Games People Play

Our corporate media has been in a frenzy. The unprecedented January 6 assault on the Capitol in Washington, DC has conjured widespread interpretation and unbridled speculation. Conspiracy theories abound, from fascist coup attempts to murderous assassination attempts against our beloved leaders. Whatever its actual meaning, it has long since become a gambit in the political games played in the two-party casino, a move shaped by the advantage thought to be gained by our high-stakes politicians.

Speaking of casinos, the new year has brought us a different high-stakes game playing out dramatically in the stock market. The last few weeks have seen an escalation in the war between some financial hedge funds-- private investment clubs for “sophisticated” investors (big money!), utilizing arcane, complex strategies and exotic investment instruments-- and a gaggle of day traders organized to act in concert through popular internet discussion sites.

Hedge funds are like the gambler who enjoys both the benefits of having a larger stake and a greater insight in the game; the hedge fund manager/gambler can shape the direction of the game as well as predict its course. With the growth of hedge funds in the 1990s, participation in a prominent hedge fund became a mark of exclusivity and prestige for the very rich.

Because they digest market information better and faster, hedge funds accelerate the accumulation of capital in the hands of the very rich, greatly increasing inequality. Their market advantages make them appear to represent less risk, but the competition between them for the favors of institutional investors often leads them to risky ventures. Their “private” status largely keeps regulators off of their backs.

Until recently, these big players have had their way in financial markets.

Other innovations have produced new players in the stock market. The introduction of impersonal internet companies that facilitate individual stock purchases without fees have enabled a renegade cabal of new day traders (estimates range from 6 million to 20 million) who communicate with each other about stock purchases over forums like WallStreetBets.

Despite the fact that the battle between short-selling hedge funds and rebel investors has only been noticed by the sensation-seeking mainstream media in recent weeks, the conditions for its escalation have long been noticed by the financial press. I wrote in late September 2020:

Some would be surprised to learn that in the modern era, individual investors-- day traders and the like-- only account for roughly one in ten trades. The rest are made up by institutional investors, funds, etc. But, in 2020, the number of trades by individual investors has doubled, accounting for about 20% of equity market action.

With social media tipsters and discussion boards, the born-again investors have accounted for many stock valuations that puzzle and concern wiser investors. Tesla, for example, has gained 438% this year, establishing the maverick car company as the highest valued auto company in the world and the eighth largest corporation in the US by market value.

Fed by social media gossip, investors jacked up share prices of Eastman Kodak by as much as 614% before losing most of the gains! This kind of euphoria-driven investment has mature investors and advisors shaking in their boots.

While few outside of Wall Street noticed this phenomenon, it nearly sank some prominent hedge funds that specialize in a particular form of options purchases-- the opportunity to sell a stock short. 

Hedge funds like Melvin Capital Management typically purchase an option to surrender a stock to a buyer at a set price. Convinced that the stock price will fall in the negotiated time frame, they hope to buy the stock at a lower price to exercise their option, pocketing the difference between what they committed and what they actually paid (for a remarkably short, but clear explanation of this process, see this article in FightBack!NEWS).

Short-selling hedge funds function like financial sharks-- they exploit market weaknesses and turmoil to manufacture a financial advantage at the expense of wounded corporate enterprises like GameStop, AMC Entertainment, Bed, Bath, and Beyond, BlackBerry, and others. Smelling blood in the water, they use their strategy to extract profit from the decline of the stocks of these companies, repeating their short selling until they drive the share prices to oblivion.

These hedge funds were akin to the financial vultures who profited by driving the cost of debt of European countries, like Greece, into the stratosphere after 2009.

But a strange thing happened in January.

Organized around the common goal of making money and utilizing the reach of social media, a substantial group of day traders pooled their collective power (a lesson for the tame US labor movement) to pillage the short-sellers. With the verve of sports fanatics, internet cheerleaders like newly-born celebrity investor Keith Gill fomented an uprising against short-sellers to buoy the prices of the targets of the short-selling vultures, especially a company called GameStop.

Consequently, GameStop shares rose 1600%. Another company’s-- AMC Entertainment-- share prices advanced 301.2% in one day, January 27!

