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Blackrock and a first for China policy
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/blackrock-gets-green-light-to-start-offering-mutual-funds-in-china-11623390321
BlackRock Survey: Overwhelming demand from workers, employers, and retirees for retirement income
June 03 2021 - 08:30AM
Business Wire
Plan sponsors concerned by the impact of COVID-19, though many savers feel they are still on track for retirement
Confidence in retirement readiness differs along lines of age group and gender
A large majority of workers saving for retirement through their employers’ 401(k) plans want options that will help them generate income in retirement, according to the fifth annual DC Pulse Survey from BlackRock (NYSE: BLK).
According to the survey, 89% of defined contribution (DC) plan participants are interested in owning a product designed to generate retirement income, and almost 9 in 10 said having guaranteed income in retirement would have a positive impact on their financial well-being. Respondents who were already retired also weighed in – 76% say having secure income in retirement makes a bigger difference than they thought it would. And employers agree, with 96% of plan sponsors indicating that they feel responsible for helping participants generate and/or manage their income in retirement.
While the SECURE Act of 2019 reduced barriers for plan sponsors to offer in-plan income solutions, adoption has lagged – due, in large part, to the necessary (though unforeseen) reprioritization of HR and benefits departments in response to the pandemic. Encouragingly, though, 82% of those who do not currently offer a retirement income solution plan to add one in the next 12 months.
“Retirement income is a new frontier, and we’re encouraged that front-footed plan sponsors are embracing retirement income solutions - but the demand is much more urgent than the pace of adoption,” said Anne Ackerley, Head of BlackRock’s Retirement Group. “Workers saving for retirement today are concerned that they are going to outlive their savings, or that they may not enjoy a high quality of life in retirement. The time is now for companies to provide their employees with solutions that can help bring peace of mind.”
The Impact of the Pandemic
The survey results also demonstrate that COVID-19 had a negative impact on retirement preparation for some – and for those plan participants who were already behind in their savings, the pandemic exacerbated their concerns. More than half (52%) of plan sponsors who keep track of short-term 401(k) loan withdrawals said employees used their 401(k) for emergency spending needs during 2020. Coupled with other impacts of the pandemic, such as furloughs and suspensions of company matches, 61% of plan sponsors said at least half of their employees were negatively affected in terms of their retirement readiness.
Encouragingly, 68% of DC plan participants still feel they are currently on track with retirement savings in 2021, with only 10% fearing they are not (21% are unsure where they stand). However, 47% of participants overall say that the pandemic has had some negative effect on how on track they are with saving for retirement.
“The effects of COVID-19 have been felt by American workers in different ways. We know that many people who lost their jobs were forced to withdraw from their long- term savings– but our data shows that this was also the case for a number of people who were fortunate enough to remain employed,” said Ackerley. “The good news is that there are resources for employers that will help them with a more holistic approach to financial planning and education for employees, such as the Emergency Savings Initiative. Accumulation, income, and short-term savings funds can be viewed as interlocking pieces in an overall plan for retirement security.”
Divergence across demographics
The survey found that savers who are earlier in their careers believe that they will not be able to enjoy the same quality of retirement as previous generations. When it comes to financial security in post-retirement, 76% of Millennials and 68% of Gen X’ers agree that people in their generation won’t have the level of retirement income that retirees used to have. The data also aligns with Millennials’ strong interest in retirement income, with 94% expressing interest in retirement income solutions.
Of all the groups surveyed, Gen X remains most uncertain about their future retirement security: 25% of Gen X plan participants are unsure if they are on track with their retirement savings, and another 13% say they are not (more likely than any other age group). Not saving enough, the cost of living, and other expenses are the reasons cited for their concerns.
Across all age groups, the responses to the survey along gender lines provided clear insights that women are more concerned and feel less prepared than men for their financial futures. 59% of women feel that they are on track with their retirement savings, compared to 78% of men. 55% of men are worried about outliving their retirement savings, compared to 64% of women.
“Our survey data reinforces what we have seen from previous industry studies on the gender savings gap, so it’s not surprising to see that women feel they are behind,” said Ackerley. “What’s helpful about these data points is that we know where we need to focus our efforts. We have an opportunity and a responsibility to help through enhanced plan design tools such as auto-enrollment, innovative solutions and leading educational resources to help savers understand what’s needed to get back on track and stay there.”
About BlackRock
BlackRock’s purpose is to help more and more people experience financial well-being. As a fiduciary to investors and a leading provider of financial technology, we help millions of people build savings that serve them throughout their lives by making investing easier and more affordable. For additional information on BlackRock, please visit www.blackrock.com/corporate
About the DC Pulse Survey
The BlackRock DC Pulse Survey is a research study of 225 large defined contribution plan sponsors in addition to over 1,000 plan participants and 300 retired participants in the U.S. The survey is executed by Escalent, Inc., an independent research company. All respondents were interviewed using an online survey conducted in March 2021. This is the fifth year that BlackRock has conducted the DC Pulse Survey to provide insights into the minds of participants, retirees and plan sponsors.
