I was discussing Goldman Sachs’ recent profit at taxpayer expense with a friend of mine, who is a very sophisticated and successful trader, and he sent me this email summarizing certain aspects of their operations:
I wanted to show you how Goldman Sachs "makes" money. Go to www.stockcharts.com and look up the symbol ICE. Over the past few days the stock has had two of its largest down bars EVER. No one knew what was happening or why, yet the volume was exploding and there were no upticks even during the day. As it was happening Goldman Sachs had a research note coming out on the stock, they gave the information that they were going to down grade the stock to their largest clients and their own trading floor. But wait, you say that the SEC would call this insider trading! That is true, but the SEC has been bought and paid for by the market makers years ago along with the congress. The SEC has actually made this practice legal because they say it’s not insider trading! The bottom line is their research note dropping the stock from buy to neutral was HUGE information to the market place.
This is how Goldman Sachs has been raping and pillaging in the markets for years. It’s short term price manipulation but it’s actually legal according to the SEC.
You notice on the chart that when they actually came out with the report (yesterday) that the stock went up:). That is because all the large clients and Goldman's traders all bought back the shares they shorted on the announcement. It’s called sell the rumor buy the news, or vice versa. This strategy of theirs works even better on the upside since the general public and even traders in general like to buy more than sell stocks. This is illegal activity and yet it occurs right in front of the SEC every stinking day!
Matt Taibbi’s recent article about GS was completely wrong in its accusations, but 100% right in the general idea. They manipulate markets short term only; long term trends are made by the fundamentals, and bubbles are made by the mob (the public). GS in reality can be caught up by the mob just like everyone else. They had huge losses last year as oil dropped from 140 to 35 and their traders were crushed in October and November trying to buy the lows early.
The IPO scam is another way they "make" money. They give their large clients access to the IPO 24 hours before it goes public and then they sell into the public buying on day one. 99% of their money is made short term via this sort of scam activity and through their market-making transactions.
It was a beautiful screw job. In 2000 they did this stuff all the time in tech stocks. Dell would get smooshed one day for no apparent reason and then the next GS would downgrade them.
I thought you'd appreciate seeing their slimy activities in real time and just how it is they "make" money.