Short-sellers, betting on share-price collapses by these damaged companies, were hammered by the increases engineered by the renegade day traders. They made money, but some hedge funds lost a lot of money. It is estimated that one hedge fund, Melvin Capital Investments, lost 53% on its investments in January from the collective action of day traders. On GameStop alone, hedge funds lost nearly $25 billion at one point in January.

The mainstream media pounced on the “battle” between day traders and hedge funds, projecting a David-versus-Goliath story. Congress members reacted predictably, some siding with David, some with Goliath.

When the no-fee trading platforms supporting the day-trading rebels stopped trading on the key stocks, odd-bedfellow politicians Senator Ted Cruz and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez reacted indignantly. AOC-- the master tweeter of the celebrity-left-- saw an injustice in denying the “heroic” retail traders from buying shares, “while hedge funds are freely able to trade the stock as they see fit.” This might appear to some to be an odd concern for a self-avowed “socialist.”

Multi-billionaire Elon Musk joined Cruz and AOC in sympathy with the upstart investors, tweeting “Get Shorty” to his 40 million followers. Of course it is worth noting that these same investors have created a frenzy of buying behind his company, Tesla, making him the world’s richest person.

Despite the popular, media-driven narrative of good rebels versus rapacious hedge funds, the truth is that this dust-up has very little to do with the fate of working people in the US. Capturing even sectors of the US left, the quaint story of an army of amateurs bringing down powerful hedge fund managers spread far and wide. Some saw the events as a populist rising, an exaggeration in the same league as the hysterics decrying a coup attempt on January 6.

Behind the facade of righteous anger directed at the flesh-eating hedge funds was individual lust for easy money corralled into a surprising market force and targeting a small, but vulnerable corner of finance capital. Portraying this as a populist rebellion, as an assault on the forces of economic tyranny is… simply absurd.

With Toto pulling the curtain back from Oz’s wizard, one finds a couple of relatively small-time fund managers who “sowed seed for frenzy” over GameStop, according to The Wall Street Journal. Both made millions off of sparking what is being sold as a rebellion.

And then there is Citadel Securities, the trading firm owned by a billionaire hedge fund manager and the largest player in facilitating retail stock trades. Citadel, more than any other company, supports the trades of the fee-less brokerages that attract the day-trading crowd. Accordingly, it makes vast sums from the explosion of new retail investors who collectively exploit the short-sellers.

At the same time, Citadel helped bail out a victim of the day-trading frenzy, participating in a $2.75 billion loan to Melvin Capital Management. Talk about working both sides of the street!

As The Wall Street Journal prominently noted (February 4, 2021), hedge funders Richard Mashaal and Brian Gonick jumped on the GameStop mania in September, cashing out at $700 million and making a hedge fund, Sunvest Management LLC, one of the big winners.

There is little heroics in this farce, and little justice.

In any case, forces within finance capital smashed GameStop on Monday, February 1, with the stock dropping 100 points and losing over 30% of its value. On Tuesday, another devastating blow was delivered. Game over for the GameStop rebellion.

We learn from this farce that there is no "peoples’ capitalism."

We learn that the stock market is, today, divorced from the real economy (though it cannot remain divorced forever). In fact, it is currently functioning as a casino for the wealthy, almost wealthy, and wannabe wealthy.

We learn that the stock market operates apart from the interest of working people and can offer no solace for those working for a living. And if we study history, we learn that investment mania, like that making headlines today, generally precedes a serious crisis. The similarity with the lead-up to the Dotcom bubble is uncanny.

Less than a month into the post-Trump era, with the Republican Party divided and the Democratic Party scrambling to separate from its weak-tea campaign promises, the corporate media is busy searching for a reality TV replacement for Trump’s antics. They have tried to transform an over-the-top tailgate by Trump’s camp followers into a coup attempt in DC.

And now they have sought to raise a mischievous, self-serving financial maneuver into a populist attack on the bastions of wealth and power, a media story akin to promoting a pick-up basketball game at the YMCA during the NBA finals.

Both stories serve as distractions from the destruction and insecurity faced by those who work for a living, by those distant from the rulers nested in Washington, DC and the financiers and their admirers tied to Wall Street.

