ETF : What's It Worth ?

My information about Exchange Traded Funds (ETF)is from Investopedia. It is the leading source of financial information on the web. My opinions on what ETF's represent in actual value to holders are my own. According to Investopedia ETF's track indices. That would include but not limited to Standard & Poors 500, NASDAQ Power Shares (QQQ), commodities such as gold, oil, materials etc.But because they only track the ETF's don't actually own. Conversely mutual funds own actual shares incorporated in their respective indices. Consequently mutual funds publish daily the net asset value (NAV) of the fund. Exchange traded funds do not publish NAV's. Because they don't own the shares.Every shareholder of ETF's effectively rely on arbitragers to keep the price of ETF's roughly in line with the theoretical underlying value of the stocks or commodities or bonds that make up the index.So the value of the ETF that trades from second to second is what the arbitragers say it is. Shareholders effectively take the word of some unknown person about the fair value of the ETF's at any given moment. Obviously what the price will be in the next moment is not guaranteed by the arbitrager. This reality leaves open the possibility of the tail wagging the dog. The arbitrager may engage in a bear or bull raid in the ETF which could impact actual prices of the real shares that are traded on the exchange.Let's fast forward to an unlikely but possible scenario. Suppose the market crashes. What does an ETF shareholder really own? Legally the shareholder owns a tracking index.Can one cash that in any where? If a mutual fund crashes the shareholders own the residual shares in the fund.Those are actual deeds to real companies.

Who Is Buying Stocks? Why Is The Market So High?

Who's buying stocks? Why is market so high? Maybe it has something to do with the increase of high frequency trading.Official SEC tallies of exchange volumes has high frequency trading making up 70% of daily volume.This is by definition not investment funds. The HFT computers parse pennies millions of times to front run other computers doing HFT  front running etc ad naseum. But there is another player. It's is the human day trader. He or she add another layer of high speed trading done the old fashion way. I.E. They do it by hand. In the news today, the SEC fined Peter Beck and his associate Charles Kim $250,000 each for failure to supervise their 5000 traders that work at  Swift Trade which is based in Toronto. The fine was failure to stop their stable of traders who range from Romania to New York from entering into conspiracies to "layer trades". Simply "layering" is an euphemism for "front running" . They collude to manipulate stocks . Swift Trade isn't the only day trading firm.So the 5000 day trders at Swift are multiplied by many more counterparts around the globe. The volume that all of them generate must make up a significant prtion of the 30% that computers don't do on a daily basis.

Could the extended levels of the Dow Jones and the S&P be the outcome of manipulation by here today gone tomorrow day traders?