I’m a fan of Michael Lewis. It started with me when I read his iconic book on the bond traders at Solomon Brothers titled ‘Liar’s Poker’. Since reading the book I’ve read everything he’s written book-wise.
This video above is after he wrote ‘The Flashboys’ in which he asserts the markets are rigged against the average investor. They’re especially rigged if four senators on the Senate Finance Committee are making prescient trades based on insider information…just saying.
Great for Oklahoma as eighty-five year old climate change denier Jim Inhoffe made the dubious Final Four. I’m sure in Oklahoma the science denier will easily be re-elected once again taking him into his nineties in the Senate even though his presence has done nothing to prevent Donald Trump from allowing the Saudis to do whatever they want with the independent oil producers in America.
The book Flash Boys goes into fascinating detail on how the market institutions have a built in edge against the average investor. It’s a great financial question? Are the markets inherently rigged like Vegas?
Of course they are… even if Warren Buffet wants to deny it.
The markets were interesting yesterday as investors guestimated oil had bottomed out at $20 dollar a barrel. Oil had its best ever day with West Texas crude getting back up to the $25 a barrel benchmark. But I’d be careful still with oil if you’re thinking bout buying into an oil ETF fund for one simple reason…there’s a mass overabundance of the commodity. Yesterday was just bottom feeding.
Both Devon and Continental had a nice little rebound day, but both are still a combined $150 billion below what their market value was maybe eight or nine years ago.
In closing, I almost fell out of my chair laughing today when Trump claimed he was very much against stock buy back plans which came in torrents after Mitch McConnell got his corporate tax cut passed.
Does anybody in America remember one instance of Donald Trump warning of the danger of stock buy back plans during the beer keg party at the White House the day the cuts were passed into law?
I’d love to hear when that happened from a Trump defender.
Never give a sucker an even break…and kick him when he’s down: The Donald Trump mantra.