This is the where we would normally do our daily market summary, but frankly there is no longer a market left to summarize: today's volume may not have been the lowest of 2012, including holidays, but it was close. Total volume on Tape A for all exchanges was just above 3 billion shares, 20% below the YTD average, which in turn is 20% below the 2011 average, and so on. As more and more firms such as Knight are carted out, and as confidence in the market follows the US corn reports percentage of corn in "good excellent" condition lower to zero, and then negative (why not? We have NIRP in half the developed world after all) more firms will have no choice but to go out of business: some may blame their extinction on a rogue algo, some on a social network IPO, but the reality is that unless trading volume picks up, banks and trading desks, in their current shape, are doomed.
[3]
As for that dump of ES into the last minute of trading to an unchanged close, it would have been almost notable, if anything about the preceding 8 hours rise in the stock market heading into it was also notable, instead of merely the artifact of what everyone now knows is merely a buy everything algorithm belonging to either Knight, or one of its increasingly smaller competitors.
[4]
Let the cannibalization begin.