Elon Musk always does things in a big way. The same is true of his plans to take SpaceX public. But how investors will make out could depend on how much they like him. As Musk works to convince buyers that his rocket company could be valued at as much as $2 trillion, SpaceX is earmarking up to 30% of shares for “nonprofessional, noninstitutional investors” and “banking on the popularity” of the tech billionaire to help it raise as much as $75 billion from the stock offering, said The Guardian. And the so-called “retail” trade by his fans will be a “critical part of this and ​a bigger part than any IPO in history,” Chief Financial Officer Bret Johnsen told a meeting of bankers on April 6, per Reuters.

SpaceX is more than just rockets. It now includes xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence company, along with Starlink, Grok and the X social media network. Money raised from the IPO would help SpaceX finance “launching artificial intelligence data centers into orbit, creating a colony on the moon and getting humans to Mars,” said The New York Times. But those are “expensive and unproven” technologies that could take “years and billions of dollars to achieve.”

What did the commentators say?

IPOs “used to fund growth,” Brad Badertscher said at The Conversation. Going public helped “young, cash-strapped companies” like Amazon and Apple get traction, and “much of their dramatic growth” happened afterward. These days, most companies “can now raise billions privately” and, like SpaceX, only go public after they have entrenched themselves in the marketplace. Investors are not getting in on the ground floor. Most “explosive growth in corporate value” comes while “companies are still private.”

The SpaceX IPO could “showcase the free market at its best,” Matthew Lynn said at The Washington Post. The company is “pioneering innovative technologies and generating jobs and wealth.” Bringing along ordinary investors might add to those accomplishments. Giving regular people ownership of stocks gives them a “stake in the free market” and makes them “far more likely to support the system.” Musk’s stock offering could convince Americans that “free-market, risk-taking entrepreneurship isn’t such a terrible thing after all.”

A “bumper crop of mega initial public offerings” is expected over the next year, Jonathan Levin said at Bloomberg. History suggests investors should “tread very, very carefully” when evaluating companies like SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic. Mega IPOs have “underperformed the market” on average in recent years. But some investors will inevitably decide that Musk’s company and its peers “are in a league of their own.”

What next?

SpaceX “could trade like a meme stock” after the IPO, said MarketWatch. Stocks driven by “social media trends” are often prone to “high trading volumes and price volatility.” The Musk-helmed company “clearly has some of the ingredients” to fit that profile, Roundhill Investments CEO Dave Mazza said to the outlet.

AI is losing its stock. More investors are opting to put their money into industries that are less likely to be affected by the technology and selling off shares of companies that are more likely to be impacted by AI. While this may not become a long-term investment choice, it points to skepticism about whether artificial intelligence truly benefits the economy.

What’s HALO trading?

“HALO” stands for “heavy assets, low obsolescence.” This means investing in “businesses less vulnerable to being supplanted by AI,” including companies operating “pipelines, utilities, transportation infrastructure, factories and ports,” said Bloomberg. Fast-food restaurants and commodity companies are included as well. These are companies that “you cannot type something in a prompt and disrupt,” Josh Brown, the chief executive at Ritholtz Wealth Management who coined the term, said to The Wall Street Journal.

HALO trading also goes hand-in-hand with AI scare trading, defined as selling “all things AI-linked,” said Bloomberg. Two specific developments are causing the rise of scare trading. The first is the concern that companies will lose valuation after announcing they are spending money on AI infrastructure, and the second is the fear that AI will “severely disrupt entire industries because AI agents will be able to replace white collar workers, shrinking the workforce and, by extension, consumer spending.”

AI scare trading has been “on a bender this year, steamrolling entire industries based on the flimsiest of evidence that the technology is coming for them,” said Axios. HALO trading, on the other hand, is a more recent occurrence and is why “many real-world sectors are outperforming this year, even as the overall market and especially tech stocks have floundered,” said CNBC. The two “top-performing sectors are energy and materials, which are surging more than 23% and 15%, respectively.”

What’s the future of investing?

