Stop Trading

It's time to go in for the kill. Buy as much physical Gold as you can.

Back in 2012, amid "intense pressure from Obama" including an appeal for its passage in his 2012 State of the Union address, Congress passed the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act (with 96-3 theatrical votes in the Senate, and 417-2 even more theatrical votes in the House) - a bill prohibiting the use of non-public information for private profit, including insider trading by members of Congress and other government employees. It is unclear why until 2012 it was perfectly legal for congress to trade on inside information, something we pointed out in May 2011 when we wrote that a "A Hedge Fund Comprised Of Junior Congressional Democrats Should Outperform The Market By 9%" as it turned out flagrant insider trading abuse occurred mostly within the democrat ranks of the House (compared to a mere 2%+ outperformance by Congressional stock trading republicans). It turns out that any cynical skepticism regarding Congress' ability and willingness to police itself was well founded, as last night the House eliminated a "key requirement of the insider trading law for most federal employees, passing legislation exempting these workers, including congressional staff, from a rule scheduled to take effect next week that mandated online posting of financial transactions."

Below are portions of a comment letter submitted by R.T. Leuchtkafer to the SEC on April 16, 2010, just 3 weeks before flash crash. The second paragraph in the excerpt below, unknowingly describes exactly how the flash crash was started. The letter goes on to alert the SEC on the dangers of High Frequency Trading (HFT), phantom liquidity and other concerns.

Back in late August, we presented a chart whose foresight and accuracy turned out to be so spot on, it scared even us. We asked: "With Apple overtaking Microsoft's 'peak-market-cap' and becoming the most 'valuable' company ever traded, we thought a reflection on what humans (as opposed to machines programmed by humans) did the last time a world-changing technology company went ubiquitous. Comparing AAPL's last few years to the run-up in MSFT's peak in 1999..." Or, in other words, "is it different this time?" Turns out, the answer is, No. It was not different this time. It never is.

"what you realize is that the lessons of ’08 will actually result in a much quicker process, a process that I would describe as a “black hole” if and when there is the next financial crisis.... Nobody in America has actually seen, or most people probably can’t even contemplate, what an actual loss of confidence may look like. What I’m trying to struggle with as a money manager, who really seriously doesn’t like to lose money, is how to protect our capital and how to think about the next crisis."

For those who want to imitate what is once again the world's largest hedge fund (reclaiming the spot from Apple's own prop trading vehicle, Braeburn, first exposed here), Ray Dalio's Bridgewater, which at last check had $138 billion in AUM ($76 billion Pure Alpha, $63 billion All Weather), the path is simple: just recreate the performance shown on the chart below over a period of two decades. (Oh and stop "trading" on Twitter and do some real trading).

It will come as no surprise to any ZeroHedge readers but High Frequency Trading (HFT) deeply concerns Erik Hunsader, founder of Nanex. He worries that today's investors, our regulators, -- heck, even the HFT algorithms themselves -- don't fully understand the risks market prices face in the brave new era of bot-dominated trading. For instance, Hunsader estimates that HFT algorithms are responsible for 70%(!) of all completed transactions on our exchanges, and for 99.9%(!!!) of all exchange quotes. The pictures of trading floors you see on TV, where the people in bright jackets appear frantically busy in making their trades, have no bearing -- claims Hunsader -- on the actual trading action. The real action happens across fiber-optic cables, on racks of servers in cooled rooms; where an arms race defined by cable length and switching speeds is being waged. The reality is that the machines have taken over.

It was fun (not really) while it lasted, but America's habitual gamblers have finally grown tired of the theta sucking monsters known as uberlevered ETFs. End result: Direxion is announcing it is closing nine 3X levered ETFs. The casualties are: Direxion Daily Agribusiness Bull 3X Shares (COWL), Direxion Daily Agribusiness Bear 3X Shares (COWS), Direxion Daily Basic Materials Bear 3X Shares (MATS), Direxion Daily BRIC Bull 3X Shares (BRIL), Direxion Daily BRIC Bear 3X Shares (BRIS), Direxion Daily Healthcare Bear 3X Shares (SICK), Direxion Daily India Bear 3X Shares (INDZ), Direxion Daily Latin America Bear 3X Shares (LHB) and Direxion Daily Retail Bear 3X Shares (RETS).

Despite what her officials say publicly, austerity has limited support within the ECB itself, because it is run at the top by neoclassical economists. Instead, the real constraint is Germany, whose citizens’ savings are on the line and which faces the prospect of its third currency collapse in a century. So this is where the lines are drawn up: spendthrifts desperate for more money, a conflicted central bank, and Germany. Angela Merkel has made considerable progress in pushing the German electorate in a direction that is completely against its instincts by playing the political card marked “there is no alternative.” With her considerable political skills, she may be able to push her people some more, but it is becoming increasingly difficult, because everyone in Germany can see that committing real savings to bailing out the spendthrifts only wipes out the savings. These are not euros simply conjured out of thin air, because the Bundesbank cannot print them and probably wouldn’t do so anyway. But the pressure is mounting on her, and she is being squeezed by governments such as the British and the Americans, who are now panicking over the consequences of failure. This is why both countries went public last week, with David Cameron even visiting Merkel in person. It is a sure indication that major governments outside the Eurozone are beginning to expect the worst, and that unless Germany gives way, it will happen quickly.

