The Casino

Interesting statistics pulled from Dshort.com

Essentially the casino we now live in has had 14 of the 64 days where intraday volatility is 8%+ ... going back to 1928. So out of 80 years, over 20% of the most volatile days have come in the past 6 weeks.

To me, it just says program trading (computers) have taken over - humans don't move like this on a normal basis. It is an illiquid market where even hedge funds who use humans have largely moved to high cash and those that remain in move the markets - remember hedge funds are only about 2% of assets but (varied) surveys say control anywhere from 35-65% of each day's trades. HAL9000 pretty much has this market to himself.

He has a chart of each of the 64 days available on the site if you are into statistics.

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Volatility is a measure of instability, and bear markets are inherently unstable. For proof, let's look at the intraday volatility (the swing between daily high and low) in the Dow since 1928. Over this 80-year period, the average volatility is about 1.8%. There have been only 64 days when the intraday volatility exceeded 8%. That's right — 64 days out of over 20,300 market days.

Fourteen of them have occurred since September 29th.

The Crash of 1929 had only eight.
Another thirty followed during the ten-year Great Depression.
Four were clustered around the Crash of 1987. Only two happened during the nasty 2000-2002 bear.