HALO trading may be a temporary trend or “another iteration of the jitters that have periodically rippled through markets since the AI investing boom began,” said the Journal. Many investors are trading “on the expectation that AI will eat away at future revenue streams rather than current ones.” Much of the trading “has felt very whiplash-y,” Lisa Shalett, the chief investment officer of Morgan Stanley Wealth Management, said to the Journal. We “don’t have any real idea” who the AI “losers are going to be.”

There are some recent signs that HALO trading has been decreasing. Tech shares have already “regained some ground this past week, with the Nasdaq besting the Dow industrials,” and stock values went up “after the news that the U.S. Supreme Court had struck down” President Donald Trump’s global tariffs, said the Journal. However, many HALO stocks “have room to run after years of underperformance, can benefit from easier monetary policy and fiscal stimulus, and could even realize improved margins from AI,” said CNBC.

What’s certain is that the “choppy trading of the past few weeks,” along with “lingering concerns that big tech companies are overspending to get ahead in a technological arms race,” indicates a “kind of evolution for the AI investing frenzy” in which investors are “more discerning,” said the Journal. A company’s previous success is not a good enough reason to continue investing in it.

“We are in a new chapter, and I think that chapter is going to be defined by companies proving” their longevity, said Jed Ellerbroek, a portfolio manager at Argent Capital Management, to the Journal. “Hype isn’t cutting it anymore.”

Fresh from his online mauling at the hands of Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary, the world’s richest man can take some consolation. Elon Musk’s SpaceX is reportedly “lining up” four Wall Street banks to advise on “a record-breaking IPO”, and it could make the rocket group – already the world’s most valuable startup – the biggest flotation in history, valued as highly as $1.5 trillion, said the FT.

No final decision has been taken, but the float may come as soon as this year. SpaceX’s soaring valuation has been driven by its “cemented” status as the leading US developer of commercial rockets for space exploration – and its Starlink satellite service. Markets were already anticipating a feast of “US mega listings”, with two big beasts of generative AI – OpenAI and Anthropic – also plotting potential floats.

Still, don’t get too “starry-eyed”, said Katie Prescott in The Times. Both are growing at a rate of knots: OpenAI’s annualised revenues rose above $20 billion in 2025. But they’re spending billions more. Staying private would keep “a comfortable cloak of secrecy over their operations”, giving time “to unpick their devilishly complex corporate structures”.

Much of the secrecy around OpenAI has already been blown open by the “increasingly public legal beef” between CEO Sam Altman and Musk, said Bloomberg. Musk, who is suing OpenAI for $134 billion, accuses its management of violating original promises about its governance (he was an early investor) and he has been providing “a steady drip of juicy internal documents”. Altman counters that Musk wants to take OpenAI down to boost his own xAI business. Certainly, this suit “poses an existential threat to OpenAI”, said Danny Fortson in The Sunday Times. “It could prove decisive in the battle for who prevails in the multitrillion-dollar race for AI dominance.”

Crypto is supposedly the currency of the future, but it is not doing so well presently. The sector has lost more than $1 trillion in value over the last few weeks.

The crypto industry is having a “terrible, horrible, no good, very bad month,” said USA Today. Bitcoin has lost more than 10% of its value for the year, dropping from a high of $126,000 in October to under $90,000 last week. The drop in digital currency values is due to a “whirlwind of factors” that include shaky showings for artificial intelligence and technology stocks amid growing concerns about the overall economy. “No one can say” when the dust might settle.

“It was supposed to be crypto’s year,” said The Wall Street Journal. Since 2025 brought a “crypto-loving White House, Wall Street adoption and friendly legislation,” it seemed poised to erase the industry’s regulatory obstacles. Instead, the “sky-high expectations of a golden age” have foundered. Cryptocurrency’s original reputation was as an “antiestablishment asset” coming out of the Great Recession. Now the sector is trying to “go legit” but having trouble shedding its standing as the “deranged, foul-mouthed little sibling of Wall Street.”

What did the commentators say?

“Brutal” selloffs in the crypto sector happen “every few years, or whenever sentiment snaps,” said Emily Nicolle at Bloomberg. But those previous cycles did not match the “speed and scale” of crypto’s collapse in recent weeks. The difference this time is that crypto is now “woven into the fabric of Wall Street and the broader public markets.” That means its fate is now “tied to AI-fueled market optimism.” Amid growing fears of an AI bubble, though, it does not take much prompting to “spook investors into selling.”

