A Secret New Government Tax
By Elliott Wave International
Did you know for one major financial sector the Great Recession never ended?
One look at this chart of the KBW Bank Index and the HFRX Global Hedge Fund Index, and you can see it for yourself:
As anger against Wall Street subsided from the 2009 low, financial share prices rose, and the government began enacting and enforcing new laws — er "safeguards" — and raking in huge taxes — er "penalties" — from the world's largest banks. Yet, as you can see in the above chart, the financial sector never fully recovered — their aggregate share prices sit at roughly half of what they used to be.
In 2014, bank penalties were up 40% to a record $65 billion. Some say these fines are a new cost of doing business, yet few seem to question how drawing huge sums from the still-fragile financial sector will make banks and their customers safer.
Meanwhile, investor optimism toward the financial sector has largely recovered — with 18% of money managers, according to a fall 2015 Barron's poll, picking it as the single best-performing sector over the next 12 months.
To the contrary, we believe the optimism will prove wildly misplaced, banks will pay the price, and investors will be left holding the bag.
Why? Because the market sentiment readings and unfolding patterns do not support a long-term bullish outcome.
We invite you to read this new, subscriber-level excerpted report from this month's issues of The Elliott Wave Financial Forecast and its European counterpart. Together, they unveil the current state of the financial sector; how the government is clamping down; and how we believe it will ultimately play out.
Elliott Wave International's top U.S. and European analysts have just released a brand-new report, which shows how the government is strong-arming big banks and squeezing out depositors' hard-earned money — under the guise of keeping it safe. Click here to learn more and read the complimentary report now.
