Don’t Trust Your Broker

About two weeks ago, one of my brokers called and told me that it was time to get back in the market. I laughed at him. I reminded him that I got out of the market entirely in May 2008, and now that events have unfolded, I had little faith in our financial system. But he kept on pushing and pushing, and of course, we were going nowhere, because in my view the downsides far outweigh the upsides. Here are the top reasons why I will never listen to another stockbroker ever again.

Stockbrokers advise you when and what to buy not when to sell. That was what my broker was doing two weeks ago. He wanted me to buy again. That’s my issue, in all of my years of investing, I have never had a broker call me and tell me to sell. Never.

That’s what makes it sort of like a Ponzi scheme. As long as people keep on buying and the number of people that sell are minimized, life is great.

Actually, when I told the exact same broker to sell everything in August 2008, he told me that it was ridiculous. Had I listened to him, I would have lost right about 1/2.

All of the onus is on you to determine when to sell. And if you are serious about it, it is the high stress role in the relationship.

A stock brokers options are limited. On top of #1, the only thing that a stock broker can offer by and large are US equities and derivatives there of. What about commodities? They have no ability to hedge risk by getting into commodoties. Commodities such as oil, corn, live stock are all off the table.

But the list goes on. Precious metals. They have no clue if you want to abate your risk by stock piling some gold and silver.

How about currencies? No way. You are better off getting an on line account, because your broker has no idea what is going on with the EUR/USD.

Then last but not least are international equities. There are a few international mutual funds, but by and large, there is not a real good way to get into international equities either.

It’s like they can play one card from a six card deck, so they just keep playing the same card over and over.

They are not worried about your financial security. Because they only want to encourage you to buy, and never to sell, they are more interested in their own commissions. That is how they make their money. In fact, the premise of their entire compensation structure is to bring new money into the market.

When I told the broker how I invested a lot of money in Brazil in certificate of deposits, he pulled out every trick in the book to discount the success. His most significant argument is that I was taking too much risk. Huh? With a certificate of deposit, the risk is much less than the American stock market, and the returns are guaranteed. It just shows the inherent conflict of interest. His goal was not to improve my financial security, it was to sell something.

Now when I see all those financial commercials on golf tournaments, I don’t believe any of them. In fact, I think the exact opposite. They are more worried about their financial success than yours.

Bubble Butt Heads

This entire economic crisis has left me more than a little peeved. The reason is that Obama and Bush have been dancing around assigning blame for this huge mess. The reality is that this entire crisis and heartbreak was entirely avoidable. In order to create such a mess with the world’s largest and most powerful economy takes a perfect storm of retards acting overtly and covertly.

What is an economic bubble? If one looks at any chart related to the housing prices or the stock market during the last 15-20 years, the bubbles are more than apparent. A bubble is by definition something that pops. That means that there is ascent in pricing, followed by a precipitous decline, also known as a crash. Therefore, the people that buy and sell in the beginning of the bubble, win. The people that invest at the tail of the bubble, lose almost everything. When one looks at it through this lens, it is hard to distinguish between a bubble and a Ponzi scheme. The only difference is that the architects of a Ponzi scheme go to jail. The architects of a bubble retire to a private island.

I think it is suffice to say that bubbles should be avoided, but that’s not what is happening. In
fact the opposite is occurring, Obama, Treasury, the Fed, and Wall Street are doing everything humanly possible to re-inflate the popped bubble. So let’s start handing out the Bubble Butt Head Awards to the biggest dick heads of the financial crisis.

The Ratings Agency. First off are the rating agencies such as Standard and Poors, and Moody’s. These butt heads were rating securities as AAA instead of being rated as JUNK. This is not a mathematical problem, or a clerical error. If they had mistaken a AAA security as AA, that would be OK. The reality is that they didn’t even do a mathematical analysis to assess the risk. They just slapped a AAA rating on the security and collected their fees so that other All Star Dickheads could pawn their snake oil throughout the banks and financial institutions throughout the world. These Buttheads belong in jail for fraud of a massive nature but no one is talking about this. More on this later.

AIG. If you have not read the Rolling Stone piece by Matt Taibbi, do so. The piece is well
researched, well written, and edgy. Taibbi does not pull any punches, nor should he. These douche bags at AIG made ghastly sums of money that almost makes me want to puke. These Butt Heads were making 9 figure salaries every year. Wait, that doesn’t include performance or retention bonus. We hear everyone talking about toxic assets. The people that designed these worthless pieces of paper all worked at AIG. The reason that these assets are toxic, and the paper worthless is because these fuck heads never had any intention of honoring the commitments.

Can you imagine if you buy flood insurance for your house? Then a flood comes by and ruins the first floor of your house. Your insurance company won’t pay. Their reason is that they didn’t think your house would ever flood. That would be illegal, and for sure they would be in jail. AIG has done the exact same thing, just on a much grander scale. Again, no one is even look at what AIG is doing is criminal.

The Fed. As I documented over 6 months ago, the root of the economic crisis is the Fed. That would be Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke. This is NOT a Republican/Democrat thing, it’s a Fed thing. Up to this point, it never made sense to me. Over the last 20 years, the Fed printed way too much money. Normally, this would be economic suicide because it is highly inflationary. Ultimately, the currency would become worthless. How did the Fed get away with it?

The only way is if the the inflation was highly focused on specific areas. These areas are all related to the financial sector. In the last 8 years, America has seen tremendous inflation in three area – the stock market, the housing market, and oil futures. Guess what all of these areas have in common? Wall Street.

Here’s the news. The Fed does not work for the government. They are an independent company that has enormous power over the American economy. The Fed controls inflation rates, exchange rates, interest rates, and the money supply. Personally, I don’t feel comfortable that an independent company with only nominal ties to our government has so much control over our economy, but let’s leave that aside. The truly insidious, devious and hidden issue is the relationship between the Fed and Wall Street.

Now the picture is becoming clearer. When the Fed lowers interest rates (by printing more money), the stock market immediately booms. It is a well documented, knee-jerk reaction. The Fed has been printing money and funneling the freshly minted funds to Wall Street. They all became stunningly rich. So now it’s time to throw out the names of the rest of the Butt Heads. Goldman Sachs, Alan Greenspan, Bank of America, Ben Bernanke, Lawrence Summers and on and on. The reason is that the economic mess is as grandiose is because they are all linked together in one way or another. This is the reason why no one is investigating AIG and Moody’s. They are all part of the same circle.

So in conclusion, in my view, they are all BUTT HEADS. Every single one of them. They talk about toxic assets, well, in my view, they are all toxic Butt Heads. Not all of them belong in jail, but they should not be blocking the ones that do.