something fishy - 5000 lots, page-2

I've given up trying to understand the market. All I can see is volatility that allows people (wearing flash suits and living extravagant lifestyles) to extort a living skimming off the top, where the value of stocks is driven by increasing dominance of institutional investors and how they trade. I think this is undermining the confidence of ma and pa investors, so they either sell out or sit and let the instos play their games and wait for a better time (so they can sell out and buy something solid like property). It's deeply worrying to me that something like 70-80% of the market is now held by instos because I feel that they destabilise the market through selling off to avoid losses when we are in a down cycle. Interested in other thoughts, as to me it's not making a lot of sense to buy shares at all other than in high risk speccies...