The plan sponsors who were interviewed had at least $300 million in assets, with one-third of the respondents serving in benefits or human resources roles, and the rest in finance, investment or business management for their organizations. The plan participants surveyed were employed full-time at the time of the survey and participating in their employer’s 401(k) or 403(b) plan, with at least $5,000 in assets in their current account. Retirees who participated in the survey were retired at least 10 years and previously enrolled in a 401(k) or 403(b) plan; some have stayed in plan after retirement. Broken down by age group, the sample size was 24% Millennial, 26% Gen X, 37% Boomer, and 13% Silent Generation. All respondents were interviewed using an online survey. For the sponsor sample, the survey’s margin of error is +/- 6.5 percentage points; for the participant sample, it is +/- 3.1 percentage points.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210603005135/en/
Media:
Thomasin Bentley
Thomasin.bentley@BlackRock.com
Kristen Rivera
Kristen.Rivera@BlackRock.com
https://ih.advfn.com/stock-market/NYSE/blackrock-BLK/stock-news/85278000/blackrock-survey-overwhelming-demand-from-workers
BlackRock Declares Quarterly Dividend of $4.13 on Common Stock
May 26 2021 - 03:50PM
Business Wire
BlackRock, Inc. (NYSE:BLK) today announced that its Board of Directors has declared a quarterly cash dividend of $4.13 per share of common stock, payable June 23, 2021 to shareholders of record at the close of business on June 4, 2021.
About BlackRock
BlackRock’s purpose is to help more and more people experience financial well-being. As a fiduciary to investors and a leading provider of financial technology, we help millions of people build savings that serve them throughout their lives by making investing easier and more affordable. For additional information on BlackRock, please visit www.blackrock.com/corporate
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210526006072/en/
Investor Relations
Samantha Tortora
212-810-5397
samantha.tortora@blackrock.com
Media Relations
Brian Beades
212-810-5596
brian.beades@blackrock.com
BlackRock’s Laurence D. Fink to Present at the 2021 Deutsche Bank Global Financial Services Conference on June 2nd
May 19 2021 - 01:00PM
Business Wire
BlackRock, Inc. (NYSE:BLK) today announced that Laurence D. Fink, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, is scheduled to speak at the 2021 Deutsche Bank Global Financial Services Conference on June 2nd, 2021, beginning at approximately 9:30 a.m. ET. A live audio webcast will be accessible via the “Investor Relations” section of BlackRock’s website, www.blackrock.com. A replay of the webcast will be available within 24 hours of the presentation and will remain accessible through the Company’s website for three months.
About BlackRock
BlackRock’s purpose is to help more and more people experience financial well-being. As a fiduciary to investors and a leading provider of financial technology, we help millions of people build savings that serve them throughout their lives by making investing easier and more affordable. For additional information on BlackRock, please visit www.blackrock.com/corporate | Twitter: @blackrock | LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/blackrock
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210519005662/en/
Investor Relations
Samantha Tortora
212-810-5397
samantha.tortora@blackrock.com
Media Relations
Brian Beades
212-810-5596
brian.beades@blackrock.com
https://ih.advfn.com/stock-market/NYSE/blackrock-BLK/stock-news/85159619/blackrock-s-laurence-d-fink-to-present-at-the-20
Fed going to have Blackrock buy all these busted SPACs to keep the market Ponzi going
Ponzis Go Boom!!!
by Kuppy • Mar 29, 2021 • 101 Comments
The SPAC market is in the process of detonating and it will take the Ponzi Sector with it.
By Harris “Kuppy” Kupperman, founder of Praetorian Capital, Adventures in Capitalism:
For the past few years, I have been critical of the Ponzi Sector. To me, these are businesses that sell a dollar for 80 cents and hope to make it up in volume. Just because Amazon (AMZN – USA) ran at a loss early on, doesn’t mean that all businesses will inflect at scale. In fact, many of the Ponzi Sector companies seem to have declining economics at scale—largely the result of intense competition with other Ponzi companies who also have negligible costs of capital.
I recently wrote about how interest rates are on the rise. If capital will have a cost to it, I suspect that the funding shuts off to the Ponzi Sector—buying unprofitable revenue growth becomes less attractive if you have other options. Besides, when you can no longer use presumed negative interest rates in your DCF, these businesses have no value. I believe the top is now finally in for the Ponzi Sector and a multi-year sector rotation is starting. However, interest rates are only a small piece of the puzzle.
Conventional wisdom says that the internet bubble blew up due to increasing interest rates. This may partly be true, but bubbles are irrational—rates shouldn’t matter—it is the psychology that matters.
I believe two primary forces were at play that finally broke the internet bubble; equity supply and taxes. Look at a deal calendar from the second half of 1999. The number of speculative IPOs went exponential. Most IPOs unlock and allow restricted shareholders to sell roughly 180 days from the IPO. Is it any surprise that things got wobbly in March of 2020 and then collapsed in the months after that? Line up the un-lock window with the IPOs. It was a crescendo of supply—even excluding stock option exercises and secondary offerings. The supply simply overwhelmed the number of crazed retail investors buying worthless internet schemes.
Back in 2000, I used to joke that in a scenario where a company wanted to raise equity capital, but insiders wanted to sell, they’d both dump shares on the market—but the insiders would get out first. What do you think that did to share prices as both parties fought for the few available bids?
However, the proximate cause of the internet bubble’s collapse was when people got their tax bills in March and had to sell stocks to pay their taxes in April. What’s the scariest thing in finance? It’s when you owe a fixed tax bill from the prior year, yet your portfolio starts declining. You start selling fast to stop the mismatch. Trust me, I’ve been there. Tax time is pushed back a bit this year, but it is coming.
I bring this all up, because the SPAC market is in the process of detonating and it will take the Ponzi Sector with it.
Let’s look back at the internet bubble. A VC firm would IPO 4 million shares at $20, the stock would open at $50 and end the day at $100. Everyone chased it to get in. Then the brokers would upgrade it and the CEO would go on TV. With a 4 million share float, it was easy to manipulate the shares higher. Often, the newly IPO’d company would level out well north of $100 a few weeks later. It was a virtuous cycle and everyone played the game.
