From Canadian Banks to high speed trading

Canadian culture is sufficiently distinct from US culture to frown on the obvious levels of financial excess that led to the recent financial meltdown. Canadian banks were largely spared from the worst of all that because they are more highly regulated. In my Canadian affairs, I  bank with Toronto Dominion (TD), and I  cordially dislike them. They could be the Canadian bank  to compete with US banks. They actually have moved into the US quite successfully. As my mother used to say, "they are up to all the tricks". Even their website is annoying, and as for service, forget it! Not something they provide (although as a Canadian, I'd have to say that  goes way beyond banking n my home and native land.) No such consideration is supposed to matter to  investors (including me). I found TD on a list of "highly rated large cap stocks", along with the Bank of Nova Scotia (BNS) and  Suncor (SU)

I'm not sure what happened to the Royal Bank of Canada, which did not make that particular list, and calls itself  RBS here, well understanding that neither "Royal" nor "Canada" would be a winner. Sneaky buzzards, "flying in low under the cultural radar", as was once said of another Canadian who succeeded in the USA. I always disliked banks, and never invested in any until after the crash, when because of volatility they became attractive for option trading.

 Reuters says "any weakness in earnings reports during the upcoming earnings season (Jan 4-Feb 15) will give traders a reason to pull back from the rally of recent weeks, which stalled on Friday on bank stock losses and lackluster jobs data."  Nevertheless, according to the NY Times, the biggest "upcoming jump" (assuming there are upcoming jumps)  is  expected  from  "financial services", with profit growth of 250%, (Standard & Poor figures).  

It depends on your time frame. My dear friend Linda sent me an article from the NY Times reporting that these days one new strategy is to use powerful computers to speed-read news reports automatically, then to let the machines interpret and trade on them. High-frequency traders now account for 56 percent of total stock market trading. A measure of their importance is that rather than charging them commissions, some exchanges now even pay high-frequency traders to bring orders to their machines. This is not a time frame that has any interest for me. I wonder about  "any weakness in earnings reports during the upcoming "earnings season"  will give traders a reason to pull back from the rally of recent weeks" .... Which traders do they mean? Not me, for sure. 

“Markets are there for capital formation and long-term investment, not for gaming,”says Michael Durbin,

author of the book “All About High-Frequency Trading"  How ingenuous. Bah, humbug. Since I've got my eye on Canada, I'm thinking of Suncor instead- another very dirty bunch.