NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- During the market's most volatile moments on May 6, Barbara Oliver saw what was unfolding and quickly executed trades to protect her personal portfolio.
Whatever regulators ultimately unearth about what caused the volatility, the action on May 6 is another dent to investor trust. Despite the tremendous bull market run since March 2009, Main Street and Wall Street still aren't getting along very well, and a so-called flash crash leading to the cancellation of trades in hundreds of stocks by both the NYSE Euronext(NYX), and Nasdaq OMX Group(NDAQ) doesn't help. There's also the wreckage caused by the exchanges' decision to use a 60% price differential between trades as a benchmark for cancellation to sort out. Many have called it arbitrary and unfair. Investors who had safety stop limit orders in place to guard against catastrophe but whose trades weren't executed beyond that band may have gotten unfairly pushed out of positions on the down with no way to get made whole on the way back. Their recourse is unclear. "The action last week simply makes individual investors feel like the game is rigged, and that it is an unequal playing field," says James "Rev Shark" DePorre, author of Invest Like a Shark: How a Deaf Guy with No Job and Limited Capital made a Fortune Investing in the Stock Market and founder and CEO of Shark Asset Management. "No one has even offered a clear explanation for what happened so how can the average guy trust the market," says DePorre, who is also a contributor to TheStreet's sister Website Real Money, in an e-mail conversation. "When you combine that with the anti-Wall Street politics in Washington I'm afraid it is going to be a long time before the average individual investor has much confidence in the market again." Paul Markowich, a senior financial professional at Firstrust Financial Resources, a Philadelphia-based wealth manager with $550 million assets under management, says Thursday's market crash is a wake-up call for a lot of retail investors. Loading Comments... 1 2 3 Last » Next ›SHARE:
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