Only in a banana republic would Congress be "forced" to hold hearings on whether to ban itself from illegal (for everyone else) insider trading. Which explains why below readers can watch precisely that, live from the house Committee on Financial Services.The legislation in question relates to bill H.R. 1148, the "Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act." We wonder how long until Congress manages to scuttle this latest effort to keep the playing field between the muppets and everyone else. After all, someone has to leak critical rating agency information (such as the FT's break of a key S&P leak yesterday, or Nancy Pelosi knowing weeks in advance that Moody's would not downgrade the US) to the media and/or trading entities.

Today, BusinessWeek's Michael Serrill and Jonathan Neumann have released a blockbuster report based on a FOIA response by the Treasury, which proves that in America rules are only for little people, that this country has been a banana republic for years, that Animal Farm was spot on, and gives excruciating detail of how Hank Paulson tipped off a select group of Goldman diaspora hedge fund managers about the eventual failure of Fannie and Freddie 7 weeks ahead of this information becoming public knowledge. The report basically is a summary of a meeting that took place at the offices of Eton Mindich's Eton Park headquarters on July 21, 2008, 7 days after his famous '“If you have a bazooka, and people know you have it, you're not likely to take it out," speech and 7 weeks before both GSEs effectively filed for bankruptcy and were put into conservatorship. Now if it only ended there it would have been fine - a case of potential criminal collusion between the government (although nothing specific against Paulson as he didn't actually trade: he just made sure his former Goldman colleagues made money), and the 0.00001% in the face of a few multi-billionaires who most certainly did trade on material non-public information sourced by Hank. Where it however gets worse is when one considers the actual role of one Eric Mindich in the hierarchy of the Asset Managers' committee of the President's Working Group on Capital Markets, better known of course as the PPT: a topic we discussed first back in September 2009 when we asked "What Is Goldman Alum Eric Mindich's Role As Chair Of The Asset Managers' Committee Of The President's Working Group?" Back then we did not get an answer. Luckily, courtesy of a few answered FOIA requests, some real investigative journalism, and not reporting for the sake of brown-nosing just so one can get soundbites for their next name dropping "blockbuster" and straight to HBO movie, we are starting to get the full picture of just how high in US government the Goldman Sachs controlled "crony capitalist" adminsitration truly runs.

Update: we have learned that the current iteration of HR 682 is HR 1148, it's purpose is "To prohibit commodities and securities trading based on nonpublic information relating to Congress, to require additional reporting by Members and employees of Congress of securities transactions, and for other purposes" sponsored by Tim Waltz, and as of June 1 was... referred to the Subcommittee on the Constitution.

Following yesterday's 60 Minutes grotesque special which finally exposed to the general public what most experts in the industry have known for many years, namely that the bulk of "profits" for Congressmen (at a fixed $174,000 salary for the current year) and Senators are made courtesy of perfectly legal insider trading, it is time to ask the logical next question: how is it possible that the US system of checks and balances has failed so spectacularly, as to allow a glaringly illegal activity for everyone else to proceed and to generate multi-million dollar windfalls for congressional and senatorial critters? It would be perfectly understandable if some very righteous anger accompanies said question. Well, as it turns out, some, very few, Congressmen have a conscience and do believe in operating within the confines of the law, and 2 years ago proposed HR 682: Stop Trading On Congressional Knowledge Act. HR 682, sponsored by Rep. Brian Baird, has a purpose "To prohibit securities and commodities trading based on nonpublic information relating to Congress, and to require additional reporting by Members and employees of Congress of securities transaction, and for other purposes." Wonder why you have never heard of HR 682, aside from the obvious: that Congress would never vote in a law to cut off this massive illegal form of funding for itself: "This bill never became law." Well, duh.

Short dated Greek bonds remain weak. They have not bounced. You can buy the 2 year bond at 50. With a 4% coupon, that is 8% current yield with the chance to double in price in 2 years. Clearly the bond market is expecting a default or massive write-offs for Greek debt. I have heard the argument that equities must be pricing that in at this stage. That is possible, but I find more equity people believe that "something" will be done to avert default than credit people. Looking back at 2007 and 2008, it often seemed like equities had to be hit over the head with a stick before they would price in problems in credit. Stocks hit their high in October 2007 - after strong signs of problems in the credit markets had appeared. They also managed to shrug off the Bear Stearns problems after JPM bought them and rallied hard after that, completely missing the impending doom of FNMA, LEH, GM. I would not feel comfortable that stocks have "priced in" the problems in Europe. I think they have failed before on credit problems and with such a high percentage of daily volume just "churn" from traders and computers who go home flat every day and funds trying to avoid showing a monthly loss, the value of stocks as a pricing mechanism seems diminished.

The Fed may be talking like Smokey the Bear, but it continues to hand out matches trying to increase leverage ...

For those curious what is happening in Italy, where the stock market has been closed for most of the day, here it is straight from the Google-translated horse's mouth (and in the original).