up, they don't mention the MM's, they say that the company is awesome, has a brilliant CEO, has a great product, they're great traders, the stock has formed such-and-such TA pattern, etc. The MM conspiracy theory is just a rationalization to make someone feel better when their trade isn't working out.
The scenario you mention with AAPL is interesting, but even if it were true, what does it matter if someone manipulates the price by 1/2 point, less than 2%, and for just a few hours? Perhaps if they are controlling huge amounts of money, they can get a lot of 0.50% - 1.00% profits or something. I figure plenty of that goes on with people controlling the spread anyways. But does that really affect us regular investors? Do you have enough money tied up in hourly or daily trades that this is an issue? If so, maybe you should try playing craps or roulette instead, the odds are probably more in your favor.
Warren Buffett is known to make all of his investment decisions based on the stock prices in the newspaper -- i.e. he only needs the daily quotes, not by the hour or minute. If you can find someone that became a multi-billionaire from short-term trading, maybe I'd change my mind, but all of the successful investors that I know of have a trading time frame much longer than a few hours or days.
Randy |
