quants, hedgies, & probear etf's

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snip:

 

<<Most investors (who are long-biased), and indeed the very U.S. stock market as a whole, are disadvantaged in a market dominated by momentum-based quant funds and by ultra bear ETFs, both of which prey on a weakening hedge fund industry riddled by redemptions and by a community of individual investors whose confidence is badly broken.

These quant funds and ultra bear ETFs, which bypass Federal Reserve Regulation T margin rules governing the extension of credit by securities dealers and brokers in the U.S., wreak havoc in a market that needs all the regulatory support it can get.

 

Today's investors no longer walk tall as they have seen their portfolios shrivel up. For several years, institutional and individual investors have been competing on an uneven playing field dominated by the powerful quant funds and ultra bear ETFs that not only have a disproportionate role in total NYSE trading but, more importantly, have had an undue influence on pushing stocks lower during the course of the bear market.

 

The pages of RealMoney have included an extensive and effective discourse on the effect of the ultra bear ETFs on the market, so I won't spend much time repeating what others on the site have written. >>

 

from doug kass. i still find much of what he says enlightening...except when he goes off on his "buffett has lost it" tangents, a subject which, as a TRADER, he is ill equiped to opine on with insight, imo.

 

rest of the article here:

 

http://www.thestreet.com/p/newsanalysis/investing/10466702.html