2016-05-13
Despite all the media articles and CNBC speakers to the contrary. the take-down of the retail sector as witnessed by so many names this week, including Nordstrom (JWN) during the day and in after-markets trading yesterday and this morning, is a sign the Bear is growling.
For another sure sign that sophisticated investors are jumping out of the market, look to the sale of $670 million of Amazon (AMZN) stock by founder/CEO Jeff Bezos. He may call it estate planning or whatever but when they are selling and their companies are buying in stock, it is a sign of the Bear.
The fact that the Republicans under Trump are surging in the national polls and their odds always seem to go up when equity market indexes fall is another sign that just maybe the equity market is going to take a fall.
I’m sure many of you saw this yesterday:
JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon to Trump and others: Stop ‘scapegoating’ and ‘yelling’
“If the next president does the right things around immigration, corporate and individual tax reform, [and] infrastructure spending, America would be booming,” Dimon said. “That boom would help the people who need it the most, the people at the bottom of the ladder.” “What I know doesn’t work is denigration, scapegoating, finger-pointing, and yelling,” Dimon added in a “Squawk Box” phone interview.
Jamie Dimon in his next breath does exactly that. Poor form Dimon, as usual.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/j-p-morgans-dimon-slugs-it-out-with-community-banker-1462990445
The article says:
Jamie Dimon wants to be friends with small banks on Main Street.
But the JPMorgan (JPM) chief wasn’t exactly extending the olive branch on Wednesday when he responded to criticism from a small bank lobbyist by calling him “a jerk.”
Camden Fine, a long time community banker and head of a group that represents small banks, had rejected Dimon’s op-ed last month in The Wall Street Journal titled “Large Banks and Small Banks Are Allies, Not Enemies.”
Fine argued that Dimon is trying to use small banks as cover in Congress to help get his agenda passed.
“Just because Jamie Dimon says ‘let’s sing kumbaya’ doesn’t mean community banks are going to just line-up like a Greek chorus,” Fine told Bloomberg.
Speaking on CNBC Wednesday, this was what Dimon had to say about Fine.
“I think the guy who wrote that is a jerk,” Dimon said in a phone interview. Dimon urged for an end to “bank on bank violence.”
Fine fired back at Dimon in a phone interview with CNNMoney on Wednesday.
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I think it’s time the leaders of America take a step back. We are not the enemy. We have in our society, in fact, many fine people who have risen to great heights who, for reasons I have discussed for years, are constantly in public spats. The source of our problems is the ongoing exasperating conflict of interest issue.
If our fundamental laws were being created such that conflict of interest was not enabled by legislation, but prohibited, our society would not be in its current near-death state, overwhelmed by regulation and administration.
When I watch a video like the wonderful In Performance at the White House, I have to ask myself why I cannot stand the sight of so many people in the room who are enjoying the same entertainers as I. What separates us however is not competition among people or organizations, because competition is good, or any other factor than simply because we know there is not a level playing field for the people in that room or the ones on Financial Entertainment Television and ourselves. We despise the system.
https://youtu.be/Nvo9z8NXrGM
Sadly, it’s the conflict of interest issue that has led to much of the break-down in our society. You see; it’s not essential that we must play on the same team, or even in the same country, but we do have to be playing the same game, and our legislators have to understand that. America has a Constitution that is being shredded by interventionists who are the same ones who are destroying our financial system and greatly impacting our capital markets in the worst way.
In fact, if I hear another word about public-private partnerships or financial engineering, I’m going to scream. That stuff is all about gaining advantages over the rest of us by organizations and people close to our elected representatives.
Maybe there will be change coming to Washington. Who knows yet. But, I note today’s headline in InvestmentNews, the leading magazine for Registered Financial Advisors.
Donald Trump builds lead as top pick for president as field narrows: InvestmentNews poll
Donald Trump is the frontrunner, Clinton is behind and some don’t plan on voting
At the end of last year, he was ranked third among advisers’ picks — behind Marco Rubio and then Hillary Clinton… In this week’s InvestmentNewspoll, 56% of the more than 600 readers who responded said they were voting for Mr. Trump, followed by 30% for Ms. Clinton and 5% for Mr. Sanders. An additional 9% said they do not plan to vote in the election.
Sounds to me like the Trump Express is rolling.
From MarketBeat today is an item that has been on my mind for months.
A new law snuck into existence through Fed’s Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) means your bank account can be frozen and confiscated for something as innocent as depositing or withdrawing a few thousand dollars of your own money!
For example…
- In 2013, the IRS seized $35,000 from a 70-year-oldfrom Michigan simply because he had made too many small cash deposits into his account. (Source: Washington Post)
- In 2014, the owner of a gas station in rural North Carolina lost $107,702.66 – his entire bank account – to the IRS. They targeted him for depositing his business’s cash earnings in a way the federal government deemed “suspicious.” (Source: Washington Post)
- And Army Sgt. Jeff C. lost $66,000 to the IRS for exactly the same reason. The IRS scooped up all the money he’d been saving to send his daughters to college. (Source: New York Times)…
Same thing happened to me! When leaving Canada to visit a country that is not part of the Fed banking system — which means also no credit cards — Pat and I required a cash withdrawal of US$5,000 from our bank account in Toronto. The transaction at the main branch of a global banking institution took a full 30 minutes between teller and her supervisor to complete. This was not service; it was an insult. They demanded to know where we were going to spend our money and then after we explained it was for a multi-month world trip, they actually told us that we were taking a risk and they were not responsible. The audacity! Since when is a commercial bank responsible for a client’s withdrawn funds and since when can they determine the conditions on which we can withdraw our own money?
Something serious is going on here.
The weekend’s coming. Enjoy!
/Bill
