There are a lot of different reasons in the last few years that make me lose confidence in trading markets in general, and I'm wondering if people here share them.
Cyber Coins - This is trillions of dollars based on nothing. Thin regulation, frequent frauds, and the price supported by massive amounts of fake trades that are basically one pocket to another. (Or "lack economic substance", as it says in tax law)
Meme stocks - Why is TSLA market cap over $1 trillion when their sales are declining & project after project has failed? Is there a fundamental problem due to excess piles of concentrated capital?
Prediction markets - A booming form of gambling on a lot of things with no control over insiders jumping in on bets they either know or can influence the outcome of. How is this legal?
The AI bubble - The biggest, most obvious bubble since real estate in 2007.
Are commodities still honest, or is something going on there, too?
Your concerns are understandable, and many experienced traders have raised similar questions over the last few years. Market structure has changed significantly, and the factors you mentioned — crypto, meme stocks, prediction markets, and the AI boom — have all contributed to a perception that price discovery is no longer driven purely by fundamentals.
First, regarding cryptocurrencies, the issue is not only regulation but also market structure. A large portion of trading volume is concentrated on a small number of exchanges, and there have been repeated allegations of wash trading, liquidity recycling, and artificial volume creation. When a market allows large amounts of capital to move without transparent oversight, confidence in fair pricing naturally declines.
Second, the rise of meme stocks showed that market capitalization is no longer always tied to earnings or cash flow. Companies like Tesla became heavily influenced by narrative, liquidity, and retail flows rather than traditional valuation models. This does not necessarily mean the market is broken, but it does mean that excess liquidity and concentrated capital can distort prices for long periods of time.
Third, prediction markets and event-based betting platforms blur the line between finance and gambling. When participants can potentially influence the outcome of the event they are betting on, it raises legitimate concerns about fairness and regulation. Even when legal, these markets operate under different rules than traditional exchanges, which adds to the feeling that the overall system is becoming less transparent.
Fourth, the current enthusiasm around artificial intelligence stocks does resemble past speculative cycles. History shows similar patterns during the dot-com bubble and the housing boom before 2007. Rapid capital inflows into a narrow sector can push valuations far beyond realistic expectations, and when liquidity tightens, those same sectors often correct sharply.
As for commodities, they are generally considered more grounded because they are tied to physical supply and demand. However, they are not immune to distortion. Large institutional flows, derivatives markets, algorithmic trading, and geopolitical events can all move prices far away from short-term fundamentals. Futures markets in particular can reflect positioning and liquidity conditions more than physical reality at times.
That said, commodities still tend to return to fundamental value faster than many other asset classes, because production costs, inventory levels, and real consumption eventually matter. This is why many traders still view metals, energy, and agricultural markets as more reliable for long-term cycle analysis, even though short-term volatility can be extreme.
In summary, it is not that markets have become completely dishonest, but they have become more complex, more liquidity-driven, and more influenced by large capital flows than in the past. For traders, this means that relying only on fundamentals is often not enough anymore. Understanding positioning, liquidity, sentiment, and macro cycles has become just as important as analyzing earnings or economic data--BLACK ROCK --? Aladin>>?
You really hit on one of our best topics ever here, Patrick.
I'll comment more as soon as I get the chance.
Larry retired from trading exactly because of the changes in how natural gas trades compared to 2+ decades ago and I noticed the exact same thing which has made position trading extremely tough.
I changed from a position trader to a day trader using weather model changes.
More shortly. Super Duper topic!
Great comments, fayq!
The widest current product of AI is chatbots. They basically repeat prompts back to you, with a bit of embellishment. The actual value of these is essentially negligible.
Sorry for the delay. Before commenting, I wanted to start with the latest analysis of the rich people's Ponzi Scheme.
By metmike - March 17, 2026, 1:54 p.m.
We should probably start a new thread but there's so many great posts on this one, so here's 1 more on this topic:
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/stock-market
1. 1 month: Strong downtrend that accelerated last week but made a double bottom.......or will this just be a BEAR flag? Also another possible symmetrical triangle. We showed you the break out to the downside of the last symmetrical triangle earlier in this thread.
2. 1 year: The rounded top formation continues to be confirmed. The stock market has no only lost steam/momentum from an uptrend that became less and less steep in 2025, we are now in the DOWN trend on the other side of the high/peak. The only thing that will negate this very profound chart pattern is new, definitive highs that continue higher which seems almost possible to imagine with so many dark Donald Trump clouds raining on the economic parade.
3. 10 years: The exponential/parabolic move higher is breaking down. This COULD be a bull flag but the amount of bearish news pounding the market seems to be overwhelming. The only thing keeping it up is the Ponzi Scheme nature and self fulfilling prophesy that keeps money flows coming by ignoring the fundamentals(extremely overpriced in an economy doing poorly) and instead and instead is based on the desire of enough people for the market to go higher that is strong enough for them to continue to behave, with their money/investments in a way that completely ignores all the reasons for it to go lower. 
