Well put FP, I'm impressed.

Back in the day when the market was connected to reality, I was a player of the game. These days, a significant portion of all volume consists of High Frequency trading mechanisms, because most of the smart money is out. The clowns destroyed the pricing mechanism via their put/flooring and disconnected the capital markets from reality. In consequence they turned the capital markets into Ponzi scheme. They trade this Ponzi between themselves always finding the greater fool until the music stops. This can go for very long time but something tells me in 2013 the music will stop. They'll stop the music when they've found the last greater fool and then continue to profit on the downside.

For those who see both sides of the trade, every direction is progress, I guess, but I opt not to participate in such a disgraceful sham on principle alone.

Yeah, the markets were up in 2012, Thank the Federal Reserve and Q-Infinity for that, not anything that is real.