Search Results for: Federal Reserve

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: February 8, 2018 The U.S. Senate Banking Committee needs to get its act together and immediately schedule hearings on the trading outages that occurred at numerous discount brokers and mutual funds on Monday. According to thousands of on-line complaints, customers of major firms like TD Ameritrade, Fidelity, Vanguard, and T. Rowe Price could not access their accounts using the firms’ websites on Monday and thus could not place sell or buy orders as the market dove 1,597 points in mid afternoon, then partially recovered to close down 1,175 points. At online outage tracker, downdetector.com, both TD Ameritrade and Fidelity were verbally brutalized by outraged customers, many of whom said they had lost thousands of dollars as a result of the outage. Others commenters were stirring up momentum for a class action lawsuit. Complaints against Fidelity included this one from a poster calling himself Lee … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: February 6, 2018 In little more than a week, $4 trillion in global stock market value has vanished as quickly as a snow cone in July. The heretofore uncanny calm of a U.S. stock market setting regular new highs was punctured Friday with a 665.7 point selloff in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. That was followed by yesterday’s bungee dive in late afternoon that took the Dow down 1597 points followed by a quick partial retracement that left the Dow down 1,175 points on the day. (That plunge and retracement brought back memories of the Flash Crash of 2010. See charts above and our coverage: Flash Crash Report Raises Flags on Quasi Stock Exchanges Inside Wall Street Firms.) On a point loss basis, yesterday’s decline was the largest in Dow history. On a percentage basis, it paled in comparison to the 22.6 percent decline … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 30, 2018 The benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury yield touched 2.7 percent on Monday and as of 8:16 a.m. this morning it has returned to that level. The sharp rise in Treasury yields produced a 177 point drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average yesterday. As of 10:07 a.m. this morning, the Dow had lost an additional 334 points. Many market watchers see even more dangerous headwinds for the stock market if the 10-year Treasury reaches a 3 percent yield. (See our analysis: Rising Treasury Yields Pose Risk for Those Over-Weighted in Stocks.) The recent market action suggests that investors are about to get a serious investing lesson in the concept of supply and demand. According to research from the major Wall Street banks, there is going to be a stunning doubling of the net issuance of U.S. Treasury securities in the current Federal … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 25, 2018 U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin opened his mouth at the base of the snow-covered mountains of Davos, Switzerland yesterday during the World Economic Forum and sent an instant chill through currency markets around the world. After Mnuchin made the highly inappropriate remark that a weak dollar would be good for U.S. trade prospects, the U.S. Dollar plunged to a three-year low. Anyone who knew in advance that Mnuchin was going to make such a comment could have cleaned up in currency trades yesterday. Two U.S. banks (JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup) and two foreign banks (Barclays and RBS) were charged with felony counts on May 20, 2015 for their roles in rigging foreign currency markets. Mnuchin is a former 17-year veteran of Goldman Sachs and should have known better than to make such a remark at an event covered by 500 journalists … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 22, 2018 President Donald Trump’s persistence on his Twitter page in touting how well the stock market is doing is distracting investors from a scary, negative indicator for stocks – rising yields on U.S. Treasury securities. Since September of last year, yields have been on a steady and sharp upward trajectory, reminiscent of standing at the base of a mogul run in Colorado and craning one’s neck toward the summit. The complacency the stock market is showing toward the fierce rise in yields may also turn out to be a dangerous, slippery slope for those heavily weighted in stocks. On November 9, 2016 the two-year U.S. Treasury Note closed the day with a yield of 0.8942 percent. One year later, on November 9, 2017, it finished its trading session with a yield of 1.64 percent. As of 6:50 a.m. this morning, the yield … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 17, 2018 If you are raising children, caring for aging parents, working multiple jobs to pay the mortgage or simply spending your free time protesting the policies of the current administration, you may have missed the latest series of scandals swirling around the so-called leader of the free world. Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Donald Trump’s longtime personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, “arranged a $130,000 payment” to a former porn star just weeks prior to the 2016 presidential election as part of a gag order meant to silence her from disclosing to the public an “alleged sexual encounter” with Trump while he was married to his current wife, Melania. The former porn star is Stephanie Clifford whose stage name is Stormy Daniels. Jacob Weisberg, Editor-in-Chief of the Slate Group, appeared on MSNBC last evening and had this to say about the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 16, 2018 Nomi Prins’ latest book, Collusion: How Central Bankers Rigged the World, ensures her place as one of this century’s most informed Wall Street historians. It’s the perfect segue from Prins’ earlier “It Takes a Pillage,” and her 2014 book All the Presidents’ Bankers. If you are serious about understanding the corrupting influences that have left the U.S. vulnerable to another epic financial crash, buy all three books and read them as one. Prins is a veteran of Wall Street who has now written six books and dozens of articles to help Americans navigate the snake pit that has replaced the financial system of the United States. It all started with her first book in 2004, Other People’s Money: The Corporate Mugging of America, where she explained her motivation as follows: “When I left Wall Street, at the height of a wave … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 10, 2018 On Monday, Institutional Investor’s Jonathan Kandell wrote a fascinating profile of Citigroup. He tried in every conceivable way to be kind to the company but the facts just kept getting in his way. Interestingly, the official name of the behemoth bank holding company, Citigroup, appears just once in the article. Its homey, cuddly moniker, “Citi,” appears 84 times. As the bank’s public relations legions attempt to erase the stain of Citigroup’s performance during the 2008 financial crisis and its Frankenbank birth in 1998 in violation of the Glass-Steagall Act and Bank Holding Act of 1956, changing the bank’s name is likely in the cards. When Sandy Weill and John Reed proposed to merge the disparate parts of Weill’s Travelers Group, which owned an insurance firm (Travelers), investment bank (Salomon Brothers) and retail brokerage (Smith Barney) with Reed’s Citicorp, parent of the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 4, 2018  On Monday, 37-year old Arthur Gregg (A.G.) Sulzberger took the helm as the new Publisher of the New York Times, succeeding his father, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., whose tenure in the post lasted for the past quarter of a century. A.G. has previously held positions at the Times as metro reporter, national correspondent, associate editor for strategy and deputy publisher. He marked the occasion of becoming the fifth generation of his family to assume the mantle of Publisher by invoking his great-great grandfather, Adolph Ochs, who promised readers he would “give the news impartially, without fear or favor, regardless of party, sect, or interests involved.” A.G. then added his own 900-word promise for “independent, courageous, trustworthy journalism” on his watch. In one particularly poignant passage from the missive, A.G. writes: “The Times will hold itself to the highest standards of independence, … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: December 27, 2017 During Fed Chair Janet Yellen’s press conference on December 13, she had this to say about financial stability on Wall Street: “And I think when we look at other indicators of financial stability risks, there’s nothing flashing red there or possibly even orange. We have a much more resilient, stronger banking system, and we’re not seeing some worrisome buildup in leverage or credit growth at excessive levels.” Where does Fed Chair Janet Yellen get her information on financial stability risks to the U.S. financial system? A key source for that information is the Office of Financial Research (OFR), a Federal agency created under the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation of 2010 to keep key government regulators like the Federal Reserve informed on mounting risks. On December 5, the OFR released its Annual Report for 2017. It was not nearly as sanguine as … Continue reading →