Facing joblessness, eviction, foreclosure, and a broken, ineffective health care system unable to deliver hundreds of thousands of US citizens from a death sentence, the public needs more than an entertaining, sensationalist narrative.

In the shadows of these media circuses lurks the real story, a story of a politico-economic system bringing misery and despair to millions of US citizens, corrupting US politics, denying a solution to a wrenching health care disaster, and spurring inequality. Dare I say the word that eludes the corporate media?

Capitalism.

Now that would be a story worth telling.

Greg Godels
zzsblogml@gmail.com

October Surprise: Market Apocalypse?

Volatility!

That’s the word that Wall Street uses when investors are getting nervous. And Wall Street and the financial pundits should and are getting nervous now.

The major US equity markets-- the Dow Jones, S&P, and NASDAQ-- have enjoyed a strong, and, to many, a paradoxical recovery since the pandemic shuttered much of the productive economy. While unemployment has soared and is only slowly reversing, while growth has collapsed, and while earnings are challenged, stock markets are marching forward, restoring nearly all of their previous losses by the end of August.

To many of us, it is not unusual to see stock performance far outpace the general economic welfare of the people. That is a commonplace of the capitalist economy.

Nor is it unusual for investors to expect that the stock market will outperform the economy in general. After all, that was the point of Piketty’s celebrated, thorough historical study of capital which showed that, all things being equal, the rate of return on investment will grow faster than the rate of economic growth. As a result, capitalism necessarily generates what we Marxists insist is exploitation.

But equity markets are not free floating, independent systems; they must intersect at some point or some time with the real economy. Stock performance must reflect the underlying ability of its associated corporation or enterprise to produce something of worth to the investor: profit. 

So if stock values in the five or six months of the 2020 pandemic seem dissociated from the economy, what is going on?

The Wall Street Journal offers a useful, if incomplete, explanation of the anomaly. How Stocks Defied The Pandemic (September 15, 2020) suggests five factors: 1. Stimulus from the Fed and Congress, 2. Expectations of a strong recovery, 3. The dominance of the tech giants, 4. The return of individual investors, and 5. Momentum trading.

Certainly the Federal Reserve and the two parties’ elected officials acted swiftly in the wake of the pandemic shut-down. Absorbing the lessons of the 2007-2009 crisis, they cranked out trillions of dollars’ worth of stimulus, they sanctioned easy loans, and they collapsed interest rates swiftly. 

But it is telling that equity markets appear to have been bolstered more significantly than other aspects of the economy, including those aspects protecting or promoting the fate of those most vulnerable to the catastrophe. In short, the investor class seemed to reap the greater benefit of their actions.

Though maybe unintended, the bailout encouraged hungry investors to devour stock market opportunities, with bond yields decimated and other interest-generating instruments foreclosed by the Federal Reserve’s actions. Capitalists must land their capital somewhere in order to preserve the accumulation process-- the system’s blood flow; the impact of institutional intervention by the Fed left them few promising alternatives outside of the equity markets. And that is where they put their money.

As for “expectations” of a quick recovery, any notion that such expectations could be built on anything more solid than hope and faith must be discarded. This singular event-- a crisis of public health, economics, politics, and racial conflict-- generated profound fear more than expectations.

The WSJ correctly located the outsized influence of Tech stocks-- principally, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet (Google), and Facebook-- in the stock boom. Without the investment flowing into tech stocks, mainly the big five, there would be no notable market rally. Apple, alone, has gained 57% in 2020 and now has a valuation greater than the FTSE 100, an index of the top companies on the London Stock Exchange. At the same time, the frenzy for tech stocks frightens pundits and advisors. Apart from Amazon, tech stocks play in a virtual universe that challenges real-world valuation. Moreover, they have been notoriously volatile. And the gains have been concentrated in the Big Five, with other companies far less successful. 

Past stock market collapses have been preceded by a dramatic increase in individual investors bent on taking advantage of an overheated market. The return of the “rubes” has always been a signature benchmark of an impending decline. From the casual dabbler before the Great Depression to the day trader and dilettante of today, the engagement of “amateurs” is always a harbinger of market disaster. 

