petrofrontier spiked today, page-82

I think we have had a similar discussion before, Newland.

The poor performance of the ASX just never seems to get discussed by the media - so the market manipulators must be doing a fantastic job of keeping the general public in the dark and feeding us.....bit like mushrooms.

For example, in late 2007, the DJIA was around 13000 points.
It is now back at that level, give or take a couple of hundred points, following the GFC which was caused by the US, I believe.

In late 2007 the ASX was at 6800 points.
Today, it is around 4200 points, give or take a hundred points.
Australia did not cause the GFC and in fact, the Politicians delight in telling us how we 'escaped the worse of the GFC'.

Yet, by any measure, the ASX is still 33 per cent (or one third if you prefer) off where it was back in late 2007.
At the end of 2011, in a world measure of share market performances, Australia came in 31st of 'best' performing share markets.
You can google these facts, if you want to check.

Clearly, something is seriously wrong with the Aussie sharemarket. In my personal opinion, lack of adequate supervision of the market manipulators has a lot to do with that. It is like the wild west for us retail investors, with one rule for us and another set of rules for the Brokers and other market manipulators. Just look at the number of trades for a value of less than $500 this morning, on BKP.
Then there is the high frequency trading, the inside trading (which is so obvious to regulars on HC but on which, nothing ever appears to get done), the trades of one single share at the end of trading which is designed to lower the price (or manipulate the market)and could only be done by a Broker, never by a retail investor (just try it and see how quick you get shot down in flames)......and so it goes on and on and on.

In the case of BHP and RIO, it has a lot to do with the ridiculously high Aussie dollar - which in turn is staying high partly thanks to the 'carry trade' percentage seekers, plus falling demand for their resources (there was an article on this in today's online version of 'The Wall Street Journal'.

Anyway, I could go on all night but time to end this.

All the above is my personal opinion. DYOR.