What was left unsaid was that there were another 46 million shares held by management and VCs and these shares would hit the market 180 days later. At first, the market absorbed the new supply so no one showed concern—then the market choked. I wrote about this when talking about the QS unlock. This process is about to repeat, but now with the odd nuances of SPACs.
A typical SPAC deal involves a few hundred million dollars raised for the SPAC trust—this is the only real float. Then a few hundred million more is raised for the PIPE—these guys are buying at $10 because they plan to flip for a gain as soon as the registration statement becomes effective—which is often a few weeks after the deal closes. When a company merges with a SPAC, billions in newly printed shares are given to the former owners—those shares start to unlock a few months later in various tranches. Finally, the promoters behind the SPAC get to sell.
When you look at a pre-merger deal trading at a big premium to the $10 trust value, you’re looking at an iceberg. There might be ten or twenty restricted shares for every free trading share—all of these guys desperately want out. It’s a game theory exercise—how do you find enough bag-holders without destroying the price? Hence, part of why the current price is determined by an artificially restricted float and the unlocks come in tranches. As restricted shares come unlocked, the promoters lose control of the float and the house of cards collapses.
Part of the hilarity of SPACs is that the promoters claim to be aligned with shareholders because they exit last in terms of unlock tranches. What’s left unsaid is that their shares have almost a zero-cost basis—hence when they sell out at well under $10, it’s still all profit.
Meanwhile the acquired company insiders often have an even lower cost basis because they founded the company at a negligible cost, there were bidding wars by various SPACs which drove the valuations to nosebleed levels and the acquisition targets are often mostly fake anyway.
When there were only a few high-profile SPACs, this supply could be absorbed—very much like 1999 with internet IPOs. This made people unconcerned about the supply deluge.
Now we’re starting to enter the teeth of the unlock window from 2020 vintage SPACs. There are literally tens of billions a week in stock flooding the market—except there’s no natural shareholder base for these things. There are only so many retail punters who wake up and want to buy a fake “green” company with no revenue and no path to revenue—much less profits.
When everyone is making money in ESG themed frauds, it draws fresh capital into the bubble and helps inflate things. When the losses start stacking up, capital leaves—yet there are still hundreds of billions of dollars in SPAC shares waiting to be unlocked and dumped. Remember how their cost basis is effectively zero? The insiders and promoters literally do not care what price they sell at. It is the internet bubble all over again.
You may wonder how the SPAC bubble will infest the rest of the Ponzi Sector. It comes down to collateral and shareholder bases. On the collateral side, much of the Ponzi Sector bubble is built on leverage. That could be margin debt or YOLO call options, but it’s all leverage.
As asset values decline, brokers will force punters to de-lever. This will lead to waves of selling, leading to more forced selling. As for YOLO call options? They’re not exactly firm bedrock when it comes to a bubble. The SPACs and the Ponzi Sector are all tied together, because they all have the same shareholder base. As these owners take losses, they’ll be forced to sell “best in class” Ponzis like Tesla [TSLAQ].
Back in 1999, there were various firms that enabled the internet bubble. They had handshake agreements that they’d be given IPO allocations, on the understanding that they wouldn’t sell—in fact, they frequently bought more in the open market, often at many times the IPO price. This allowed VC firms to tighten up already tight floats and manipulate shares higher. As these firms outperformed, they had inflows, allowing them to continue buying the same companies and pushing shares higher—leading to more inflows.
It was a virtuous cycle and many firms worked together as wolf-packs in the same names. When redemptions came, these firms were forced to sell and the process unwound—except it was unusually speedy to the downside as the share prices were artificially propped up.
I have my sights on a certain ETF for this cycle. Go through ARK Innovation ETF’s [ARKK] position list, go through all the quasi-affiliated firms that have copied this position list. All these firms have surprising concentrations in the same names.
When it comes tumbling down, you don’t want to own any of these positions—especially the ones where ARKK owns more than 10% of the shares. You won’t want to own positions that are owned by people who own ARKK type positions as they’ll be forced sellers too. You want to be as far away from the Ponzi Sector ecosystem as possible.
I don’t know when it’s going to blow, but if I’m right that the top is in, the deluge isn’t too far off. Bubbles are highly unstable—if they’re not inflating, they’re usually bursting—there isn’t really a middle option.
I think the past few weeks are more than a simple pullback—the losses from the SPAC bubble are going to dent the Ponzi Sector psychology. With this in mind, I took my long book way down over the past few weeks (including my GameStop [GME] straddle for a nice score). That said, I don’t have shorts because this is still “Project Zimbabwe.” If I’m wrong, so be it. I’ll do just fine on my Event-Driven book. Besides, 2021 has already been a pretty spectacular year for me. By Harris Kupperman, founder of Praetorian Capital, Adventures in Capitalism.
https://wolfstreet.com/2021/03/29/ponzis-go-boom/
How we doin’ ??
Black rock for the big win.......
Now, let’s have good earnings......I mean, duhhhhh.......lol.
$$ BLK $$
Breaking News: $BLK Despite Improving Market Conditions, PNC's CEO Has Not Changed His Approach to M&A
Since the coronavirus pandemic first sent markets plunging, the $462 billion asset PNC Financial Services Group (NYSE: PNC) based in Pittsburgh has been looking to make a game-changing acquisition. The bank sold its $14 billion stake in the asset management firm BlackRock (NYS...
Read the whole news BLK - Despite Improving Market Conditions, PNC's CEO Has Not Changed His Approach to M&A
A stimulus package for the 99% of Americans is too hard for Congress to settle on but something for the 1% of American Billionaires is easily passed in by the Washington Congress and it’s Swamp chronies.
