I always thought the stock market was traded a lot with computers, but I was shocked to see on Fox Business News last week, that 85% of all stock trades are done by computer! Wow! Locally, a vice president of J.C. Penney, or maybe he is the president, I am not sure as I don’t know him, lives in a beautiful farm here, and in our church is a former J.C. Penney store manager. I have a bit of a soft spot for J.C. Penney, and especially since they have a great, huge store in my town. I now even have a J.C. Penney charge card. Last week JCP stock was a dollar. Six months ago it was a bit under two dollars. I know Penney is in deep trouble, or at least isn’t doing too well, so maybe if it goes to 75 cents, I’ll buy a thousand shares. A gamble? Of course, but for $750, if they go that low, maybe they’ll pull themselves up to a buck or two, and I’ll make lunch money.
I mention this because I don’t own a single share of stock. If I tried to buy a thousand shares of JCP at 75 cents a share, I wonder if the 85% of computer trading would allow that. When 85% of stock trades are done by computer, isn’t it very possible that those computers can, or could be, influenced or made to do trades for the benefit of a hacker, foreign insider, or entity who owns millions of shares? A hedge fund? After all, a foreign hacker disrupted several major American newspapers last week, causing them untold problems. A headline for a story in Sunday’s Drudge Report, said “U.S. retirees try to keep cool as stocks tumble.” Did some computer hack in China cause stocks to go to their lowest level since Hoover was president? Isn’t the economy doing very well under Trump? Isn’t unemployment at a virtual all time low under Trump? Aren’t corporations doing very well and bringing hundreds of billions back to the U.S., thanks to Trump? Has the stock market fallen out of bed, thanks to a computer hacking Democrat with pull, such as maybe Bloomberg, who will possibly run against Trump in 2020?
Trump had a bumper strip saying, “Drain the Swamp,” and I have one. Isn’t the D.C. swamp so screwed up, that it really needs to be drained? Schumer, who heads the demo Senate, a couple of decades ago introduced a bill calling for a $25 billion wall on our southern border, and now is aghast at a $5 billion request from Trump? D.C. is a swamp, and I think the New York Stock Exchange is also. When the market began to crumble, many got out, and guess where they put their dollars? Into bonds, which are just another fake paper value. U.S. bonds and dollars, are backed by the “Full Faith and Credit of the U S Government.” That doesn’t do much for me, but it seems to impress 99% of investors in the stock market, which remember, is 85% traded by computers. Yuk.
What happened to gold and silver prices as the stock market crashed? They went up. How’s bit coin doing for the fools that bought tiny shares in a brass coin? Not too well, and another Wall Street Journal article last week said that people should get out of bit coin. It was the second such Journal article in the last month. I wrote several columns about bit coin before the Journal said a word. The Journal should tell people to get out of stocks and get into real money for thousands of years. We have them, if you are clairvoyant enough to know the difference between fake or real anything, and especially pieces of paper (fake wealth) or gold and silver (real wealth), and if you also realize that you can latch on to real money for 1%, including delivery, and no other charges. Pass them on to your kids with no inheritance taxes or just admire the beauty and security of gold and silver in your hands or safe. don@coloradogold.com