Tale of ‘The Tape’

The markets referred to daily in the financial press are composed of Wall Street trading on regulated stock exchanges, less formal Over the Counter (NASDAQ) markets, organized commodity exchanges worldwide, and specialized trading in major financial centers across the globe.

Old timers often refer to price reporting as “the tape”, a reference to a 19^th century telegraphic system that reported individual security transactions. By extension, one “fighting the tape” meant going against factual trends (i.e., the markets are poised to remain positive) because he presumes to be better informed. This also would be known as a contrarian.

In a vast industrial sector, price levels are indicative of anticipated corporate performance. Recent markets that have risen to record breaking levels have given huge thumbs up to GOP economics and the leadership of President Donald J. Trump.

High speed electronic data transfers have sent Edison’s ticker tape to museums. Modern trading desks are where authority to assume billions of dollars of risk is granted to alert young people who may not have reached their 30th birthdays.

Many believe the free market performance in a competitive marketplace driven by perfect competition is the most reliable indicator of future pricing of equities and commodities. Perfect competition is defined as the situation prevailing in a market in which buyers and sellers are so numerous and well informed that all elements of monopoly are absent, and the market price of a commodity is beyond the control of any single individual buyer or seller. It is a classical economic theory.

The world’s trading in wheat, crude oil, strategic metals and international markets for a nation’s currency, provide spot pricing (today) or a fixed future price defined by delivery at distant point of time. A user of cotton, for example, will set his raw material cost by purchasing a given amount of the commodity at a fixed price for future delivery. Sellers of cotton, farmers for example, eliminate market risk by selling their anticipated production for future delivery.

There are many investors who enter the market as speculators and their risk is their own capital based on an individual analysis of market conditions. Publicly traded stocks anticipate corporate earnings and dividends and a rising equity price indicates belief in an enterprise’s growth over time. Collective wisdom, many economists believe, has a superior predictive capability.

So, today’s “tape” is saying that tax reductions, less regulation and decentralization of decision making is good for most Americans. Anticipated growth seems to be a more laudable goal than redistribution, espoused by the left.

Let’s turn to the anti-Trump political climate that emanates from believers in progressivism. They believe so strongly in government control they are unrealistic in their analysis of public data. They are fighting the tape.

The Trump assertive leadership, while something new to Washington, has found favor among Americans. Wall Street performance says so and all the tales of gloom and doom from the disciples of the FDR New Deal and the Johnson Great Society are clearly backward looking using faulty economic logic. Similarly flawed logic was expressed, ahead of Trump’s election, by Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who predicted that a Trump victory would trigger an economic collapse from which the United States might never recover.

Current Democrat party leadership has adopted a policy they have called “The Resistance.” This is proving to be not very useful thinking to combat international threats stirring in North Korea and Iran to world peace and prosperity. It is a policy risk that is devoid of constructive thinking at a time when it may be clear to voters that policy changes are urgently needed.

The party of Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), California Gov. Jerry Brown, and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is not the party of FDR, Kennedy, or even Barack Obama. It offers no ideas about production and preaches consumption with fairness predicated on a system that buries individual responsibility.

American success is due to creative individuals who shoulder responsibility, show up on time and take pride in a job well done. Collective performance leads to collective prosperity. Yet the Democrat Party continues fighting the tape.

– Walter B. Bull, Jr.