Search Results for: JPMorgan

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 12, 2022 ~ On May 4, 2020, while Jay Clayton was the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission in the Trump administration, the SEC granted approval for a new national stock exchange called MEMX, whose Wall Street megabank owners have admitted to a collective nine criminal felony counts brought by the U.S. Department of Justice. JPMorgan Chase accounts for five of those felony counts; Goldman Sachs and a subsidiary account for two felony counts; Citigroup and UBS account for one felony count each. The other owners of MEMX include: Bank of America, BlackRock, Charles Schwab, Citadel Securities, E*TRADE, Fidelity Investments, Flow Traders, Jane Street, Manikay Partners, Morgan Stanley, TD Ameritrade, Virtu Financial, Wells Fargo, and Williams Trading. The SEC’s letter approving MEMX as a national securities exchange stated that the SEC was confident that MEMX would “prevent fraudulent and manipulative acts and practices, … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 5, 2022 ~ The Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) will release its advance estimate for U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for the second quarter of 2022 at 8:30 a.m. on July 28. All eyes on Wall Street will be glued to that number as a gauge of where stock prices are headed. As of this morning, the highly respected number crunchers at the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow model are forecasting a contraction of -2.1 percent in U.S. economic growth in the second quarter. (That’s the real GDP growth/seasonally adjusted annual rate.) The Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow modelers will update their forecast five more times, based on additional economic data releases, before the advance estimate for second quarter GDP is officially released by the BEA on July 28. GDP contracted at a -1.6 percent annualized rate in the first quarter. Two quarters of negative … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 23, 2022 ~ Yesterday, Benzinga reported on a curious statement made by Fed Chair Jerome Powell during his appearance before the Senate Banking Committee on Wednesday. Powell was asked by Senator Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) if the Fed had been tracking the events in the crypto markets in the past several weeks. Powell responded that the Fed was watching those events “very carefully” but the Fed “did not see significant macro-economic implications.” The article goes on to lend credence to this observation from the Fed by noting the following: “It is important to note the entire cryptocurrency market cap is $889.25 billion versus the American GDP, which is $25.34 trillion, and an equities market that controls more than $49 trillion.” Before we drill down into the weeds of that crypto market cap figure, it’s important to note that former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan told Congress that he saw no major … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 21, 2022 ~ There have been a number of articles lately attempting to reassure Americans that the crypto carnage will not cause financial instability or an economic collapse in the U.S. like that of 2008. The fact is, absolutely no one can say with any degree of certainty what will be the outcome of this unprecedented era of reckless investing. That’s because anything that causes the megabanks on Wall Street to pull back from lending to one another or to major counterparties – out of fear that the institution has dangerous crypto exposure – could cause the same contagion effect that occurred in 2008 from opaque derivatives and toxic subprime debt exposures. We decided to have a look at the websites and quarterly SEC filings (10-Qs) made by the megabanks on Wall Street, the ones that since the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 13, 2022 ~ Welcome to Monday morning and market hell. As of 8:47 a.m. (ET) this morning, Dow futures are down 553 points; Bitcoin futures have lost 17 percent of their value on the news that cryptocurrency lender, Celsius Network, has frozen withdrawals. The 5-year Treasury note has spiked to yield 3.38 percent, a 50-basis point increase in a month, leading to an inverted yield curve against the 10-year Treasury note, which is trading at 9:01 a.m. (ET) this morning at a yield of 3.27 percent. (An inversion signals a rising recession risk.) All of this comes as the Fed has signaled that it will announce another interest rate hike this Wednesday, following the two-day meeting of its Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). Stocks are developing a habit of tanking one day after Fed Chair Jerome Powell holds his FOMC Wednesday afternoon press conference, … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 9, 2022 ~ On September 14 of last year, we wrote this about SEC Chair Gary Gensler: “Gensler’s opening remarks at today’s Senate Banking Committee hearing include seven references to this phrase: ‘asked staff for recommendations…’ If past is prologue, this will mean that Gensler will run out the clock on actually advancing any meaningful ‘recommendations’ into concrete final rules.” Yesterday, Gensler gave a heavily promoted speech about cleaning up the way that retail stock orders are handled on Wall Street. But all the speech actually did was to ask his staff for more ideas and recommendations. The phrase “asked staff” appears 13 times in the speech. While Gensler spends his time giving speeches and asking his staff for recommendations that don’t go anywhere, large chunks of U.S. markets are blowing up in investor portfolios. Let’s start with some of the tech startups that … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 6, 2022 ~ Last month the Federal Reserve Bank of New York released its 2021 annual report from its “Markets Group.” That’s the group that operates a trading floor (complete with speed dials to the trading houses on Wall Street) at the New York Fed, located not far from the New York Stock Exchange, as well as another trading floor on the premises of the Chicago Fed, which is not far from the futures exchanges in Chicago. That report showed that despite all of the recent talk about the Fed dramatically shrinking its balance sheet from its current size of $8.9 trillion, the internal Federal Reserve plan for the balance sheet is actually this: “After declining by about $2.5 trillion from the peak size reached in the first half of 2022, the portfolio stops declining in mid-2025, at which point it is held constant … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: May 23, 2022 ~ On June 18, 1991 I was having lunch with two of my new investment clients on the outdoor patio of their private country club on Long Island. As their friends stopped by the table, the married couple introduced me as their investment advisor and recommended me to their friends. One friend said to my astonishment: “Can you guarantee me the same 13 percent annual return as Bernie Madoff?” If one is a reputable, licensed broker, guaranteeing a 13 percent return – or any guaranteed return on a stock portfolio – is a flagrant violation of the rules of the investment industry. It can also strip you of your license, your career, and get you perp walked. Stock investing is a volatile endeavor. Stocks can go into a bear market and deliver a negative return for years. That is why it is illegal to guarantee … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 19, 2022 ~ This past Tuesday, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell sat for an interview with Wall Street Journal reporter Nick Timiraos as part of the newspaper’s “Future of Everything Festival.” During that interview, Powell told Timiraos that U.S. markets “are orderly, they’re functioning.” The precise exchange went as follows: (Watch it at 24:38 on YouTube video here.) Timiraos: “A Number of people have suggested to me the one thing that might slow you down or at least make this much more difficult would be some kind of market cataclysm. I wonder, in part, if that is why you are trying to be more transparent, not erratic, making sudden moves on your policy moves. My question there is, where’s your level of concern that financial stability and controlling inflation by raising interest rates, maybe a lot, might be fundamentally incompatible in that raising rates … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 18, 2022 ~ The March 15-16 minutes of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) of the Federal Reserve show that there was agreement, given “elevated inflation and tight labor market conditions,” that the Fed needed to take decisive action to shrink its balance sheet, with FOMC participants reaffirming “that the Federal Reserve’s securities holdings should be reduced over time in a predictable manner primarily by adjusting the amounts reinvested of principal payments….” But Jerome Powell’s Fed did not actually announce a specific plan to shrink its balance sheet until May 4 and stated at that time that the plan would not go into effect until June 1 – almost three months after the FOMC indicated that the Fed should take decisive action. As a result of this stalling, the Fed’s balance sheet has remained at the $9 trillion level since its March 15-16 FOMC … Continue reading →