Courtesy of Pam Martens.
Trading in Citigroup (Green) Versus Dow Jones Industrial Average (Orange), Friday, August 21, 2015
After an 8.5 percent plunge in China’s Shanghai Composite Index on Monday (bringing its loss for the month to a negative 21 percent), a drop in the U.S. Dollar and the U.S. crude oil benchmark, West Texas Intermediate, slipping below $39 a barrel, futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average at 8:27 a.m. are flashing an ugly opening in New York, with a potential loss of as much as 648 points. (That could materially change before the market opens at 9:30 a.m.)
Mainstream media seem obsessed with what actions the central bank of China might take to stem the rout while also focused on debating if this means a rate hike from the Fed is off the table. The Fed, unfortunately, can only talk about hiking or not hiking since it’s fired all its bullets and has no rate cuts to offer should the U.S. economy need a monetary boost.
What no one seems to be talking about is the serious drubbing the shares of the too-big-to-fail Wall Street banks took on Thursday and Friday of last week. That’s not something that should be swept under the rug when markets are behaving like the early days of the last financial crisis in 2008 — which saw the largest Wall Street bank bailouts in history.
While the stock losses of the largest Wall Street banks were manageable last Thursday, they picked up steam on Friday. What was particularly surprising was that JPMorgan’s losses were on a par with those of Citigroup, with Citigroup shares losing 6.06 percent in the two day period while JPMorgan was off by 6.01 percent. Bank of America, which owns the giant Wall Street stock brokerage firm, Merrill Lynch, lost 7.95 percent in the two-day span.
Citigroup is under a criminal investigation for potential money laundering in connection with its Mexican unit, Banamex, after admitting to a felony for foreign currency rigging earlier this year. One would think the investigation would cause its shares to trade at a significant deficit to JPMorgan Chase during a market rout.
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