Search Results for: JPMorgan

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 8, 2020 ~ Federal regulators are rapidly becoming bigger Dark Pools of information than those secretive stock exchanges run by the big banks on Wall Street. On Tuesday, September 29, when all eyes were focused on the presidential debate to occur that evening, the Justice Department issued a press release announcing the fourth and fifth felony counts against JPMorgan Chase in the past six years. In an unprecedented move, the Justice Department did not hold a press conference to explain why the country’s largest bank is allowed to perpetually commit felonies with no change in management. The bank admitted to the charges and was put on a three-year probation – its third such probation in six years. Jamie Dimon, the Chairman and CEO of the bank, who has presided over all five felony counts, was left in place at the bank. Yesterday, when … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 5, 2020 ~ Is the Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Jay Clayton, a watchdog or a lapdog? If you judge him by his actions since taking office on May 4, 2017, it looks like the latter. That was easily predictable given that Clayton had represented 8 of the 10 largest Wall Street banks in the three years prior to taking his seat as Chair of the SEC. Clayton is also the man who is now attempting to elevate his role to that of the top criminal prosecutor in Wall Street’s home turf of Manhattan, by knocking Geoffrey Berman out of the job. That office is the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York where there are pending investigations related to both Donald Trump as well as Clayton’s former clients, the big banks on Wall Street. One person in … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 25, 2020 ~ Refinitiv Lipper has been reporting fund flows into and out of the stock market for the past 18 years. According to its most recent report, for the week ended Wednesday, September 23, equity (stock) funds, including both equity mutual funds and equity Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), have now seen a net outflow of money for the sixth straight week. This week’s outflow from equity funds totaled -$14.9 billion. That’s the largest outflow by far in the past six weeks. It brings the total net outflow from equity mutual funds and equity ETFs to a net outflow of $42 billion beginning with the week ending August 19. That may not sound like a lot of money in a $35 trillion (as of June 30, 2020) market, but it is if you focus on the word “net.” If you have a long-term … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 24, 2020 ~ Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s oft repeated mantra this year – that the behemoth Wall Street banks “are a source of strength” in this economic crisis – is melting away faster than a snow cone in July, along with the share prices of these banks. So whom should Americans believe: The composite wisdom of the market or the opinion of a federal regulator whose supervision of these banks has been far from stellar. The market would seem to have spoken clearly on just how “strong” these banks are. Since the first trading day of the year, January 2,  to yesterday’s closing price, here’s the factual reality of just how much common equity capital these banks have bled: Citigroup is down a stunning 48 percent, losing almost half of its common equity capital; Bank of America has lost 35 percent; while … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 17, 2020 ~ At the time the Fed released the results of its bank stress tests in June, it announced that because of the pandemic and unprecedented economic downturn, it would require additional stress testing of the biggest banks later this year. This afternoon, the Fed released those plans. Among the various hypothetical scenarios that the banks will have to perform against, 13 of the banks with significant trading operations will have to consider what would happen if a major counterparty blew up. The banks that will have to submit outcomes under this scenario include: Bank of America, Bank of New York Mellon, Barclays US, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank USA, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, State Street, UBS, and Wells Fargo. The Fed will release bank-specific results before the end of the year. All 34 banks will face two hypothetical … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 15, 2020 ~ The business media was abuzz yesterday with reports that two of Citigroup’s federal regulators – the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve – are considering reprimanding the bank for failure to improve its risk management systems. Trust us: there is a lot more to this story than you’re reading about in the main stream press. Citigroup doesn’t do anything small. When it does something bad, it goes all in – sometimes even assigning a code name. Let’s start with the “Dr. Evil” trade. That was actually the code name that Citigroup traders assigned to an attempt to exploit a weakness in a European bond trading system. Citigroup was fined $26 million in 2005 by Europe’s Financial Services Authority for the trades. Citigroup employees gave another code name, “Buca Nero” – Italian for “Black Hole” – … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 12, 2020 ~  So far this year, the mega Wall Street bank, Citigroup, has lost 37 percent of its market value – outpacing peer banks like Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America. (See chart below.) Then there was the fat finger in August in the back office of Citigroup that wired $900 million by mistake to pay off the entire principal balance of a Revlon bond instead of making just the payment of interest on the bond. Citigroup is now embroiled in lawsuits with the Revlon lenders, attempting to get them to return the money. According to Institutional Investor, “a total of $526.4 million has yet to be returned” as of August 27. The lenders are refusing to return the funds to Citigroup on the basis that Revlon owed them the money anyway because Revlon had improperly changed the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 9, 2020 ~ The mega banks on Wall Street joined the tech wreck yesterday as illustrated on the chart above. The selloff in these banks can be attributed to, primarily, the selloff in the price of crude oil – which suggests the banks will be forced to increase loan loss reserves as the threat of more bankruptcies among debt-strapped U.S. oil producers increases. Domestic crude oil, known as West Texas Intermediate or WTI, had a $41 handle on Friday on the Nymex. Yesterday, that turned into a $36 handle – a decline of 12 percent from Friday. A WTI handle below $40 is panic-time for U.S. independent oil producers who are deep in debt and struggling to avoid bankruptcy. The big summer driving season that was expected to boost crude demand was officially over the day after Labor Day. But, in fact, a … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 4, 2020 ~ There were ghosts of the dot.com bust of 2000 to 2002 on every trading screen yesterday. The Nasdaq composite index fell 4.96 percent to close at 11,458.10 but the carnage in many of the underlying stocks was far worse. Notably, 50 stocks in the tech-heavy Nasdaq dropped 9 percent or more yesterday, including some of this year’s highfliers. One of those highfliers was Zoom Video Communications (ZM). Zoom closed on the first day of trading this year at $68.72; flew to $457 by September 1; lost 9.97 percent yesterday to close at $381.32 – still showing more than a quintupling of its market value in a span of eight months. That stock has a nose-bleed-worthy price-to-earnings ratio of 474. While much of the focus has been on the bubble in the big tech names like Alphabet (parent of Google), Amazon, … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 2, 2020 ~  Members Exchange (MEMX), a brand new stock exchange, has announced that it will begin live trading of select stocks for the first time on September 21 with a full phase-in on September 29. Criminal histories are, apparently, no barrier to running a stock exchange in the United States to the deeply conflicted way of thinking of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which issued its approval to operate the exchange on May 5. Investors in the new stock exchange are some of the most serially-charged Wall Street banks, including JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and UBS, along with the hedge fund, Citadel Securities. BlackRock, which is up to its neck in the Federal Reserve’s deeply conflicted bailout programs, is also an investor, as is the high-frequency trading firm, Virtu Financial, and others. JPMorgan Chase has been criminally investigated by the U.S. Department … Continue reading →