You’d think that with all the confusion and chaos in the Trump administration, the stock market would be on a roller coaster. Actually, it’s been the opposite, at least so far. Barron’s, Bloomberg News, and Yahoo Finance had articles about the lack of volatility the first week of February (on the 4th, 3rd, and 7th respectively, which makes me think they may have been echoing each other for lack of anything more interesting to write about).
So much for facts; now here’s my speculation on why. I think the rather spastic movements the stock market often shows could be due to the machinations of big money movers and shakers. First, I wondered if all those folks were too busy jockeying for position in the Trump administration and they didn’t have time to manipulate the stock market. Or by now, maybe they’re all scrambling to avoid going to jail. Anybody who thinks the FBI is on his tail is going to avoid doing anything that might attract attention. But as sleazy as the Trump administration seems, I couldn’t imagine it could have kept all of the ultra-rich manipulator class busy. There ought to be enough of them to fill half a dozen administrations, at least.
But then it hit me that all those folks ought to be worried about who’s watching them. If the FBI or NSA hasn’t tapped their own phones, has it tapped the phones of people they might be wheeling and dealing with? And how about Putin and the KGB, and maybe the Chinese, perhaps looking for ways to influence or blackmail them? Even if they try to avoid any kind of electronic communication and just meet and talk face to face, they almost can’t travel unnoticed. Even the movement of private jets can be tracked. Here on Daily Kos we’ve had it pointed out when people in Trump’s circle have turned up with their private planes spending a weekend at the same out of the way airport as someone who’s a Putin contact. We don’t know those folks met face to face, but it’s a reasonable guess they did.
Of course, there must be ways for those folks to travel while leaving almost no trace, but they’re not good at it; at least not yet. And they’re also not good at knowing what kind of remote communication they can trust to be private. They’ll probably get much better at sneaking around and at encrypting their electronic communication, or sending sealed letters by private couriers, but it will take months at least to make those adjustments. Meanwhile, they’ll be afraid to coordinate their actions to manipulate markets.
I doubt we’ll ever know if this was a real reason for the stock market’s calm, but I enjoy thinking that Trump has inconvenienced a lot of very rich folks and even made them paranoid. Join the club, plutocrats!