Business

In the latest creeping takeover by Goldman Sachs of the White House, overnight the White House announced that Donald Trump will nominate another Goldman Sachs banker, James Donovan, for a key financial post as deputy Treasury secretary, the White House said on Tuesday, adding another alumnus of the Wall Street investment bank to his administration. Donovan joins his former peers, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and chief Economic advisor, Gary Cohn, who are also former Goldman executives who occupy senior economic posts within the administration.

Stock Market Most Overvalued On Record — Worse Than 1929?

The US stock market today has never been more dangerous and overvalued, according to respected Wall Street market analyst John Hussman.

Indeed, Hussman goes as far as to say that "this is the most dangerous and overvalued stock market on record — worse than 2007, worse than 2000, even worse than 1929" as reported by Marketwatch.

Despite the surge in consumer confidence and exuberance at what lies ahead, real wages for America's average joes declined year-over-year in February (down 0.3%). This is the first consecutive monthly drop in real wages since 2011 (which forced Bernanke to to hint at and then unleash QE2 later that year).

So not only is The Fed hiking into the weakest GDP growth outlook since 1987, noiw they are hiking into declining real wage growth (something tht has previously driven The Fed to a massvely dovish stance).

It is fitting that just a few hours until the Fed's second rate hike in two quarters, and one day after Goldman downgraded global stocks to Neutral for the next 3 months, not to mention with the results of the anticipated Dutch election due shortly, that global stocks as well as S&P futures are higher, while crude oil has finally managed to stage a rebound as the Dollar DXY index is fractionally in the red.

Literally no one knows the true 'value' of equity research, not even the investment banks that are selling it.  Up until now, equity research has been treated as a 'freebie' given away to institutional clients in return for trading commissions but that is all about to change thanks to the European Union’s MiFID II regulations, which require asset managers to separate trading commissions from investment-research payments.