No problem in handing billions in taxpayer over to the 1% percenters vía Wall Street.
Finally I will end this with the most deepest understanding for investors who try to short Tesla and the markets in general on how the Fed Ponzi and taxpayers dollars keep the markets green for the foreseeable future as Tesla and the Stock Market are to Big to fail.
The SMCCF program began operations on May 12. By May 18 the Fed had spent $1.58 billion in taxpayer dollars buying up ETFs. The ultimate goal of the facility, at this point, is to spend $250 billion in taxpayer dollars on ETFs and secondary market corporate bonds. The U.S. Treasury Department was supposed to hand over $25 billion of taxpayer money to eat losses on the SMCCF program. Instead, without explanation, the latest data from the Fed shows that the Treasury deposited $37.5 billion into the SMCCF, suggesting the program is expecting losses of greater than $25 billion in taxpayer dollars.
The bulk of the purchases of ETFs were those issued by BlackRock, the company to whom the New York Fed has outsourced the program. The Fed is allowing BlackRock to buy up its own, previously sinking, ETFs as well as those of other ETF issuers. The New York Fed gave BlackRock a no-bid contract to run the program as investment manager. But that’s far from the only outrage.
Here’s where you need to pay close attention. The Fed released a list of the Wall Street firms that are selling these ETFs to the Fed’s bailout facility. The majority of the sellers just happen to be the very same firms that create these ETFs under the title of “Authorized Participants.”
We’ll let James Chen of Investopedia explain what function “Authorized Participants” perform for an ETF. He writes as follows:
“Authorized participants (AP) are one of the major parties at the center of the creation and redemption process for exchange-traded funds (ETF). They provide a large portion of liquidity in the ETF market by obtaining the underlying assets required to create a fund. When there is a shortage of shares in the market, the authorized participant creates more. Conversely, the authorized participant will reduce shares in circulation when supply [exceeds] demand. This can be done with the creation and redemption mechanism that keeps share prices aligned with its underlying net asset value (NAV).
“Authorized participants are responsible for acquiring the securities that the ETF wants to hold…In return, authorized participants receive a block of equally valued shares called a creation unit. Issuers can use the services of one or more authorized participants for a fund. Large and active funds tend to have a greater number of authorized participants. This also differs between various types of funds. Equities, on average, have more participants than bonds, perhaps due to greater trading volume.
“Traditionally, authorized participants are large (Mafia) banks like Bank of America (BAC), JPMorgan Chase (JPM), Goldman Sachs (GS), and Morgan Stanley (MS), among others. They do not receive compensation from a sponsor and have no legal obligation to redeem or create the ETF’s shares. Instead, authorized participants are compensated through activity in the secondary market or service fees collected from clients yearning to execute primary trades.”
That phrase in the above paragraph, highlighting that authorized participants “have no legal obligation to redeem or create the ETF’s shares” is part of the train wreck that is happening right now on Wall Street.
Ayan Bhattacharya and Maureen O’Hara wrote an outstanding paper for the CFA [Chartered Financial Analyst] Institute Research Foundation in January on the dangers of ETFs. They write as follows:
“ ‘Step away risk’ on the part of authorized participants is a concern, with some evidence of reduced authorized participant activity in stressful periods. This issue is especially serious in illiquid markets, where authorized participants are often also the dealers in the underlying markets.
“The use of ETFs as cash substitutes by money market funds and other investment products raises the prospect of problems in ETFs spreading to other markets.
“ETFs based on illiquid, nontransparent markets can face rebalancing risks, which can lead to systemic effects on both the ETF and the underlying [securities].”
The authors explain further:
“One reason this ‘step away’ risk can take on systemic importance is that it affects money managers holding ETFs in other types of funds. The rise of fixed-income ETFs has led many asset managers to use ETFs for cash management purposes. This practice of using ETFs as cash equivalents is only appropriate, however, if the ETFs can always be turned into cash immediately (and relatively without cost). Disruptions in the bond market, leading to disruptions in the creation and redemption process for fixed income ETFs, would undermine this ability. The European Systemic Risk Board has argued that such disruption could destabilize institutions that depend on ETFs for cash management. The Central Bank of Ireland, as part of a broader program to manage potential concentration risk, has proposed identifying which institutions act as authorized participants and how they are compensated for doing so.”
If, as the authors suggest, money market funds are holding bond ETFs as cash substitutes and they have now become illiquid, this may explain why the Fed had to also establish a Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility which has, as of last Wednesday, bailed out $29.86 billion of assets that no one else wanted.
As for the possibility that the biggest banks on Wall Street that hold the vast majority of deposits in the country might “step away” from doing their job of lending, we already have proof of that. We know that the Fed’s emergency repo loan program, which has funneled more than $9 trillion cumulatively in below market rate loans to Wall Street, began on September 17, 2019, months before there was a COVID-19 case anywhere in the world. We know it resulted from the biggest bank in the country stepping away from making repo loans because JPMorgan Chase’s CEO, Jamie Dimon, admitted that in an earnings call. (Other Wall Street banks likely stepped away as well.)
Congress needs to stop fiddling while Rome burns and start holding hearings to get at the truth of what’s happening on Wall Street.
The largest Banks and ETFs own Tesla and BlackRock who has been appointed by the Fed to buy stocks is a top ten owner of Tesla stock.
Rock on Tesla Ponzi. Don’t short Tesla the Fed has its back.
Blackrock now the Fed’s pet project to buy stocks to lift the stock market as an on need basis.
(Source: Federal Reserve's website)
You can see that according to the Exhibit B, this is the power of attorney language for BlackRock to “manage, supervise, and direct the investments” for the Fed’s account. Clearly, the language in Exhibit B says, “transact in any and all stocks, bonds, cash held for investment and other assets.”
