Search Results for: JPMorgan

“This raises the serious question as to whether the Senate Banking and House Financial Services Committees should be investigating the gamification of markets or the monetization of the stock market via Wall Street’s ownership of federally insured deposits.” By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 5, 2021 ~ In late March, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) released its quarterly report on “Bank Trading and Derivatives Activities.” Graph 15 of the report shows that using data submitted by banks on their form RC-R of their call reports, JPMorgan Chase’s federally insured bank had exposure to $2.65 trillion in notional equity (stock) derivatives as of December 31, 2020. (Notional means face amount.) That’s a stunning figure for the largest federally-insured bank in the United States to have in exposure to the stock market. But more stunning is the fact that according to the OCC, JPMorgan Chase’s equity derivative contracts … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 25, 2021 ~ Yesterday, during a Senate Banking hearing with witnesses Fed Chair Jerome Powell and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Senator Elizabeth Warren grilled Yellen on why BlackRock wasn’t being investigated for posing a systemic risk to the U.S. financial system. Warren stated: “BlackRock is the world’s largest asset management firm, overseeing nearly $9 trillion in assets. That’s more than double where it was 10 years ago. It also holds a stake in just about every company listed on the S&P 500. To put that in perspective, Blackrock manages more assets than the entire GDP of Japan, or Germany, or Great Britain or any other nation in the world, except the United States and China.” BlackRock may, indeed, pose a systemic risk to the U.S. financial system but it’s not because it holds a stake in just about every company listed on the S&P … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 29, 2021 ~ According to JPMorgan Chase’s 13F filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, it moved from a net short position in GameStop shares as of December 31, 2019 to a big long position as of September 30, 2020, the date of its last 13F filing. As of the end of the third quarter of last year, JPMorgan Chase was long (owned) 368,196 shares of GameStop versus a put (short position) on a meager 19,300 shares. At the close of trading on September 30, 2020, GameStop was a $10.20 stock, making JPMorgan’s long position worth $3.8 million. At the intraday high yesterday, GameStop was a $483 stock. If JPMorgan had sold at the top, it would have made approximately $174 million on its long position versus where it was trading four months earlier. We’re dismissing what happened to the put that JPMorgan … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 28, 2021 ~ Dark Pools owned by the biggest names on Wall Street – such as Goldman Sachs’ Sigma X2, JPMorgan Chase’s JPM-X, UBS’ UBSA, Morgan Stanley’s MSPL, and Credit Suisse’s Crossfinder — have been making tens of thousands of trades in the shares of GameStop on an ongoing weekly basis.  FINRA, Wall Street’s highly compromised self-regulator, reports the Dark Pool data on a stale basis, two to three weeks after the trading has occurred. It is then lumped together for the whole week, rendering it useless in terms of monitoring price manipulation. The chart above is taken from the latest available information from FINRA. (See our previous reporting on Dark Pools in Related Articles below.) It’s a fair guess that you haven’t heard a peep about Dark Pools on the evening news. The fact that you haven’t is a perfect commentary on … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 6, 2021 ~ On December 29 we needed a clarification from former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers about his opinion column against Congress issuing $2,000 stimulus checks. We sent him an email at 10:13 a.m. and received a very clear response from him directly at 12:51 p.m. that day — a span of a few hours. Compare that timely response to Janet Yellen’s respect for the media’s obligation to report a full set of facts to the American people. Three days ago, we contacted Yellen at four different entities with which she is affiliated. Only the Brookings Institution responded, saying she was on leave. President-elect Joe Biden’s media team did not respond at all, nor did the Washington Speakers Bureau and University of California, Berkeley. Yellen is Biden’s nominee for U.S. Treasury Secretary. In anticipation of her Senate confirmation hearing, she has released her … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: December 4, 2020 ~ On November 24 the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) fined JPMorgan Chase $250 million for wrongdoing that was apparently too deplorable to be spoken out loud to the public. The specific details were cloaked in this phrase: “failure to maintain adequate internal controls and internal audit over its fiduciary business.” We went to the OCC’s Consent Order connected to the fine to see if there were the typical smoking gun internal emails or at least some clue as to what the actual illegal activity was. There were zero clues, just more obfuscation. What we did see, however, was a dollar figure that popped our eyes wide open. The OCC Consent Order said this: “The Bank maintains one of the world’s largest and most complex fiduciary businesses with total fiduciary and related assets of $29.1 trillion, including $1.3 … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 25, 2020 ~ Maybe it’s because Wall Street On Parade has been shining a bright light on the serial crimes and rap sheets of Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase. Or maybe it’s because the nonpartisan watchdog, Better Markets, published a report last year titled “Wall Street’s Six Biggest Bailed-Out Banks: Their RAP Sheets & Their Ongoing Crime Spree.” Or maybe it all comes down to what Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois said after the financial crisis of 2008: “And the banks – hard to believe in a time when we’re facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created – are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place.” Whatever the reason, the darkness that started growing around the crimes committed by the big Wall Street banks during the Obama administration has now evolved into such a … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 18, 2020 ~ According to the 13F filing that Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway made with the Securities and Exchange Commission for the quarter ending December 31, 2019, it held 59.5 million shares of JPMorgan Chase with a total value at that time of $8.29 billion. By June 30 of this year, that position had been trimmed by more than half, to 22.2 million shares. By September 30, one day after JPMorgan Chase had just admitted to its fourth and fifth felony count in the past six years, brought by the U.S. Department of Justice, Berkshire Hathaway’s position in JPMorgan Chase tallied up to just under 1 million shares, a 98 percent reduction from the beginning of the year, according to the SEC filing Berkshire Hathaway made on Monday. And it’s not like Buffett is simply getting out of all big bank stocks. According … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 10, 2020 ~ Each quarter publicly traded companies file a form known as the 10-Q with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The 10-Q filed by the largest bank in the United States, JPMorgan Chase, on November 2 carried a very disturbing paragraph that had not appeared in the 10-Q the bank filed on August 3. The paragraph reads as follows: “JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. has been advised by one of its U.S. regulators of a potential civil money penalty action against the Bank related to historical deficiencies in internal controls and internal audit over certain advisory and other activities. The Bank already has controls in place to address the deficiencies related to the proposed penalty. The Firm is currently engaged in resolution discussions with the U.S. regulator. There is no assurance that such discussions will result in resolution.” Why is this paragraph so … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 30, 2020 ~ Imagine that your neighbor across the street had been criminally charged with five felony counts for financial crimes in the past six years and admitted to committing each and every crime to the U.S. Department of Justice. Would you put one-third of all of your money in a safe, give that neighbor the combination, and ask him to hold the safe in his house for you? You would probably be suited up for a straight jacket if you did something like that. That’s effectively what the Federal Reserve, the central bank of the United States, has done when it comes to JPMorgan Chase. As of this past Wednesday, the Fed has a $7 trillion balance sheet and $2 trillion of its agency Mortgage-Backed Securities are sitting at JPMorgan Chase, the bank that the Department of Justice has charged with five … Continue reading →