Excellent article V. I found this quote interesting in light of extreme ECU's price action.

"Plus, the computers are able to do something normal buyers and sellers can't do. They can pick a price they want a security to trade at and then fill in all the necessary trading volume needed to get the price of the security to that point. In other words, you can program computers to rig markets."

So it would seem that politics and greed override fundamentals and technicals at the whim of the new york and dc, self anointed lords. They don't even have to short stocks anymore to destroy a company or exert political pressure on industry. Or for that matter they can keep the stock price of banks and other "favored" corps up. This is just a sophisticated thievery that they use to extrect Billions of $s from the market and the regulatory agencies and courts are too stupid or corrupt to respond.

The PPT can remain hidden from view because of the lack ot tools for honest people to view the influence of these computer driven trades. And the recent financial reform bill does absolutely nothing to address this. What this indicates is it may be around for a long time.