Stocks Are Up Because... Trump's Tax Plan? Maybe, But for all the Wrong Reasons

Every day the market is open, especially since the advent of financial news networks like CNBC, there always has to be a reason for stocks to go up, down, or sideways.

Usually, the reason is a political event - like Wednesday's release of the Trump tax plan - or a weather event, or, for heaven's sake, an actual financial event, like the Fed hiking or lowering the federal funds rate.

Generally speaking, however, the reasoning for general market advances or declines is just a cover story, and usually nonsense. Stocks go up because some greater fool is willing to pay more for shares than the previous fool. They go lower when there are the fools are selling, usually to people wishing to catch falling knives, buy the dip or any of a number of cliche rationales.

So, with Wednesday's broad advance, the financial media was giddy over the prospects for an overhaul to the federal income tax regime. That's the story, and the talking heads are sticking to it.

What belies their fabulous innuendo is the reality that the tax plan was only released as an outline and is sure to undergo great debate (if congress can be said to do anything "great") and numerous revisions before it ever comes out of committees, onto the floors of the dual chambers and sent to the president for his final signature.

The plan released on Wednesday was the result of months of wrangling and preparing by the so-called "Big Six," which includes House Majority Leader Paul Ryan, House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senate Finance Chairman Orrin Hatch, National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, all Republicans.

The plan may have sounded good on the surface, but only to the ultra-heathy in the top tax bracket, who get a reduction in their rate, from 39.6% to 35%. While the plan reduces the number of brackets from seven to three, the lowest rate goes from 10% to 12%, which is supposedly going to be offset by a near doubling of the standard deduction and an increase in the child tax credit. The devil is in the details, however. The higher standard deduction is attained by taking away the personal exemption. It's a swap-out, and a swindle that's not being properly reported.

The other windfall for the upper crust is a reduction in the corporate tax rate, from the current 35% to 20%. Superficially, that's a big cut, but it is also widely understood that very few, if any, corporations actually pay at that level, thanks to an assortment of loopholes and very loose policies on deductions and amortizations.

One of the more controversial parts of the plan is the scrapping of almost every deduction at the personal level, except those for mortgage interest and charitable contributions, an odd combination, since people who have mortgages often don't have much left over to help out others in need. Additionally, the plan caps the deduction for state taxes, which will largely affect people who live in high state income tax states like New York, New Jersey, and California.

So, for the lower and what's left of the middle class, the changes don't really add up to much, except that if you're really on the lowest rung of the income ladder, you may not have to file at all, though the government will make sure to deduct 15-18% of your earnings every pay period in order to fund the failing entitlements of Social Security and Medicaid/Medicare. Of course, most people won't see that much deducted, as their employers pay half. Still, the government is already in the people's pockets before they get to cash their paltry checks.

The winning side is obvious in this case. People making over $250,000 or whatever the low end of the top tax rate will be, are going to save bundles of cash under the new rates. An individual or couple earning $500,000, will see a 4.6% reduction in their tax, or $23,000. That's an entire year's earnings for somebody at or near the bottom.

That poor schlub, will pay 12% on $11,000, instead of 10%, or $1320 instead of $1100. How paying another $220 in taxes exactly helps out the lower class is a mystery.

With tax reform like this, it's a wonder more people don't simply incorporate themselves. The tax rate is lower, the deductions greater and more liberal, and there are more ways to save and hold profits and losses over years than those offered to the simple plebeians.

Without a doubt, the plan as rolled out benefits only people in upper income brackets and the rhetoric from President Trump about creating more jobs and helping out the middle class is shameful, to say the least.

More of the same. Americans can change their president every four years, but loosening the tax noose around their collective throats is obviously a tougher proposition, one which the president's advisors and the plotters and planners in congress want to keep as tight as possible around the necks of the lower and middle classes.

At the Close, Wednesday, September 27, 2017:
Dow: 22,340.71, +56.39 (+0.25%)
NASDAQ: 6,453.26, +73.10 (+1.15%)
S&P 500: 2,507.04, +10.20 (+0.41%)
NYSE Composite: 12,157.65, +29.73 (+0.25%)

Janet Yellen Admits She May Not Know What She's Talking About

As Janet Yellen dispensed more gibberish about labor markets and inflation in a speech at the annual conference of the National Association for Business Economics, stocks drifted aimlessly, seeking some sense of direction from congress, the president, the Fed Chair, anybody.

The problem for the markets is that there isn't any other direction but down. In just the past few weeks, Houston, Florida and Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands have been wracked by hurricanes, NFL protests became more important than the games themselves, Kim Jong-un and President Trump continue to trade insults. These are not exactly headlines or stories that make people confident about buying stocks, mutual funds, ETFs or any of the other wealth-enhancing products offered by the Wall Street swindle machine.

