Plunge Protection Team Saves Christmas?

Undoubtedly you've heard of the PPT, many of you might think it's a tin-foil hat conspiracy, however did you ever think you'd see the day when your own country spied on all of your electronic private communications and no one cared or did anything about it?

I sure didn't.

In any case, in 2009 myself and David DT ( A Russian trader many of you know) were trading together (over phone or instant message) and we got so good at picking out areas where the PPT would come in to the market, we could actually call it 10 minutes before it happened...New low in March of 2009? I don't think so, the PPT were there every time the market came within a few percent of breaking down.

Today would have been really easy for them to work because volume was so low, first let me show you who they are, then why they'd be active today and then the tell-tale signs.

The actual name, "President's Working Group on Financial Markets", called by Wall Street and the Washington Post, "the Plunge Protection Team".

Officially created by Executive Order 12631 

They released this during the 2008 Financial Crisis... "On October 6, 2008, the working group issued a statement indicating that it was taking multiple actions available to it in order to attempt to stabilize the financial system, although purchase of stock shares was not part of the statement.^[16] The government may wind up owning shares in the firms to which it provided loans, as they will receive warrants as collateral for these loans.

The official members...1) Secretary of the Treasury, 2) the Chair of the F_E_D, 3) chair of the SEC and 4) Chair of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)

It is well known and established that the actual working arm of the group is the "Open Markets" trading desk at the NY F_E_D, Brian Sack use to run it and quite controversially.

In the last 2-days I mentioned the NY F_E_D's trading desk in this context 4 times, 

"I doubt they'll let anything bad happen in front of Black Friday even if the NY F_E_D's open markets desk has to buy up everything"

WHY? This isn't even about the market really, it's about consumer sentiment in front of the biggest shopping day of the year. Did you know a large percentage of retailers run at a loss all year and make all of their profits during the holiday season? It's obvious, it's about sentiment in an economy that is really rough and it's not going to help OB with his popularity ratings, especially if Black Friday flops, the OB Care will catch a lot of the blame and note that at least half of the members of the PPT are his cabinet members and others are his nomination.

Why do I think PPT?

Simply there was no other place for the pump, I'll check the most heavily weighted stocks, but I'm guessing on low volume, that's exactly where they did this and I'll show you some proof. The money they'd have to spend on a low volume day like this vs the possible repercussions make it well worth it.

 The NYSE Tick is probably the most damning evidence, as you can see, there was no mass movement of a majority of stocks higher in to the close, this suggests only a few stocks moved higher to effect the ramp and the way the major averages are weighted, they can but a couple of stocks in the Dow and 1 or 2 in the NASDAQ and move the entire market, all they have to do is take out the ask stack which isn't hard to do or expensive on a day like this.

 The SPOT VIX didn't crash, but went the opposite of what you'd expect after having looked at the NASDAQ 100

This is short term VIX futures in green vs the QQQ in red, they were not knocked down either which is a typical lever used to manipulate the market higher.

Why wasn't short term futures taken down? Simple, there was strong demand for protection and to take out the ask stack there would have cost a lot of money.

 HYG in green vs the QQQ in red, another lever commonly used, but not surprisingly considering HY credit and the 3C chart, HYG went the opposite direction, it's a wonder it didn't trigger some negative market arbitrage.

TLT pushed lower is a lever to ramp the market, but that didn't happen as you can see, again I'm surprised this didn't cause some negative market arbitrage, maybe it did and they had to compensate.

 And the Yen wasn't pushed around so none of the carry pairs could have lifted the market.

The only thing left is using the strange weighting of the averages and buying the most heavily weighted stocks, for example AAPL use to have nearly 20% of the NASDAQ 100's weight, this was the same as the bottom 50 NASDAQ 100 stocks COMBINED, 1 stock can move an entire average that much while the others do nothing...THIS IS WHY THE NYSE TICK WAS SO NEUTRAL.

And the proof...

This is AAPL in green and the NASDAQ 100/QQQ in red, notice anything?