What We're Reading

Re: Quant funds & high frequency trading - are they the reason that there issome perception that the market takes an appearance of "climbing smooth hills"(etfs). I heard that this presented a problem for some traders. It seems to meto be the opposite (nice and smooth, some etfs). I wonder if this would at somepoint smooth out the curves on underlying stocks and might be a reason that somecomment that sometimes earnings announcements, etc. seem to get ignored in termsof market action around them, e.g. the conflict between quant fund patternperformance and fundamentally oriented models, etc. My question: for those ofyou that are familiar with the quant fund domain, is it your opinion that the"smooth" price chart forms will continue (up or down). Or, do you think thatwith a down turn (future) that some of the inverse ETFs might smoothly rise. Itseems like 2008 was an extreme situation. I was wondering if a smoother bearmarket (future) would be possible with the new funds/etfs, etc. (wishf