In fact, since the FOMC meeting came to a close last Wednesday, stocks have done nothing but go lower. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is down four straight days since the Fed confirmed that it would begin shrinking its balance sheet in October. Though the losses have not been great, they have been consistent. The blue chip index is off 128 points since closing at a record high of 22,412.59 on September 20.

The S&P 500 snapped a three-day losing streak, but only by 18 cents, finishing green for the first time since the Fed announcement. The NYSE Composite bucked the trend by making new highs on Friday, but has posted losses both days this week, and the NASDAQ finished higher on Tuesday, but is still down 42 points from FOMC day.

Yellen's remarks aren't of any help to markets seeking guidance. In here address today, she said the following:

"My colleagues and I may have misjudged the strength of the labor market, the degree to which longer-run inflation expectations are consistent with our inflation objective or even the fundamental forces driving inflation."

Essentially, statements like those are not going to inspire much confidence. Parsing the quote, she's basically saying all of the Fed's assumptions about the labor market, inflation and even the fundamentals of the economy itself may be wrong.

Wow. Just wow. And people actually listen to this witch doctor of finance for guidance and direction?

What's amusing, or scary, depending on your point of view, is the current madness is just the warm-up act to the Fed's actual sales of MBS and treasury bonds in upcoming months, a global garage sale that will commence over at least three to five years. Anything less would rapidly throw markets into a death spiral because of the number of assets, the size ($4.4 trillion) of the balance sheet and the lack of quality in the offerings.

For now, markets are taking it in stride, slowly adjusting to the new paradigm of rising interest rates in an environment of low inflation, slack wage demand and slow to no growth in GDP, globally.

If anything, the officials at the Fed should trade in their accountant vizors for dunce caps because they're sending the economy down a black hole with experimental policies and solutions to problems that don't already exist. Judging by past performance, the Fed will find a way to assure the business cycle is complete by plunging the economy into recession.

You can almost count on it.

At the Close, Tuesday, September 26, 2017:
Dow: 22,284.32, -11.77 (-0.05%)
NASDAQ: 6,380.16, +9.57 (+0.15%)
S&P 500: 2,496.84, +0.18 (+0.01%)
NYSE Composite: 12,127.93, -13.64 (-0.11%)

Stocks Drop, Gold, Silver Soar, NFL Ratings Tank

Less than a week after the Fed committed to selling off their hoard of toxic and subprime bond "assets," stocks are down, gold and silver are up and the NFL is imploding.

None of this is coincidence. The market rally has run its course, as phony as it always was. US dominance in global currency markets - as the reserve currency - is waning. Gold and silver and hard assets will become more and more valued as economies adjust to the new realities of a bi-polar (East vs. West) global economic paradigm.

There is no stopping the forces that have been at work for a long time. The United States has squandered its treasure, the US government is ineffective, emasculated, and impotent. The rest of the world has tired of US domination, just like sports fans have tired of boring games complete with bold-faced, meaningless protests by millionaires on the sidelines and on the field.

A great reset is coming because working Americans are not happy. They toil and cannot save. They work only to see their paychecks taxed and exploited by government programs - from horrible attempts at education to crumbling infrastructure - and they are told to shut up and pay up, so now they are fed up.

If you're one of the millions of Americans who have had their pay stagnate, their credit cards and social security numbers left unprotected and hacked, and who have seen their money pay for social welfare programs that are designed only to enrich the status quo and keep the recipients on the dole, then you know the score.

It's why Donald J. Trump won the presidency. It's why Hillary Clinton is a whiner and sore loser. It's why the left is fighting so hard to continue their wasteful policies, but there's no going back. Change is in the wind.

Get used to days like this one in the stock market. This is only the beginning.

At the close, Monday, September 25, 2017:
Dow: 22,296.09, -53.50 (-0.24%)
NASDAQ: 6,370.59, -56.33 (-0.88%)
S&P 500: 2,496.66, -5.56 (-0.22%)
NYSE Composite: 12,141.60, -10.23 (-0.08%)

Weekend Wrap: Stocks Pop and Stop After FOMC Meeting

With the Fed's $4.4 trillion balance sheet overhanging the global economy, US stocks spent Thursday and Friday treading water as investors try to figure out just how the added weight from tranches of MBS and various maturities of treasury bonds will affect liquidity and markets in the coming months and years.

While the Fed's stated goal is to reduce the size of its balance sheet alongside an attempt to normalize interest rates, the structure of their policies leaves open many questions and uncertainties, chief among them being just wo is supposed to sop up all of the excess the Fed will be releasing into markets.

More than likely it will be the usual suspects, money center banks, hedge funds, and possibly sovereign wealth funds, which may consider buying up bonds on the cheap a strategy for preserving wealth rather than increasing it.

