Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Who Are The Stock Market Manipulators

As I wrote in the past, the bias is to keep the wheel of fortune spinning, it does not matter where it falls, the manipulator does not care, the idea is to keep it "all pink all the time."
Pink benefits them and makes those holding stocks feel pink. Their happiness it exposes them to a meager return of annualized 7% including dividends - as reported by Standard and Poor.
All is done using substantial amount of risk. Those risks shifts depending when you have to buy and sell stocks, and how much leverage those pools of pension money need to re float with extra leverage -thus increased risk.
The market operators have become extraordinary good at controlling public opinion and governments around the globe. Manipulators are confident -some say arrogant- to keep demanding the elimination of government guaranteed pensions, thus the risk is shifted to the individuals via “privatized pensions funds”, in other words they get people’s money to buy baseless assets. Thus a de facto transfer wealth towards those who control the access to debt and again sell back their liabilities to the pension pools.

The list of manipulators is short enough that can be compiled in one page.
To have an example how a market can be moved here is a press release on April 4 2007, that might offer some light.

“The indices are trading slightly higher midday as investors weigh more relief in the Middle East, a subsequent decline in oil prices, and upbeat analyst commentary against weak economic data.
The biggest headline today has been Iranian President Ahmadinejad announcing the release of the 15 British naval personnel captured nearly two weeks ago. The news has improved overall sentiment and pushed oil prices lower. However, given yesterday's sizable gains amid a lack of overwhelming news to support such a rally, it hasn't been overly surprising to see some hesitation on the part of buyers.
In fact, if it weren't for a 2.0% surge on the Nasdaq's most influential constituent and the third most heavily-weighted stock on the S&P 500 -- Microsoft (MSFT 28.43 +0.56), the indices would be exhibiting more noticeable consolidation. The Dow component is getting a boost after a Citigroup analyst raised his Q3 earnings estimates.”

In this case a major bank as Citigroup also one of the largest pools of pensions, issues a comments, that can be or not, but because it has under management and receives every day enough pension money to move the stock with a comments, not a fact.
As simplistic as it might sound there are some important mechanics behind issuing opinions with baseless facts.
If Citigroup knows that Microsoft is going to increase earnings, why do they need to tell the planet? Self interest? It can be broken down in two: one is sending a message to all other pension funds saying, we are not selling, for now; second to its fund mangers: reduce your selling of the stock. You might wonder why they do not send an email to all their fund managers, and keep it quiet having asymmetric advantage.
Well, that will have cross some many countries and at least thousands of fund managers that it will be a de facto stock manipulation. Because Microsoft float of share is so large it is easier to send the message in the open saying we are not selling, what about you?
Still this is an opinion that affects millions of people and around five trillion dollars worth of market capitalization.
That how big a comment like this is.

Stocks The Biggest Casino in Human History

As you hear the news and you might get the feeling that you are getting some part of the truth about the underlining rational why stocks go up or down.

The answer is not simple. It can be summarize in two parts one is the transfer of wealth from the poor towards those with the access to large sums of borrowing, this is a new and extremely sophisticated class warfare, that can be see as the super-wealth taking advantage of the rest of the population. Second, linked to the first is the shift of risk from government responsibilities to the unprepared workers. Pension allocations is the primary driver of stocks prices second is the speculators from hedge funds that work for all major banks.
If you pay attention fear is the number one driver of news. Second is the building on the sense of wealth by using the power of central banks to create interest rates that will re-allocate the value of assets, as the wealth effect create by home value increases, with no underlining reason other than cheap borrowing costs. The dichotomy of fear and wealth creates uncertainty and the need for personal assessment of savings and pension risks.
Imagine if two and half billion people will give you for the next thirty years the present average of $290 a year and you can keep at least .5% of that money as custodian. No a bad deal, and it gets better. It does not matter what happen to the actual returns and performance of that money your cut stays the same.

Clearly, this “all is good” creates a bias and that is to keep the money flowing and people believing the downside needs to keep growing like a pyramid scheme you need money flowing in to absorb the all those fees accumulated over the movement of the money from fund a to b and the rotation keeps the grease and those manager multimillion dollar salaries alive. If you wonder why all the financial news are biased in the optimistic the reason is simple they want your money.
If you think about why stocks should be sold above any other asset, well that is the dirty secret, they do not need, but the are enough suckers to keep the game alive, and the use of the free capital rhetoric is not other than taking the pension of other people and place it into stocks does not matter if those stocks any intrinsic worth.

I think that it will be interesting to address some of the fallacies and talking points that the talking heads use when they talk about stocks and other risk investments.

Part of the same process is the boom and boost process that occurs every four or five years in the prices of stocks and other assets as real estate. I leave that for a future commentary.

The big question is what one should do to have a more stable system. It is not hat easy anymore, but there are action that you can take and one is to find people in your community that care about their future and are concern about the risk that the present system represents.