SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Spinning Wheel

"What goes up must come down

spinning wheel got to go round

Talking about your troubles it's a crying sin

Ride a painted pony

Let the spinning wheel spin

You got no money, and you, you got no home

Spinning wheel, spinning all alone

Talking about your troubles and you, you never learn

Ride a painted pony

let the spinning wheel turn."

Blood Sweat and Tears, Spinning Wheel

The spectacular ramp in stocks failed badly, and they went out mostly unchanged after yesterday's big drop.

The song says it all.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

 

 

US 2nd District Court of Appeals Issues the Economic Equivalent of the Dred Scott Decision

SEC. 20A. (a) PRIVATE RIGHTS OF ACTION BASED ON CONTEMPORANEOUS TRADING.

Any person who violates any provision of this title or the rules or regulations thereunder by purchasing or selling a security while in possession of material, non-public information shall be liable in an action in any court of competent jurisdiction to any person who, contemporaneously with the purchase or sale of securities that is the subject of such violation, has purchased (where such violation is based on a sale of securities) or sold (where such violation is based on a purchase of securities) securities of the same class.

Securities and Exchange Act of 1934

In their zeal to exonerate some Wall Street wiseguys associated with the infamous insider trading ring involving SAC Capital, the sophists on the 2nd US Court of Appeals, located in lower Manhattan near Wall Street, just issued the equivalent of the Dred Scott decision for US markets.

"Although the government might like the law to be different, nothing in the law requires a symmetry of information in the nation's securities markets."

Barrington Parker, 2nd U.S. Circuit of Appeals Judge

Are you kidding me?  Equal protection under the law?   Who says we have to do that? We can do whatever we want, and just try and stop us.  We own the lawmakers and we own the courts.

Symmetry of information, also known as a 'level playing field,' is the cornerstone and underlying principle of US Securities laws since 1933.

"Information symmetry is a condition in which all relevant information is known to all parties involved. For example, in the stock market, stock information has a full public disclosure, and all investors are in the same position to share information."

"In contract theory and economics, information asymmetry deals with the study of decisions in transactions where one party has more or better information than the other. This creates an imbalance of power in transactions which can sometimes cause the transactions to go awry, a kind of market failure in the worst case. Examples of this problem are adverse selection, moral hazard, and information monopoly."

Is this the point where the pigmen take the masks off and say, 'what the hell, we really are just robbing and cheating you. So what are you going to do about it?  We own the system, and can have our sophists rationalize just about anything.'

Some judicial propeller head was encouraged to put themselves into super-literalist, laser-beam mode, and twist the letter of the law hard enough to find a reason for excusing some particularly blatant insider trading, and the substance of the law be damned.

As long as the exchanging of favors is sufficiently soft and undocumented, and not the explicit exchange of cash, videotaped and posted to Youtube, it's all good.  Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of financial fraud on the general public.

The purpose of information symmetry is to prevent certain market actors from engaging in control frauds. This principle taken to a perfect and natural ideal was a cornerstore of one of the great economic canards that justified deregulating the markets. 

"In finance, the efficient-market hypothesis asserts that financial markets are 'informationally efficient'. In consequence of this, one cannot consistently achieve returns in excess of average market returns on a risk-adjusted basis, given the information available at the time the investment is made."

And now they are dropping the pretext. Are they counting on most people not understanding what 'symmetry of information' means?   Are they counting on you doing nothing about this?

Information symmetry means that some analyst or CEO cannot tell his friends that they are going to give downward guidance in a week, so that they can all sell their stock and even short it ahead of the public.

It means that the most powerful players in the market cannot traffic in private knowledge, presenting two sorts of datastreams, one for the public and one for themselves.

It's a big club.  And you aren't in it.

I expect this decision to be reversed, because otherwise there can be no confidence in US markets any longer, and no one who is not an insider can no longer believe in their impartiality and honesty.  They are worse than any casino, because the dealer can signal some of the players when he has an ace in the hole.