On the betting sites. No kidding!!!!
Here's just one of them that I've been tracking recently.
Re: Re: Trump's bombing countries illegally
By metmike - March 14, 2026, 8:15 p.m.
https://kalshi.com/markets/kxtrumpout27/trump-out-as-president/kxtrumpout27-27
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The things that you can bet on are insane.
Maybe we should start a bet at MarketForum on when metmike will post next, using the word psychopath to describe Donald Trump
Or when mcfarm will make a post blaming everything bad on far left libs
Polymarket raises the question : If a missile lands in the forest, can I collect?
The reporter who reported it got death threats demanding he change the story to just fragments, from people who had bet on no missiles landing in Israel on March 10.
A longer and more general discussion of the whole farce ends with the notes that users can pay to vote on the "truth" of the outcome -
Polymarket determines the “truth” used to resolve bets on its platform via a complex system of voting by users who have bought a particular cryptocurrency token. As those users debated who should win the bet over missile strikes on March 10 in the days following the blast, more Polymarket bettors piled in, wagering another $7 million, with some individuals standing to win more than $1 million if the market resolved to “yes.” And Fabian began to receive messages from strangers encouraging him to revisit his reporting.
On AI.
There are so many different applications.
On some it's already flawless. For instance doing things that are based exclusively on solving mathematical equations. There will never be any disagreement about those solutions to even the most complex equations.
However, when you try to apply it to realms that have uncertainty, then AI often begins to have flaws.
The NWS has been using AI numerical guidance for over a decade with their local forecasts.
We know all the physical principles of the atmosphere and can represent MOST of them accurately with many thousands of equations but there is tremendous uncertainty that AI will never be able to make certain because of the chaotic nature of weather systems and how the small initial errors grow in size exponentially with time.
In many cases, its the garbage in, garbage out law. Since we can't measure every square inch of the atmosphere to use as empirical data to feed into the thousands of mathematical equations in weather models(that themselves are not perfect) AI will NEVER be perfect when used in that field until the data and equations are perfect and that will NEVER happen.
As somebody that has used AI in the weather forecasts, I have enormously benefited as it gives us SOME products that are superior compared to before. Like graphs of hour by hour graphs of temps, winds, snowfall and more for instance at any 1 location in the United States going out for X number of days.
However, when you use that same data and have AI generate a worded forecast, it is massively flawed compared to the verbiage that a human meteorologist uses.
When the weather is changing rapidly, it describes parameters too literally and MUCH more precise than possible.
For instance, for 3 days from now:
Cloudy with a slight chance of rain between 9am and 11am. Then rain mixed with snow likely between 11am and Noon, followed by occasional snow from Noon until 2pm, then cloudy from 2pm to 3pm and a slight chance of snow between 3pm and 5pm.
As a meteorologist, I understand why its doing this based on it using the % odds of the slight chance, chance, likely and occasional verbiage in the forecast. It makes a bit more sense if you look at a graph.
However, what I dislike the most is that when the public uses this product the impression is that we actually have the capability of knowing X days ahead of time, the precise times that weather A, B, C and D will start and end using hourly cut off time frames.
We might come close in many situations that are within the next 24 hours but this is silly for several days from now when the weather is changing drastically during that forecast period. The chaotic nature of the weather will always be there so AI can never eliminate that, no matter how good it is.
I'm sure that with time this will be refined and improved but the point is, unless you have a solid understanding of the field, the AI product is misleading with a false confidence level when it should, instead be used as general guidance not precise accuracy.
And right now, they are using the exact same AI verbiage in a day 1 forecast as they do in a day 3 forecast.
Each situation is different. Only a human being can assess that right now. Regardless, even when AI IMPROVES people will be assuming it can do things that it can't based on the way it comes out.
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I would have provided some examples a few days ago but we are in an extremely quiet weather pattern for the next 10+ days.
Here's an example of how I like to use this AI product. Its the graph/data at the bottom. Even though using it this way is the quickest way to understand what is going to happen by just looking at 1 image, there are flaws.
Re: Re: Re: HUGE Snow/ice event week of 1/18/26
By metmike - Jan. 22, 2026, 1 a.m.
The just out 0z GEFS continues to confirm some hefty amounts in Evansville. The 10+ inch band is just north of the Ohio River. I zoomed in and put the color code below to make it easier to interpret. the yellow is 12+ inches. That red dot in the state of Virginia is 24 inches of snow.
The latest NWS numerical guidance(AI) is up to a total of 10.8 inches of snow falling! Winds are much less on Saturday so the blowing won't be terribly bad, even though this snow will be very fluffy.
