Eric Hunsader Explains To CNBC That “Markets Are Always Rigged” And What He May Spend His $750,000 Prize On

Once upon a time it was anathema the publicly proclaim two things: i) that central banks manipulate and intervene in the markets and that ii) the market is rigged. Ever since this website was launched 7 years ago and made the proof of these two claims its mission, it was branded as a collection of “tinfoil hat conspiracy theorists” by either the most incompetent, most corrupt or most clueless cores of what passes for financial media and capital markets participants (with either real or virtual money).
More importantly, what has also become apparent over these same 7 years, is that we were right: it is now no longer even a debate if HFTs rig markets or if central banks intervene directly in stocks, bond or FX – it is broadly accepted and even desired: just imagine the dreadful world in which there is fair price discovery and where traders actually have to take risk. Ghastly.
To be sure, those same well-dressed if hollow talking heads and click generators who claimed precisely the opposite, fell back to the only defense they had: “well, maybe the Fed intervenes, and maybe the markets are rigged, but everyone knows that and after all, what’s the big deal – they have been manipulated and rigged since the beginning.”
It is usually at that point where one laughs and moves on to important topics.
Unfortunately, Nanex’ Eric Hunsader – who as noted earlier won a $750,000 whistleblower award for demonstrating precisely how the NYSE had rigged the market in 2010 – was unable to “move on” because he had a little under 5 minutes to kill this afternoon on CNBC.

This post was published at Zero Hedge on 03/01/2016.