Hi Budget.....how we doin’ ??
Well hello budget.......looks just fine to me.......
Yep......good earnings means big money !
Have a good day !!
You too, Budget !!
$$$ BLK $$$
Another nice day here, Budget..........!!
Yep, you're right Budget........
Nice to see you here again..........
You too !!!
Go $$ BLK $$
Hi Budget....!
Well, hello Budget........another nice day here......
Yep......the Analysts love us......
Very nice upgrade by Deutsche Bank to a buy rating........
Looking for increased share price into their earnings on October 13th.
Good luck, everyone !!
$$ BLK $$
BREAKING NEWS: $BLK Rolling Stone and Fidelity Take a Stand in Trump's Battle Against ESG Funds
There's a battle going on, and it could affect the future of investment options in your 401(k). The Department of Labor (DOL) under President Trump has taken a stand to keep ESG funds out of workplace-sponsored retirement plans. Opposing that stance are major financial firms like Fidelity and B...
In case you are interested BLK - Rolling Stone and Fidelity Take a Stand in Trump's Battle Against ESG Funds
Blackrock buying etfs to lift the futures market. Keep the Ponzi going. Keep those markets green is the name of the game. Money printing at its finest
As the US Dollar depreciates in value stocks keep on going higher as a result.
Keep on buying stocks for the Fed, Blackrock. Don’t forget Jerome Powell has a sizable investment in “Blacrack”. No conflict of interest there.
What, like - The party is over for gold y'mean (if it's up by a few bucks tonight) ?
Okay, so what're the odds that the gold price pulls back ?....Where if this here starts climbing then that's what is happening
Hate it when people can't see the trees thru the forest (or sumpthin' to that effect)
Is the US dollar plunging on down thru that line ?......
because if so.....That'd be awfully good for gold stocks
Turn out the lights, the party is over!
Powell is a member of that one percent class. According to his 2019 financial disclosure, his net worth could run as high as $55 million. Much of his investments are with Goldman Sachs (a Wall Street bank that is supervised by the Fed) or with BlackRock and its iShares Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs). The government mandated financial disclosures report investment values in a range. The upper value of Powell’s holdings with BlackRock is $11.6 million. The upper range of Powell’s holdings with Goldman Sachs is $16.55 million. The name Goldman Sachs has been shortened to “GS” in the disclosure document.
These would appear to be large conflicts of interest. BlackRock has been selected to manage the unprecedented buying of both investment grade and junk bonds on behalf of the Fed to the tune of approximately $750 billion according to the most recent term sheet from the Fed. Even more conflicted, the Fed will allow BlackRock to buy up its own sinking junk bond ETFs using taxpayer and Fed
News: $BLK Why PNC May Use a Different M&A Playbook Than It Did During the Great Recession
In 2008, amid the Great Recession, PNC Financial Services Group (NYSE: PNC) acquired National City Corp. in a deal that valued National City at $7 billion less than its tangible book value, according to The Wall Street Journal . The deal is considered to be a success by many, and PNC's CEO...
Read the whole news BLK - Why PNC May Use a Different M&A Playbook Than It Did During the Great Recession
"We're seeing an economy that is almost bipolar," BlackRock's Mr. Fink said. "Some parts of the economy are doing quite well, and some parts are doing quite poorly."
ie. Like ; Stock market trading versus Main Street realities ?
https://ih.advfn.com/stock-market/NYSE/blackrock-BLK/stock-news/82881442/blackrocks-profits-get-lift-from-volatility-wsj
Why will the Fed use Blackrock to buy stocks in the fake markets? The reason why this would happen is when the market begins to fall precipitously it will erode the paper value of people’s 401k accounts. This would induce fear and panic, and even cause psychological mindset of not wanting to spend in the economy. Need to keep the rich richer and the poor poorer in the Kingdom of Jerome Powell.
Blackrock now the Fed’s pet project to buy stocks to lift the fake stock markets as needed.
(Source: Federal Reserve's website)
You can see that according to the Exhibit B, this is the power of attorney language for BlackRock to “manage, supervise, and direct the investments” for the Fed’s account. Clearly, the language in Exhibit B says, “transact in any and all stocks, bonds, cash held for investment and other assets.”
Scott Minerd's opinion -- The Fed will likely buy stocks
Let’s see how well-known financial people are saying about this. Scott Minerd, Global Chief Investment Officer at Guggenheim Partner said in a recent CNBC article, that “a reckoning is coming, and soon. He expects the S&P 500 will retest its March 23 low of 2,237.40 over the next month, potentially crumbling to as low as 1,600.” It should be noted that Minerd is one of the more bearish people on Wall Street right now. Scott Minerd further adds, "there's a point where the Federal Reserve is going to have to pull out a bazooka," Minerd said in an interview. "And I think the option of buying stocks on the part of the Fed is on the table." Clearly, if the stock market does continue to fall due to sustained high unemployment rates, then it would erode confidence among consumers, small businesses and CEOs.
Just remember to pull out the blocks on the bottom when you want it to collapse into a steaming pile!
The SMCCF program began operations on May 12. By May 18 the Fed had spent $1.58 billion buying up ETFs. The ultimate goal of the facility, at this point, is to spend $250 billion on ETFs and secondary market corporate bonds. The U.S. Treasury Department was supposed to hand over $25 billion of taxpayer money to eat losses on the SMCCF program. Instead, without explanation, the latest data from the Fed shows that the Treasury deposited $37.5 billion into the SMCCF, suggesting the program is expecting losses of greater than $25 billion.