Equity markets being particularly overvalued by nearly any metric, large players should be more cautious than they have been during eight years of unprecedented gains in US markets.

How it all plays out may turn out to be an exercise in futility from the sidelines because the Fed and their inner workings are not generally what one would call transparent.

Effects from the whirlwind of bond offerings in private settings will probably only be felt after the fact and in widely-varied segments of the economy. One thing is certain: the Fed is intent on unloading some highly toxic assets in the case of the mortgage-backed securities, something that could lead to unforeseen circumstances with homeowners and real estate speculators possibly exposed to long-standing, but previously hidden, claims.

With uncertainty as a backdrop following Wednesday's FOMC announcement, the record highs from Monday and Tuesday were not built upon, US equity indices generally taking a wait-and-see attitude into the weekend.

At the Close, Friday, September 22, 2017:
Dow: 22,349.59, -9.64 (-0.04%)
NASDAQ: 6,426.92, +4.23 (+0.07%)
S&P 500: 2,502.22, +1.62 (+0.06%)
NYSE Composite: 12,151.79, +18.17 (+0.15%)

For the week:
DOW: +81.25 (+0.36%)
NASDAQ: -21.55 (-0.33%)
S&P 500: +1.99 (+0.08%)
NYSE Composite: +71.66 (+0.59%)

Witch Doctors at the Fed Brewing Something Wicked?

Eventually, everything matters.

Whether it's a hurricane ravaging Houston, Miami, or Puerto Rico, Toys 'R Us going chapter 11, or JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon bashing cryptocurrencies in general and Bitcoin in the specific, all actions have consequences. It's the butterfly flapping its wings in Africa resulting in the subtropical windstorm, pure physics, action, reaction, cause and effect.

Thus it is consequential that the Fed's announcement in June indicating that it would begin to sell off it's hefty bag of assets - confirmed just yesterday - beginning in October (a scant ten days from now) should have some noticeable effect.

Market reaction to the announcement three months ago was muted. It was more serious yesterday and took on a gloomy tone today as all of the major indices retreated from all-time highs, the hardest hit being the speculative NASDAQ index, though one could posit that the knee-jerk nature of the selling today was nothing more than casual.

Suppose it is more than that.

Wouldn't the biggest players in the investing universe be monitoring market movements closely, making incremental moves, buying insurance? Of course. None of them want to tip their hand, but, they are concerned that the Federal Reserve has lost control of the monetary side of the equation. After all, ZIRP (zero interest rate policy) didn't work, nor did quantitative easing (QE). With all of their bullets spent, the Fed has nonchalantly called the financial crisis over and done and signaled to the market that they are going to raise interest rates, sell off the assets they've been hoarding for some six, seven, or eight years and the economy of the United States - and the world - will suddenly and magically be wonderful again.

As Dana Carvey playing the "Church Lady" might say, "how convenient!"

The Fed is at a loss and has been for eight or nine years running (some may say longer), because they cannot control distant event, geological occurrences, sunrises, or the whims of people with money. They are what Ayn Rand and Rollo May might have called witch doctors whose power is derived from people's belief in their so-called powers.

When the Fed begins selling their cache of securities (mostly treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities) expect some degree of howling from various quarters, notably those who have been calling the central bank's attempts to control global markets a scam, sham, or film-flam from the start.

Especially when it comes to the mortgage-backed securities (MBS) there will be great gnashing of teeth, especially deep inside the bowels of the Eccles Building, where it cannot be heard, as Fed governors (a number of them already jumping ship) bemoan their dissatisfaction over the task at hand.

They are about to become scorned, and with good reason. They've mismanaged other people's money (practically everybody's) to their own profit. Bernie Madoff would look like a saint compared to the crimes the people at the Fed have committed. Those crimes continue, and they will be manifest in the "great unwind."

As the case may be, all of these high priests and witch doctors of finance will claim they didn't see the carnage coming, but come it will. There's a place for people who use deceit and obfuscation to achieve their ends, and it's certainly not in heaven.

Keep a close eye on three things: the price of silver, the price of corn and wheat, and the performance of the major stock indices. If suspicions play out, all three (or two of three, with the only gainer being silver) will decline for months before there's true confirmation that, in the long scheme of things, the Fed officials, from Greenspan to Bernanke to Yellen, knew exactly what they were doing but did it anyway.

Today's position: Fetal.

At the Close, Thursday, September 21, 2017:
Dow: 22,359.23, -53.36 (-0.24%)
NASDAQ: 6,422.69, -33.35 (-0.52%)
S&P 500: 2,500.60, -7.64 (-0.30%)
NYSE Composite: 12,133.62, -13.88 (-0.11%)