Just a Taste: 3rd Quarter 2019 Wrap Up - Equity Overview & Rambus Chartology

This week is the 3rd Quarter 2019 Equity Overview with the quarterly blockbuster from Rambus Chartology. Check out the web presentation here for the quarterly financial charts and Rambus Chartology when posted on Thursday.

The U.S. equity market continues to outperform global equity markets. .

The Trump administration considers the U.S. stock market an essential performance indicator. Their target appears to be a Dow above 30,000. Last quarter I discussed what this means in terms of practical policies—from FASAB 56 to lower Fed interest rates to federal deregulation, and privatization efforts.

Also discussed were trends that could pinch corporate profits, including increased chances of recession, explosive U.S. sovereign debt, the decline of the unipolar model, and the challenges of the U.S.-China trade war and changing global supply lines. And, oh yes, the effort to start World War III.

This quarter, I will focus on the storm clouds gathering for the large cap US tech and health care companies that have contributed to the outperformance of the US stocks. The tech giants are the target of serious antitrust investigations by federal and state agencies. The global efforts to tax multinationals will increasingly limit jurisdictional flexibility. Large jury awards related to opioids and pesticides indicate a growing willingness to enforce expensive accountability against irresponsible corporate behavior.

Is the ability of the US political class to engineer outsize monopoly profits into its largest corporations coming to an end? Or, in the face of rising backlash against political corruption and inequality, is it simply shifting to secret revenues and assets engineered through the Fed, Treasury and mortgage markets? I will address the mother lode of all financial steroids – Secretary Mnuchin’s proposal for mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in combination with FASAB 56 and national security law