Trust the stock markets?

Maybe not.

If you are a day trader in the stock market or even if you use a broker to place your buy orders be advised that someone else may be looking at your order. That someone is a high speed computer that anticipates your order and buys the selected stock in front of you and that raises the share price that you will pay. This apparently legal operation is called “front running”

Front running is exactly what it sounds like, and it operates like this: You're waiting in line to buy a pound of hamburger that's priced a $2. By the time you get to the front of the line though, a high frequency shopper has bought a bunch of hambuger and driven up the price. Now the milk is $2.25.

Oh, and the guy who got in front of you, took the hamburger you were going to buy, bought it for $2, and then sold it back to you for $2.25. So he's making that $0.25.

For more detail see: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/30/michael-lewis-on-60-minutes_n_5060400.html

Paul Hunter