Some would be surprised to learn that in the modern era, individual investors-- day traders and the like-- only account for roughly one in ten trades. The rest are made up by institutional investors, funds, etc. But, in 2020, the number of trades by individual investors has doubled, accounting for about 20% of equity market action. 

With social media tipsters and discussion boards, the born-again investors have accounted for many stock valuations that puzzle and concern wiser investors. Tesla, for example, has gained 438% this year, establishing the maverick car company as the highest valued auto company in the world and the eighth largest corporation in the US by market value.

Fed by social media gossip, investors jacked up share prices of Eastman Kodak by as much as 614% before losing most of the gains! This kind of euphoria-driven investment has mature investors and advisors shaking in their boots.

Creating momentum through bets on overheated valuations only generates greater momentum. Easy money and the fear of missing a surge amplifies the momentum. Add the attraction of derivatives and the likelihood of a market bubble increases dramatically. 

Stock options-- the purchase of a contract to buy a stock at a price fixed before the actual purchase of the stock-- have exploded in 2020. They are attractive to investors who want to risk their capital on a bet of future gains and increase the potential return on the bet by spreading the capital over more, less costly options. Goldman Sachs reports that the volume of option trades exceeded the volume of stock trades for the first time this year. Three years ago, option-trading volume was only 40% of stock volume. In August, option trading topped 120% of stock trading. Small investors bought half of a trillion dollars’ worth of options in August alone, five times the amount bought in any previous month, as reported in the WSJ.

Much of this market craze is occurring against a backdrop of over three weeks of net decline in the US stock market indexes. Moreover, the employment recovery is stagnating, with new unemployment claims remaining at an historic high, and the pace of retail-spending growth slowing. Earnings-- the crucial factor in capitalist behavior-- is expected by some to fall by as much as 22% in the third quarter. 

Conditions are ripening for another market crisis not unlike that brought on by the 2000-2001 dot.com collapse. Billions, if not trillions, of nominal value stand to disappear.

Likely such an October Surprise would be fatal to Donald Trump’s reelection prospects, since most polls show that respondents see the economy is his greatest strength against Biden.

But whether Biden or Trump wins, the depth of the emerging crisis will make it almost impossible for either to rule effectively. Neither offers a way out. Only a profound, radical political realignment will blaze a path forward.

Greg Godels

zzsblogml@gmail.com

Storm Clouds?

As the panic over the destiny of the Federal Reserve's “quantitative easing” program reaches hysterical proportions, uncommonly bizarre economic anomalies are surfacing. In the last week of June, the news that first quarter US Gross Domestic Product growth report was reduced dramatically from 2.4% to 1.8% was met by an equally dramatic, but paradoxical positive jump in equity markets. Normally, a rather staggering drop in GDP estimates would trigger stock market losses-- investor confidence would be battered. But the opposite occurred. 

What's going on?

Pundits and investors hailed the bad news because they hope that it will keep the Federal Reserve committed to the $85 billion per month bond purchasing project dubbed “quantitative easing.” They believe that the Fed would not dare to relax the program in the face of poor economic performance. And they recognize that without the Fed’s foot firmly pressing the accelerator, the capitalist economy will stagnate or slow. The Federal Reserve program is truly a life-support system for our economy, and capitalism's apologists recognize that they are in deep trouble without it. Therefore, investors welcomed the fall in GDP growth!

Even Paul Krugman, the popular voice of social democratic theory in the US, has caught the contagion of fear. In a late-June appeal in The New York Times (Et tu, Ben?) to Federal Reserve head, Ben Bernanke, Krugman calls for the Fed to keep its foot aggressively on the gas pedal. A firm advocate of an alternative policy option, fiscal stimulus (spending on infrastructure, public works, etc), Krugman holds his nose and urges the continuation of the Fed's monetary stimulus program of printing money for bond purchases.

So why can't we just all agree to get along and urge the Federal Reserve to keep printing dollars?

