Top Chart of 2010

There are a lot of 2010 summaries going around.  I just read a top ten charts, and the charts are all federal deficit and spending charts.  Other round ups will point to the Tea Party, events like the World Cup, Earthquakes, Volcanic eruptions as critical moments of 2010.  Every year, we have those critical moments and they tend to revolve around human achievement or natural disasters.

I would like to nominate the critical chart, and critical moment of 2010. Here it is:
the Dow

and the S+P

The market may be up, but lurking in the back of every trader, fund manager, CFO’s mind is the probability of it happening again. The regulators, and Congress has abdicated responsibility for it. They are asleep at the wheel. The only question is not if, but when it will happen again.

Since May 6, we have had a series of mini flash crashes in various stocks and ETF’s in markets all over the world. Fragmentation of liquidity is the cause.

The cash equity market is structured improperly. It’s broken, and there is little incentive to fix it.

Fortunately my friend Ben Lichtenstein has a business that narrates the pit action to subscribers.  You may have heard this before, but it’s worth listening to again.  If you are laughing, you should be crying.  These are the kinds of things that destroy public confidence in markets.