The basis of the reversal will be the judgement that the 2nd Court has misapplied the principles in Dirks v SEC.   In this case the Supreme Court sought to exonerate the recipient of information from a whistleblower who wished to exposed a corporate fraud, and in doing so released information to Dirks, who while passing it on to the Wall Street Journal, also passed it on to clients who used it to sell their stock in advance of the fraud and stock sell off. 

This led to the establishment of 'The Dirks Test' by the SEC:

A standard used by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to determine whether someone who receives and acts on insider information (a tippee) is guilty of insider trading. The Dirks Test looks for two criteria

1. Whether the individual breached the company's trust
2. Whether the individual did so knowingly

Tippees can be found guilty of insider trading if they know or should know that the tipper has committed a breach of fiduciary duty.

I believe this is one of those cases where courts can and will argue about reasonableness. Is it more reasonable to expect a trader who is licensed under Securities Laws to know the difference between legitimate information and material non-public information, moreso than an unlicensed amateur?

 And I think that the 2nd District Court has overreached in declaring that the prosecution ought to demonstrate that the tipper received personal benefit, rather than violated fiduciary trust of the corporation, and that the tippees needed to know this fact, rather than understanding the difference, as a professional, between gossip, information, and material non-public information which provides them a trading advantage which has been obtained in some manner which most certainly involves the violation of fiduciary responsibility in the chain of communication.
 

The most rational response from the rest of the world will be to shun US markets, and take steps to prevent the contagion of this abuse of privilege.

The only law the moneyed interests recognize is 'Do what you will,' and just don't document the evidence of wrongdoing and post it on the internet for bragging rights.

This is the kind of situation where the locker room talk at the Country Club gets leaked out in public, and the Very Important People who do it are suddenly exposed for exactly who and what they really are, and what they really believe. 

 

And brother, its a brave new world if this decision stands. 

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Somebody to Love

More!

"He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man."

Samuel Johnson

 

The metals were held in place today, consolidating their recent gains at the top of the support and resistance channel.

 

I am sure that some day this protracted market manipulation and price rigging will collapse. 

 

And I am also sure that some day we will be offered an elaborate story of how the Western central bankers used our gold to hold the line on its price for the sake of the system.

 

After all, this is their mandate, to insure the integrity of the currency by hiding the effects of their malfeasance, while shamelessly printing bushel loads of hot money and handing it to their Banking friends so they can use it to game the system.

 

If this goes badly, I would have no doubt that some unwitting 'public servants' are going to get thrown to the wolves and under the bus.  Michael Hayden is getting slathered up with barbeque sauce, and no doubt will be offered as red meat, the torturer-in-chief, if it comes to it.  Finger lickin' good. 

 

The higher ups don't know anything about anything about nothing.  They barely know what day it is, or what their favorite magazines and newspapers might be.  Well, in a few cases we could believe it.

 

Like CEOs, and thoroughly modern managers,  they are paid astronomical sums of money, and hold tremendous power.  But when something goes wrong, they audaciously claim to have been walking around in an uninvolved, Alzheimer's like fog, oblivious to the workings of their own organizations, and unaware of their own decisions and directives. 

 

And if they know the right people, and the locations of enough of the bodies, they can make that story stick.

 

Being a card carrying member of the privileged class means never having to say I'm sorry, much less 'not guilty.'  Power is doing what you want when you want, and consequences are for everyone else.

 

Or perhaps these titans of modern industry and the halls of moneyed power are at heart just good natured bumblers.  In a misguided but since belief destroy lives and crash economies, while pursuing insane ideological theories put forward by the vested interests, all the while stuffing their pockets,  and crushing dissent with the political skills of a Machiavelli and the ruthlessness of Al Capone.

 

The banality of banking.

 

They are just hapless and good natured bumblers.  And they love dogs and children.  Remember when Uncle Al accidentally dropped the Thanksgiving turkey?  Ho ho was that funny.  Bad on him. 

 

Let's see if gold can break out here without too many other gyrations or retests.

 

FOMC meeting next week.  Russian Central Bank meets on Thursday.

 

Have a pleasant evening.