Market Update / Huge Swings Caused by High Frequency Trading?

Last September, I wrote a post about a Forbes article that described High Frequency Trading.  You can view it by clicking here.

A New York Times article posted on Yahoo! Finance lists that as possibly a culprit in yesterday's huge price swings.  How else could some fairly reliable companies make the following price swings:

• Proctor and Gamble (Symbol PG) had a high of 62.67, a low of 39.37, and closed at 60.75
• Accenture (Symbol ACN) had a high of 42.30, a low of 0.01 (!!) and closed at 41.09
• They report Exelon (Symbol EXC) traded for one-hundredth of a penny, but on the historical prices chart, this is not shown.

These are huge price swings and most of them occurred in less than an hour. 

I had been posting that the market has been oversold for a couple of months and the trading this week has been dramatic.  I will admit that I was not as hedged to the degree as reported previously.

Click here for the New York Times article on Yahoo! Finance.