Things That Make You Go Hmmm....

This story from last year with Goldman Sachs in court due to a former employee allegedly having stolen GS software...Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Facciponti told a federal judge that the theft poses a threat to U.S. markets. Here's the fun quote from the article:
"The bank has raised the possibility that there is a danger that somebody who knew how to use this program could use it to manipulate markets in unfair ways," Mr. Facciponti said, according to a recording of the hearing.
Good thing we can trust GS not to use it to manipulate markets unfairly, eh?
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In a completely unrelated story from this year, Goldman Sachs Has First Perfect Quarter With Zero Loss. Imagine that, they didn't have one losing day the entire quarter! Of course, when the Fed lends money to banks at 1/4% interest, and banks use supercomputers that get data a split second before it is released to the general public (see link below), that probably doesn't hurt, either.
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According to this article by Sol Palha that I ran across on Financial Sense, "...firms...gain advantage by buying data from stock exchanges and feeding it into supercomputers that calculate stock prices a fraction of a second before most other investors see the numbers. That lets these traders shave pennies per share from trades, which when multiplied by thousands of trades can earn the firms big profits. Critics call the practice the modern day equivalent of looking at share prices listed in tomorrow's newspaper stock tables today."
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I caught a little bit of Mad Money a week or so ago. I normally don't watch it much. In the episode I watched, Mr. Cramer opened the show wearing pajamas, blaming all the little guys who sit at home in their PJs for the craziness in the high frequency trading that is seen in the markets. That is laughable. For one thing, it would assume that all those little guys really could move markets. It would also require that they be working enmasse in order to do so. Didn't hear him utter a peep about banks and their high frequency trading using their supercomputers.
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My trading account is in cash. I exited the last week in April after the 2nd big distribution day (verifiable...this time I sent an email to a friend who had requested that I let him know when I was no longer long this market....but you can believe it or not, doesn't matter to me. Consider it luck if you wish.) The big down day 4/16 got my attention, and the one on 4/27 on big volume put me out. Normally, I would have gone short right then. But I guess it's me getting old and having a day job again, I just went to cash and have been there ever since. Hasn't been nearly as much fun since then, but it has been rather peaceful just looking on from the outside.
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At this point the trend is down, regardless of what you hear from the talking heads. The weekly charts already have a death cross, and the dailies should have it soon, as the 50 and 200 day moving averages are converging. Stocks closed below the 10 month moving average in May, which is a long term sell signal, and are still trading below the 10 month average here in late June.
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I almost put on a couple of swing trades today, but did not. With the main trend being down, they would both have been countertrend trades, and that is something that I have been trying to avoid. When the market was in its uptrend, I had a tendency to put on swing trades on the short side, and it cost me overall. Now that the worm has turned, I was tempted to put on swing trades in two of my favorites on the long side, PWE and ENB. Both are still in uptrends and are in excellent niches, in my opinion. I am also looking closely at DVN. They are looking brilliant right now, in my opinion, selling off their international assets and their holdings in the Gulf of Mexico, and concentrating on their business on the North American continent. They also recently put a cool $500 million into Canadian oil sands....don't know whether it was prescience or luck, but they have my attention.
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