The reported cause of today's stock market crash was a "trader accident," also known as a "fat finger" mistake.

That's utter nonsense, but that's the reason that's being spoon fed to the masses. You can see fat finger excuse in this video:

Sources confirm that the major media outlets have been instructed to promote today's severe stock market decline as merely an accident..

The reasoning involved is pretty easy to understand: if John Q. Public believes the crash was due to simple human error, he will not panic and rush to sell his stocks.

God forbid, if he knew the truth, there would be a mass exodus for the exits and today's crash would be a walk-in-the-park by comparison. That would be game over for the Administration's facade of "recovery."

The fact of the matter is that high frequency trading amplifies the movements in stock prices, and that works in both directions.

Today's crash was simply the result of more selling than buying.

It is very, very evident that, contrary to claims made by the owners of high frequency trading platforms, high frequency trading does not add liquidity to the market.

There was  a definite absence of both bids and liquidity in the market today. Where was all of the liquidity that is supposedly added by HFT?

What you saw today was high frequency trading algorithms doing exactly what they are programmed to do: view incoming stock orders and preemptively act before the incoming orders can be executed and filled.

You saw with your own eyes the battle of the HFT mainframes, each trying to sell before the other does.

This had the very predictable effect of intensifying the decline.

In days past, back when the SEC truly did care about enforcing the law and keeping the markets honest, high frequency trading would have been called front-runningg, which is clearly against the law.

Today it's called high frequency trading, and the SEC could care less about upholding the law and protecting mom and pop investors from the illegal actions of the sharks. Their highest priority is to make certain that the elite of Wall Street can continue to financially rape as many market participants as possible without any threat of recourse whatsoever.