In the first place, the Fed's policy of dollar-printing promiscuity is losing its healing powers. The effect of the purchase of government debt-- Treasury notes-- in order to restrain bond yields and interest rates has diminished since mid-2012. Moreover, the Fed remedy has lost its magic entirely in May and June of this year, with the yield on the 10-year Treasury note rising by two-thirds, mortgage rates jumping about 27% from March to the end of June, and the US and European (except Germany) bond market experiencing a sell-off. All of these indicators demonstrate that quantitative easing, as a stimulus policy, is simply losing its punch.

The Federal Reserve sees its injection of $85 billion into the economy every month as a hedge against the dreaded deflation, a sure companion to stagnation or negative growth. They watch to see when inflation crosses their target of 2% in order to slap on the brakes to avoid an overheated economy. But there is no reason for the Fed to fret: inflation is well below their target, a clear sign that without monetary stimulus we would be in a deflationary period. Corporations are hoarding cash rather than investing: they are holding 5.6% of their total assets in cash, against a forty year average of 4.4%. It was weak business investment, in part, that caused the first quarter GDP growth revision downward by 25%.

The Chicago Federal Reserve's three-month moving average National Activity index remained in negative territory, underlining the diminishing effects of quantitative easing.

Aside from its ineffectiveness, quantitative easing poses more serious, more fundamental problems: Fed monetary promiscuity distorts markets and masks underlying economic processes. Given that a capitalist economy is an enormously complex organism made up of mutually interactive actors, commodities and processes, manipulating some of the central elements such as interest rates, the money supply, debt growth, etc. can have unforeseen and damaging repercussions in other sectors of the economy. Mechanisms fail and balances are disrupted. A therapy becomes an injury. This is a lesson that the leadership of the Peoples' Republic of China is learning from the volatility created by its shadow banking sector. Even with majority public ownership of the biggest banks, the informal private sector distorts the impact of policy decisions.

In Marxist terms, the massive Federal Reserve intervention in financial markets violates the law of value. That is, it replaces the exchange of equivalent-for-equivalent in financial markets, with exchanges determined independently of market forces by the officers of the Fed. Those exchanges must, at some point, be reconciled; but in the meantime, they distort exchange relationships in other sectors of the economy. They create a disconnect between the financial sector and the signals sent to the productive economy. They distort the rate of profit in the financial sector, channeling capital into speculation and over-reliance on cheap credit. It’s no wonder that corporations hoard cash and seek higher returns on retained capital and easily available capital.

In reality, quantitative easing invites the very conditions that led to the 2007-8 collapse.

And we are now seeing omens in the economic data.

The exuberant 2013 stock market is suffering a retreat, but even more ominously, demonstrating growing volatility. Last year, the small investor jumped back in the market, a sure sign that a bear market was in sight. Much of the volatility comes from market manipulators exploiting the amateur day-traders. Like the swaggering Vegas weekend gambler, they are ripe for the picking. One can watch the picking by following the end-of-day trading; they don't know when to get in or when to get out.

US exports are pulling back.

The post-World War II record profits reported in 2012 are threatened. Of 108 companies scheduled to report profits in the second quarter of 2013, 87 offered negative guidance to their shareholders. Falling profits, contrary to underconsumption theorists, are a better predictor of a downturn than falling consumption. Consumption generally falls as a result and as an amplifier of economic decline.

Today, US consumption hangs precariously in the balance. While savings are declining, wages are in free fall. The year ending in September 2012 experienced a wage decline of 1.1%. First quarter estimates augur a shocking decline. The consumer is simply running out of money, savings, and available credit.

And the just announced June unemployment figures actually show an increase in the more telling U6 calculation to 14.3%. That rate includes those who have dropped out of the job market and those working part-time but desiring a full-time job.

Not a promising picture.

In most of the world's capitalist countries, the labor movements and left political parties have yet to decouple their fate from that of the monopoly capital, profit-driven, market-governed system. They are like ships on turbulent waters unwilling to bring their vessels and crew to port. They are simply counting on the storm to subside. They are neither prepared for nor expecting a hurricane or a shipwreck. After five disastrous years, one would hope that left and labor leaders would began to look for alternatives to capitalism, a safe haven for their fellow passengers.

Zoltan Zigedy

zoltanzigedy@gmail.com