It may start as early as Saturday morning. This will be a very long duration event, not diminishing until Sunday afternoon. The latest guidance has me thinking it could last well into the afternoon Sunday.
Sure looks like the schools will be closed for a couple of days next week!
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3-17-26: This image above is worth more than 1,000 words and so easy to understand so much so dang quickly.
This was a great time to use it as opposed to the hypothetical forecast I made up earlier.
Previous thread:
Do NOT trust AI searches!!!!
10 responses |
Started by metmike - June 2, 2025, 1:20 p.m.
https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/112278/
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Chatgpt Fact checking MetMike
11 responses |
Started by joj - Aug. 18, 2025, 10:35 p.m.
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https://www.paradigm.xyz/2025/12/polymarket-volume-is-being-double-counted
HUGE: Polymarket's US platform has a notional volume of $750M with over 5M transactions.
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https://docs.polymarket.com/api-reference/markets/list-markets
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I don't understand how to use this exactly but have no interest in using it.
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4% chance of $200 oil by the end of March.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/qNCL3aUAWbE
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Polymarket is a stock market like platform where users can bet on pretty much any possible event. I analyzed all historical Polymarket bets (~350,000).
The top 1% of markets account for ~60% of total trading volume,
and the top 5% account for over 80%.
Most markets attract almost no activity at all.
17h・Verified Binance official account
Polymarket's trading activity reached unprecedented levels last week, with the platform's weekly trading volume surpassing $2.1 billion. According to NS3.AI, this marks a new all-time high for single-week volume on the platform, highlighting increased user engagement and interest in prediction markets. The surge in trading volume reflects a growing trend in the utilization of decentralized platforms for market predictions and speculation.
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Make your bets on the NCAA tournament!
https://polymarket.com/event/2026-ncaa-tournament-winner
Welp, we have an answer re: the oil market.
The question now is, how many need to go to jail before the cleanup can get any traction?
Yesiree, Patrick!
Somebody(s) in Trump's circle knew and what it would do to the oil market and used it in a blatantly corrupt fashion!
Re: Re: Re: 3-12-26 SPR oil/gas prices
By metmike - March 24, 2026, 1:01 a.m.
Investing.com -- Traders on Monday placed bets worth about $580 million in the oil market approximately 15 minutes before President Donald Trump’s Truth Social post about Iran talks that sent crude prices tumbling, according to a report by the Financial Times.
Around 6,200 Brent and West Texas Intermediate futures contracts changed hands between 6:49 a.m. and 6:50 a.m. New York time, the FT estimated based on Bloomberg data. The trades occurred about 15 minutes before Trump’s 7:04 a.m. post stating there had been "productive conversations" with Tehran to end the war in Iran.
Later on Monday, Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, Speaker of Iran’s parliament, denied in a post on X that any negotiations between Washington and Tehran had taken place.
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https://fortune.com/2026/03/24/paul-krugman-treason-oil-futures-trading-trump-white-house/
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This will NEVER be investigated because Donald Trump has put nothing but Foxes in charge of all the hen houses.
Including Fox News
Full List of Fox News Personalities Serving in Donald Trump Administration
Pirro is the 23rd current or former Fox News employee Trump has recruited for his administration since taking office earlier this year. However, his relationship with the network runs far deeper and longer than just this year nominees.
The highest profile picks have been Pete Hegseth, one of the hosts of Fox & Friends Weekend, who took over the Pentagon as secretary of defense.
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This seems like it's a fictional story, made up with crazy facts, characters and dynamics for entertainment of readers of the book or viewers of the movie or fake reality show.
But its actually the real world created by and surrounding Donald Trump!!!
Seems like private equity is hitting the limits of debt financed looting by increasingly direct fraud. A long, harrowing read for fans of creative finance from The American Prospect.
And now they're coming after retirement funds.
There are now 3 sides fighting over Prediction Market Regulation -
Various states are trying to regulate them as gambling.
The CFTC has sued to maintain Federal (non) Regulation as futures markets - https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/9206-26
The Senate is considering the Prediction Markets are Gambling Act which would give states authority to treat these as gambling, and prohibit bets on elections, war, & death. - https://www.curtis.senate.gov/press-releases/curtis-schiff-introduce-bipartisan-legislation-to-ban-sports-prediction-market-contracts/
NASDAQ is ignoring its rules to allow the crooked SpaceX IPO. The transparent scam is that they're only putting out 3.75% of the shares, which they can maintain an absurdly high price for. Once that's done, they wait only 3 weeks, and then make it fully public, with the idea that index funds will be forced to buy this high priced junk.
https://theconversation.com/musks-spacex-is-shaping-up-as-the-biggest-ipo-on-record-its-also-bending-the-rules-to-do-so-280271
Thanks and wonderful example, patrick!
These are markets run by people for profits, the end always justifies the means.