The bulk of the purchases of ETFs were those issued by BlackRock, the company to whom the New York Fed has outsourced the program. The Fed is allowing BlackRock to buy up its own, previously sinking, ETFs as well as those of other ETF issuers. The New York Fed gave BlackRock a no-bid contract to run the program as investment manager. But that’s far from the only outrage.
Here’s where you need to pay close attention. The Fed released a list of the Wall Street firms that are selling these ETFs to the Fed’s bailout facility. (See chart above.) The majority of the sellers just happen to be the very same firms that create these ETFs under the title of “Authorized Participants.”
We’ll let James Chen of Investopedia explain what function “Authorized Participants” perform for an ETF. He writes as follows:
“Authorized participants (AP) are one of the major parties at the center of the creation and redemption process for exchange-traded funds (ETF). They provide a large portion of liquidity in the ETF market by obtaining the underlying assets required to create a fund. When there is a shortage of shares in the market, the authorized participant creates more. Conversely, the authorized participant will reduce shares in circulation when supply [exceeds] demand. This can be done with the creation and redemption mechanism that keeps share prices aligned with its underlying net asset value (NAV).
“Authorized participants are responsible for acquiring the securities that the ETF wants to hold…In return, authorized participants receive a block of equally valued shares called a creation unit. Issuers can use the services of one or more authorized participants for a fund. Large and active funds tend to have a greater number of authorized participants. This also differs between various types of funds. Equities, on average, have more participants than bonds, perhaps due to greater trading volume.
“Traditionally, authorized participants are large banks like Bank of America (BAC), JPMorgan Chase (JPM), Goldman Sachs (GS), and Morgan Stanley (MS), among others. They do not receive compensation from a sponsor and have no legal obligation to redeem or create the ETF’s shares. Instead, authorized participants are compensated through activity in the secondary market or service fees collected from clients yearning to execute primary trades.”
That phrase in the above paragraph, highlighting that authorized participants “have no legal obligation to redeem or create the ETF’s shares” is part of the train wreck that is happening right now on Wall Street.
Ayan Bhattacharya and Maureen O’Hara wrote an outstanding paper for the CFA [Chartered Financial Analyst] Institute Research Foundation in January on the dangers of ETFs. They write as follows:
“ ‘Step away risk’ on the part of authorized participants is a concern, with some evidence of reduced authorized participant activity in stressful periods. This issue is especially serious in illiquid markets, where authorized participants are often also the dealers in the underlying markets.
“The use of ETFs as cash substitutes by money market funds and other investment products raises the prospect of problems in ETFs spreading to other markets.
“ETFs based on illiquid, nontransparent markets can face rebalancing risks, which can lead to systemic effects on both the ETF and the underlying [securities].”
The authors explain further:
“One reason this ‘step away’ risk can take on systemic importance is that it affects money managers holding ETFs in other types of funds. The rise of fixed-income ETFs has led many asset managers to use ETFs for cash management purposes. This practice of using ETFs as cash equivalents is only appropriate, however, if the ETFs can always be turned into cash immediately (and relatively without cost). Disruptions in the bond market, leading to disruptions in the creation and redemption process for fixed income ETFs, would undermine this ability. The European Systemic Risk Board has argued that such disruption could destabilize institutions that depend on ETFs for cash management. The Central Bank of Ireland, as part of a broader program to manage potential concentration risk, has proposed identifying which institutions act as authorized participants and how they are compensated for doing so.”
If, as the authors suggest, money market funds are holding bond ETFs as cash substitutes and they have now become illiquid, this may explain why the Fed had to also establish a Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility which has, as of last Wednesday, bailed out $29.86 billion of assets that no one else wanted.
As for the possibility that the biggest banks on Wall Street that hold the vast majority of deposits in the country might “step away” from doing their job of lending, we already have proof of that. We know that the Fed’s emergency repo loan program, which has funneled more than $9 trillion cumulatively in below market rate loans to Wall Street, began on September 17, 2019, months before there was a COVID-19 case anywhere in the world. We know it resulted from the biggest bank in the country stepping away from making repo loans because JPMorgan Chase’s CEO, Jamie Dimon, admitted that in an earnings call. (Other Wall Street banks likely stepped away as well.)
Congress needs to stop fiddling while Rome burns and start holding hearings to get at the truth of what’s happening on Wall Street.
Blackrock the Fed's buddie has been told to buy Junk Bonds. What a joke the markets have become
Is the seller also the buyer?
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/12/the-fed-is-starting-up-its-program-to-purchase-corporate-bond-etfs.html
Fed Chair Powell Has Upwards of $11.6 Million Invested with BlackRock, the Firm that Will Manage a $750 Billion Corporate Bond Bailout Program for the Fed
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 5, 2020 ~
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Fed Chairman Jerome Powell at Press Conference, April 29, 2020
Most Americans likely assume that Jerome Powell, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, is an economist, like the prior chairs of the Fed over the past 40 years. He’s not. Powell is a former investment banker at the Wall Street firm, Dillon Read; a former partner at the controversial private equity and leveraged buyout firm, the Carlyle Group, which has spent over $1 billion over the past decade lobbying the federal government; and a former lawyer at Davis Polk, a Big Law firm that played a key role advising the government and Treasury in the 2008 Wall Street bailout.
Powell’s background would be strange enough but now consider this. The Vice Chairman for Supervision at the Fed, Randal Quarles, who is in charge of supervising the largest and most dangerous Wall Street bank holding companies in the U.S., has an uncannily similar background to Powell. Quarles also worked previously at Davis Polk and the Carlyle Group. (Powell and Quarles are also good friends, according to Senator Elizabeth Warren.)
