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Has the Stock Market Been Nationalized?
Welcome Shareholders, or, Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here
By now it's old news to say "the stock market has been nationalized," given that it was this past Friday evening when Treasury Secretary Paulson himself pretty much declared the same thing.
It's just that Paulson's statement came about an hour after my Friday post to this page. I said I had very recently heard someone ranting about why the government needs to intervene by directly purchasing shares in the stock market. I called it "a lunatic idea."
That was then, obviously. Now the more appropriate phrase is, "Welcome Shareholders," although "Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here" also comes to mind. Either way the government is in the market. So-are-you, like-it-or-not.
Yes, I know that Paulson spoke only about buying "financial" shares. But that's what the SEC said a month ago when it made short-selling illegal -- it began with a list of 799 financial stocks that investors could not short. Then the SEC added nearly 200 non-financials, including General Motors and CVS.
What's more, soon after the short-selling ban expired on Oct. 8, the American Bankers Association loudly demanded that the SEC "reinstate" the ban instantly if bank stock prices started going down again -- that is, if they started going down even more dramatically than they did during the ban.
Clearly the government did a one-up on that demand: instead of reinstating the short-selling ban, the Treasury will now proceed to buy bank shares. Needless to say, all the stock market news now proclaims that today's 936-point, "biggest one-day point gain ever" in the Dow Industrials was because "governments and central banks took aggressive steps to unlock the flow of credit."
Interesting correlation: It reminds me of one that I heard just like it less than a month ago, on the day after they imposed the short-selling ban -- stocks saw an explosive rally then, too. From there the major indexes began a free-fall on the order of 25%.
Will that scenario repeat itself? We answer that and many other questions, from a near-term and longer-term perspective. Today's
Short Term Update and the October
Elliott Wave Financial Forecast are online right now, with analysis, forecasts and labeled charts that will keep you ahead of the trend.
Click here to learn more.
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