Courtesy of Pam Martens.
Serious observers of Wall Street are increasingly asking this question: could a group of trading venues with giant pools of capital, operating in the dark, using high-speed algorithms and artificial intelligence that has a massive historical database and gets smarter with each micro-second trade — effectively own the stock market. Today, we take a look at the massive trading control exercised by just five Wall Street firms.
JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup jointly control trillions of dollars in commercial bank deposits with thousands of branch bank buildings stretching across the United States scooping up the life savings of everyday Joes who have no clue these are also the Masters of the Universe on Wall Street.
Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley also own FDIC insured banks. Goldman Sachs Bank USA, as of March 31, 2014, has $104.7 billion in assets; Morgan Stanley Bank, N.A., as of the same date, has $108.8 billion in assets.
These institutions have access to the Fed’s discount window, super cheap access to capital from FDIC insured deposits and a massive subsidy of their institutions under the too-big-to-fail doctrine. And, they also own outright or jointly a large swath of anything and everything that passes as a trading venue on Wall Street today.
The dark pool known as BIDS Trading, L.P. says it “was designed to bring counterparties together to anonymously trade large blocks of shares.” According to its web site, it is owned by: JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley – along with other financial firms.
Before BATS Global Exchange pulled its planned Initial Public Offering (IPO), its SEC filing said its owners included Citigroup, a subsidiary of Bank of America Merrill Lynch, and others. BATS has since merged with Direct Edge, whose owners included Goldman Sachs. The combination of BATS with Direct Edge puts four of the 13 public stock exchanges under the control of this one entity.
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