DOW + 134 = 16,457
SPX + 14 = 1872
NAS + 43 = 4198
10 YR YLD + .01 = 2.72%
OIL – .18 = 101.49
GOLD – 10.10 = 1285.80
SILV – .06 = 19.86
Wrapping up the first quarter let’s go to the scorecard. The Dow Industrials lost 121 points in the quarter but gained 136 points in the month of March; the S&P 500 finished the quarter up 24 points and up 13 points in March; the Nasdaq Comp gained 22 points in the quarter and lost 110 points in March; oil prices are up $3.50 a barrel since the start of the year and down .42 in March; gold gained $74.80 for the quarter but lost $41.90 the last month; silver added .33 for the quarter but down $1.44 for the month of March.
The first quarter marked the fifth straight quarter of gains for the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite indices. Last week’s drop of 2.8% in the Nasdaq Comp was the first such drop since October 2012, or the first time the Nasdaq dropped by 2.8% in 77 weeks.
Did you see 60 Minutes last night? They interviewed Michael Lewis, who is an excellent financial writer; he has a new book called “Flash Boys†and it deals with high frequency traders on Wall Street. They tried to present the idea that they had just discovered the market is rigged. It is rigged, and it has been rigged for quite some time; this is not a new discovery. The high frequency traders scalp as many trades as possible; they add no value; they do not make markets; they do not provide liquidity; they steal from everyone who buys and sells stocks. Good for Michael Lewis for writing a book about this, but it is not new.
And it is not the only market that’s rigged. Switzerland’s Competition Commission announced today that it had begun a formal investigation into eight financial institutions, over potential collusion to manipulate the currency markets. The regulator opened a preliminary investigation into the foreign exchange market last year. Regulators in Britain, the United States and other countries have begun investigations into whether traders tried to manipulate benchmark currency rates. The financial institutions being investigated include: UBS, Credit Suisse, Zurcher Kantonalbank, Julius Baer, Royal Bank of Scotland, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Barclays.
And of course, this follows investigations into the Libor rate rigging, ISDAfix derivatives rigging, gold rigging, mortgages backed securities rate rigging, robo-signing, and the shorter path is to find markets that haven’t been rigged and manipulated. Earlier today, a district judge said shareholders could pursue a securities fraud lawsuit against JPMorgan for the London Whale trading scam. The financial sector dips its beak into everything, everywhere. The Bank of England recently admitted in its Quarterly Bulletin that banks don’t actually lend the money to the depositors; they lend bank credit created on their books. In the United States the finance charges on this credit amounts to approximately 30% to 40% of the economy. So, in effect, everything is rigged.
