My Certainty

Nothing is certain but death and taxes.

Is there suppose to be correlation or causal relationship between the two though?

There's a "trader tax" proposed by this public servant douche bag from Oregon, Peter Defazio has proposed a 0.25% trading tax on all transaction in stocks, options, and futures. It may not sound like a lot, but consider this: most online brokers transaction fees are about $7, meaning that any stocks you purchase for your retirement account, IRA, etc over $2800 you are essentially doubling your transaction fees. For us prop traders most of us our commission fees are so low it's negligible and this "minuscule" trader tax is really quite significant. Does that mean we can't make money now? Of course not. The point is that this is absolutely unnecessary, ill-advised, and ill-intentioned.

Here's a clip of his interview on Fox Busniess. Normally I despise Fox News with a passion, especially that angry leprechaun that we somehow call a journalist Bill O'Reily but I have to say that Fox Business is actually pretty impressive, especially the HD version. It would make me a very happy person if we can get Bloomberg news or Fox Business in the office instead of CNBC.

The intent of this is to have the tax fund the $700 billion TARP. Have Wall Street pay for Wall Street I guess you can say. Hmm... interesting, because I am not Wall Street. Your grandmother buying for her retirement is not Wall Street. We are not the Big Boys with our big swinging dicks getting in way over our heads. There's so much cash just sitting on the sideline right now and this tax is definitely not going to inspire confidence for people to get in. Or any taxes for that matter. Most people knew about Obama's intention to raise taxes, especially on the rich but I have to say even I'm surprised that he's doing this so quickly. Chalk me up under the Keynesian camp but I believe that in a time or economic crisis the government should increase spending and cut taxes. Yeah, it sucks the deficit is large right now but now is not the time to raise taxes. A few years down the line when the market has recovered, then you do it, but of course don't do it too close to re-election time right?

As far as I know this bill is just sitting in the committee stage and not going anywhere but with all the anti-Wall Street sentiment right now I wouldn't be surprised if it builds momentum. If it does get passed though, it's gonna drive another coffin into the market. One of the biggest thing us traders do is we provide liquidity in situations of a huge influx of orders and if it's gone you're going to see larger, more erratic drops in the market. This is kind of like when they put out a ban on short selling last year, thinking that it's going to help but it's gonna totally backfire with a vengeance.

What really got me fuming was that this Defaggio guy says that this would not hurt a lot of his constituents. Ok, none of the people that voted for him is invested in securities? When the market drops another leg none of them will get hurt right? They all have their cash stashed under a huge Olympics size pool mattress?? You want to make something that can be resolved in 2-3 years time into 10-20 years then go right ahead. I really just don't like smug bastards that talk out of their asses and have to have a script to look at when he's being interviewed. Obviously he doesn't have all the facts yet.

Speaking of death... my mom is in Taiwan right now and she went to get a follow up because she suspected last year that she has breast cancer. I feel kind of bad that I'm not reacting stronger to this but maybe it's just because after years of Dale Carnegie training I don't really get stressed out over things. It could very well be nothing. Even if it is something it is very treatable if it's caught early. My grandmother also had a stroke who is now rehabbing. Sigh... I might have to take some time off and fly back for a week or two.