StreetSmartPost

Saturday, December 26th, 2009. 12:45 am. Sorry to be so late. Tech problems.

Wall Street’s lobbying efforts to derail regulation of financial firms continue to be effective.

Although responsible for significant parts of the financial sector meltdown, which has had regulators calling for stronger regulations of the way they are created and traded, regulation of derivatives trading is the latest proposed reform pushed to the back burner, and even off the stove, in the House reform bill now being debated and revised in the Senate.

Generally traded off exchanges in semi-secret trades, which leave investors, including institutions, uninformed as to pricing, margin, and risk utilized in the trades, proposed reforms included a requirement that all derivative trading take place on exchanges, where prices and other details of the trades would be publicly visible.

However, Wall Street lobbyists were effective in convincing the House that trading of derivatives doesn’t require such strict control.

Of course not. It would cut drastically into the extra profits Wall Street dealers can make by trading out of public sight and scrutiny.

In any event, the bill was watered down so that it’s estimated that 40% of derivatives trading is exempted, creating more than enough loop-holes for Wall Street dealers to drive trucks through.

Thursday in the U.S. stock market.

In a typical half-session in the holiday season there were few participants, only 0.32 billion shares traded. Again there was no volatility, the Dow trading in a total intraday range of 60 points.

The Dow closed up 53 points, or 0.5%. The S&P 500 closed up 0.5%. The NYSE Composite closed up 0.5%. The Nasdaq closed up 0.7%. The Russell 2000 closed up 0.5%. The DJ Transportation Avg. closed up 0.1%

Global markets for the week.

A very positive week after two flat to negative weeks.

If you’d like to see a three-month chart of any or all of the abo
ve indexes click here, and then click on any of the markets in the similar list at the left side of the page it takes you to.

What’s next for stock markets?

Next week will be another shortened week in the U.S., with the market closed Friday, New Year’s Day.

There will be only a few important potential market-moving economic reports next week, including the Case-Shiller Home Price Index on Tuesday and New Home Sales on Wednesday. To see the full schedule click here, and look at the left side of the page it takes you to.

Stock Market Patterns.

The next weekly pattern is the next ‘monthly strength period’, which is due to begin on Wednesday and to run through Thursday, January 7.

Interesting Chart of the Morning.

Gold was down for the week, getting as low as $1,086 intraday, but rallied the last two days to $1,105.

Please scroll down to see other recent ‘Interesting Charts of the Morning’.

I’ll be back Monday morning after a look at events over the weekend, action in Asian markets Sunday night, and early pre-open news and reports Monday morning.

Meanwhile, to read my weekend newspaper column ‘Is Stock Market Seasonality a Myth After ALL?’ click here!

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