Jester,

I feel aure that there is an entity (ies)  that calls the tune. I'm not sure exactly who they are, but I feel sure they're neither you nor I. Its been said that 70% of trades in the market are driven by computer algorthyms that auto-trade the market. And such programs can place God knows how many in-and-out trades in the second between when you decide to buy or sell, and when you actually press the mouse button. 

There's a funny story about access to the 'edges' that ensure you never really have much of a chance of winning this roulette game: In Chicago, there was a company who had built an underground infrastructure which provided direct access to the NYSE, and was by far the fastest information system in existence. They approached a (was it a brokerage or hedge fund -can't quite recall) and said they would provide such access to that kind of trading speed to the firm for $10 million. At first, the firm execs thought this was exorbitant and crazy. But when they realized the trade-speed advantage they'd have over rivals, and how much money this could make them, they paid the $10 on one condition - that the vendor raise the price of the access to $20 million. They wanted the barrier to entry for rivals to be high enough to limit their access.

You and I have no real chance of prediction and smart trades in this system - we can only 'draft' on where the algorythms are taking us. Remember the guy who 'stuffed' the info channel with bad news 'key words' and the algorhythms dropped the market 1,000 points before reversing course? Seems to me a good illustration of who's in charge here.