Both men were well schooled in leveraged buyouts before coming to the Fed. Both men are now involved in what is effectively levering up $454 billion of taxpayers’ money provided to the Fed under the recently passed CARES Act into a $4.5 trillion leveraged buyout fund of toxic debt from Wall Street banks. After taxpayers’ take the first $454 billion in losses on those purchases, the remainder may be sold off to private investors. If this sounds to you like a set-up on behalf of the one percent, it should.
Powell is a member of that one percent class. According to his 2019 financial disclosure, his net worth could run as high as $55 million. Much of his investments are with Goldman Sachs (a Wall Street bank that is supervised by the Fed) or with BlackRock and its iShares Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs). The government mandated financial disclosures report investment values in a range. The upper value of Powell’s holdings with BlackRock is $11.6 million. The upper range of Powell’s holdings with Goldman Sachs is $16.55 million. The name Goldman Sachs has been shortened to “GS” in the disclosure document.
These would appear to be large conflicts of interest. BlackRock has been selected to manage the unprecedented buying of both investment grade and junk bonds on behalf of the Fed to the tune of approximately $750 billion according to the most recent term sheet from the Fed. Even more conflicted, the Fed will allow BlackRock to buy up its own sinking junk bond ETFs using taxpayer and Fed money. (See here and here.)
Here’s another thing you likely don’t know about Fed Chairman Jerome Powell. Some of the smartest, most respected Senate Democrats did not vote in favor of confirming Powell for the job of Fed Chairman. Those included Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut; Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey; Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York; Senator Kamala Harris of California; Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts; Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon; Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont; and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.
From the Senate floor on January 23, 2018, Senator Elizabeth Warren said this about why she would not vote in favor of Powell for Fed Chairman:
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Senator Elizabeth Warren Speaks from the Senate Floor Against the Confirmation of Jerome Powell as Fed Chairman on January 23, 2018
“I am deeply concerned that as soon as Governor Powell unpacks his boxes in the Chairman’s office, he will begin weakening the new rules Congress and the Fed put in place after the 2008 financial crisis. And he will have help: right down the hall will be his ‘close friend,’ Randal Quarles, the Fed’s new Vice Chair for Supervision. Governor Powell told me when we met that he intended to rely a lot on Vice Chair Quarles on regulatory issues.
“That is a really dangerous prospect. Before coming to the Fed, Vice Chair Quarles spent more than a decade in private equity, where he made his mark arguing for weaker rules on big banks. And he’s gotten a running start now that he’s at the Fed. In a speech a few weeks ago at his old private equity firm, Quarles announced that he was working on reducing capital standards for Wall Street banks, weakening the Volcker rule, and making stress tests easier for big banks to pass — in other words, he’s already set up his to-do list to gut measures put in place after the financial crisis that are there to try to keep our economy safer.
“So Governor Powell says he will take his cues from a guy who wants to get rid of as many rules as he can and take the teeth out of the rules that he can’t. No thank you. That will make American families less safe. It will make the American economy less safe.
“And to make matters worse, Powell’s gifts to the giant banks will come at a time when banks of all sizes made gigantic profits last year and got giant tax giveaways in the bill that was passed in December. Good grief — when will enough be enough for these guys? But even with banks rolling in money, the army of lobbyists and executives have come back, storming Capitol Hill and the halls of the Fed, spinning this story that financial rules are throttling them and need to be cut back.”
Under Powell and Quarles, the rules on everything from the amount of reserves held at the Fed by the mega banks to the Volcker Rule have been gutted until they are essentially meaningless.
That should have been a given considering that the Washington Post reported that Powell, in the nine months prior to his confirmation hearing, had “formal meetings or calls 50 times this year with the heads of Wall Street investment banks such as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Wells Fargo and Deutsche Bank, according to a copy of his calendar through Sept. 30.”
On the subject of Powell’s stated desire to roll back regulations on the Wall Street banks that were contained in the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation of 2010, to prevent another Wall Street financial collapse such as occurred in 2008, the following exchange occurred between Powel and Senator Elizabeth Warren during his Senate confirmation hearing on November 28, 2017:
Warren: “So before the 2008 crisis the Fed had a lot of authority to regulate and supervise the biggest banks in the country. But they failed to use that authority. When times were good, it looked like maybe we didn’t need strong rules. And then when the Fed’s failure to put strong rules in place ended up costing millions of people their jobs, millions of people their homes and millions of people their savings. Under Chairman Yellen’s leadership for the past four years, the Chair has adopted a number of rules to reduce the risk of another financial crisis. And you have supported those rules and helped implement them. I understand that now if you are confirmed you intend to take another look at those rules.
“In your written testimony you say that you will, and I’ll quote you, ‘continue to consider appropriate ways to ease regulatory burdens.’ So let me ask this. You specifically say that you’ll look for ways to roll the rules back. Are there any rules you believe should be made stronger?”
Powell: “Well, I do, yes. If you think of the four principle pillars of reform, I think they can all be made stronger and all be made more transparent, clearer and efficient. I’ve also said there are a number of things I wouldn’t roll back.”
Warren: “So what are the rules you said you would make stronger?”
Powell: “Well, I think with resolution. We will expect firms to make progress on resolvability, on stress testing…”
Warren: “So you would want to see rules that are more aggressive on the living wills, for example.”
Powell: “Yes, and I’m not so much thinking of more aggressive rules as our expectation…”
Warren: “Well, that’s the question I’m asking about. If you’re going to revisit the rules for roll-back purposes, which is what you said in your testimony, the question I’m asking is the reverse. I don’t want to see a one-way street here where it’s all about rolling back rules and it’s not considering the places where the rules need to be stronger.”
Powell: “So I get your question. I would say there are a lot of problems that we need to address in the banking system. I do think that we’ve had eight years now of writing new rules and, honestly, I can’t really think of a place where we are lacking an important rule. It’s really a question now of dealing with things from a supervisory standpoint.”
Warren: “So of all the rules the Fed has issued during your time, you’ve been there for five years – on capital, on leverage, on liquidity, on stress tests – you don’t thinkk a single one should be made tougher?”
Powell: “Honestly, Senator, I think they’re tough enough.”
Warren: “Well, okay. I got to say this worries me. But let me take a look for just a minute here at the rules you say you want to roll back. A few years ago the Fed and other agencies finalized the Volcker Rule with your support on that. It prohibits banks from trading on their own account unless it directly relates to customer service. And this addresses one of the main ways that banks got into trouble on the build up of the financial crisis that sent them to Congress for a $700 billion bailout. Do you support significant changes in the Volcker Rule that apply to big banks, for example, by exempting additional forms of trading?”
Powell: “I do support a rewrite of the Volcker Rule. I do believe we can do that in a way that’s favorable to both the language and the intent of the Volcker Rule.”
Warren: “So you would favor exempting more trading, for example.”
Powell: “I would favor tailoring the application of the…”
Warren: “Okay, I would call that weakening the rule…But I am deeply concerned that you believe that the biggest regulatory problem in the country right now is that the rules are too hard on Wall Street banks. That kind of mindset led the Fed to ignore the financial system risks before 2008. It helped lead to the financial crisis and it helped lead to the recession that followed it. So, I’m worried that we not go down this path again. Because if we do, it’s going to be the same thing. And that is that millions of families are going to pay the price while the banks end up once again getting bailed out and with record profits.”
That day predicted by Warren has now arrived. And it arrived four months before there was any case of COVID-19 reported anywhere in the world. See our timeline of the Wall Street financial crisis here and our report that the Fed had pumped $6.6 trillion cumulatively in emergency loans to Wall Street before the first death from COVID-19 had occurred in the U.S.
At Powell’s press conference on April 29 he was asked by a reporter about his earlier stance that the U.S. government needed to get its fiscal house in order and get the growing national debt under control. Powell answered that “This is not the time to act on those concerns.”
When we have a U.S. Treasury Secretary that’s a former Goldman Sachs banker (and foreclosure king during the last financial crisis) handing over $454 billion of taxpayers’ money to be used as “loss absorbing capital” to fund a $4.54 trillion leveraged bailout fund for Wall Street, we think that now is exactly the time to hold web-based Senate Banking hearings, open to the public, to get to the bottom of just what’s going on here.
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Icahn Called BlackRock An Extremely Dangerous Company the Fed Has Chosen It to Manage Its Corporate Bond Bailout Programs
Carl Icahn Created a Cartoon About BlackRock and Its Junk Bond ETFs Going Over a Cliff
In 2015, the legendary Wall Street investor, Carl Icahn, called BlackRock an extremely dangerous company. Icahn was specifically talking about BlackRock’s packaging of junk bonds into Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) and calling them “High Yield,” which the average American doesn’t understand is a junk-rated bond. The ETFs trade during market hours on the New York Stock Exchange, giving them the aura of liquidity when one needs it. Icahn said: “I used to laugh with some of these guys…I used to say, you know, the mafia has a better code of ethics than you guys. You know you’re selling this crap.” Icahn warned that “if and when there’s a real problem in the economy, there’s going to be a rush for the exits like in a movie theatre, and people want to sell those bonds, and think they can sell them, there is no market for them
News: $BLK This Clean Energy Stock Fuels Up Its High-Octane Dividend Growth Plan
NextEra Energy Partners (NYSE: NEP) has one of the boldest dividend growth strategies in the energy sector. The clean energy -focused company currently plans to increase its dividend at a 12% to 15% annual rate through 2024. That's a fast pace, considering the company's current yield of 3.8...
In case you are interested BLK - This Clean Energy Stock Fuels Up Its High-Octane Dividend Growth Plan
Just started looking into this. Saw some nice gains recently, curious whats going on
BlackRock reaching new highs today after stellar results. Hoping to reach $500 soon.
Some don't like followers ;)
In other words the Rothschild's were loosing money and slaves so they decided to steal about 15% of middle class wealth to maintain control.
#FatFinger #BuyTheDip
Blk continuously beasting out lately! Is this headed straight to $500 ?
Great Recession ~ 2007-2010
The Great Recession was related to the financial crisis of 2007–08 and U.S. subprime mortgage crisis of 2007–09
The Great Recession has resulted in the scarcity of valuable assets in the market economy and the collapse of the financial sector in the world economy.
contraction phase of a business cycle
The Great Recession met the IMF criteria for being a global recession
Another narrative focuses on high levels of private debt in the US economy. USA household debt as a percentage of annual disposable personal income was 127% at the end of 2007, versus 77% in 1990.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Recession
BlackRock BLK PE analysis implies stock's 10% overvalued b4 earnings Friday:
PE Multiples Analysis
any marijuana interest with the black rock group?
NBRI, SLTA, or RGI (Ruby Gold Inc,)
MAybe Blackrock should invest in the mining industry for example: NBRI, RGI (ruby Gold Inc,) or SLTA
Time to get some on the dip. With QE continuing this is easy money
Investor-Day-2013 details
Notable remarks.. Read here
http://www.earningsimpact.com/Transcript/81715/BLK/Blackrock%2c-Inc----BlackRock-Investor-Day-2013
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