Crypto in recent years has gone from an “object of mockery” to “broadly accepted, even encouraged” by mainstream financial institutions, said The Economist. That victory actually poses a problem. The “wider acceptance” has deepened crypto’s links to the broader financial markets, so that the “pain from a crypto crash will be felt more widely than in the past.” A government intervention seems remote, but “surprises can never be ruled out” in politics and in crypto.

What next?

Crypto believers see it as a “safe store of value against inflation and rising national debt,” said Marketplace. But the current instability comes amid “sticky inflation and a rising national debt.” The sector’s growing acceptance on Wall Street means your 401(k) probably includes some crypto stock. If the downturn lasts, that would produce “some knock-on effects on spending” in the broader economy, said Columbia Law School lecturer Todd Baker to the outlet.

There are now some fears of a “crypto winter,” said MarketWatch. But other observers say the sector is likely still in solid shape for the long term, thanks to its integration with financial markets. Banks like J.P. Morgan now accept crypto assets as collateral. We are not seeing a crypto winter, said Frontier Investments CEO Louis LaValle. “I think we’re watching bitcoin grow up.”

With “Too Big to Fail”, Andrew Ross Sorkin “defined the story of the 2008 financial crisis”, said Pratinav Anil in The Times. Now he has turned his gaze to an “earlier frenzy of leverage and illusion”: the Wall Street crash of 1929.

In the 1920s, with liquor outlawed, speculation became America’s “legal intoxication”. Financial regulation was lax – “insider trading was not a crime but a craft” – and debt was the “new gospel”. Key to Sorkin’s “blow-by-blow” account is a “gallery of finely drawn pen portraits”. We meet the “whip-smart” trader Jesse Livermore, who made “pots of money” shorting the market on 24 October – “Black Thursday” – only to “lose it all betting against the recovery”; the “folksy Southern Democrat” Carter Glass, the “presiding spirit behind” the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act; and even Winston Churchill, who was visiting New York in October 1929 and saw a man fling himself from his hotel window. If Sorkin’s concern for human drama makes his book seem superficial at times – he largely steers clear of “complicated explanations” – it is nonetheless “pacy” and enjoyable.

It certainly delivers plenty of “true-crime thrills”, said Zachary D. Carter in The New York Times. We learn all about the “outrageous pump-and-dump schemes”, in which bankers sold stocks to one another at inflated prices, encouraging speculators to “pile on”, before selling out and leaving the “suckers holding the bag”. There’s New York Stock Exchange president Richard Whitney, who extolled his employer as a “perfect institution”, while embezzling “more than $1m of securities to fund a life of country estate fox hunting”. Inevitably, Sorkin’s cast is “almost all-male”, said Piers Brendon in Literary Review, but there’s one entertaining exception. Evangeline Adam, an astrologer, “made a mint” advising Charlie Chaplin and others to buy shares based on their zodiac signs, but lost $100,000 on Black Thursday.

Sorkin doesn’t neglect the “ugly aftermath” of the crash, when “panic moved from Wall Street to Main Street”, said Andy Haldane in the Financial Times. He documents the slide into the Great Depression of the 1930s, when unemployment rose above eight million and shanty towns, nicknamed “Hoovervilles” (after President Herbert Hoover), sprang up across America. The product of eight years of meticulous research, this book is a “work of true scholarship”. “A people’s tragedy told through the lens of the leading players”, it is sure to be considered one of the best books in the “Great Crash/Depression genre”.

In the run-up to last week's quarterly update from the world's most valuable listed company, there were fears that lacklustre results might trigger a traumatic tech-sector correction. In the event, said Dan Gallagher in The Wall Street Journal, Nvidia's boss Jensen Huang trumpeted yet another period of record revenues and profits.

Sales of Nvidia's world-leading, AI-powering chips surged 56% year-on-year to almost $47 billion – above market expectations. It's Nvidia's slowest growth rate in two years, but it's far more than what other "megacap tech companies are currently managing". And that's with sales of AI chips to China "effectively shut off owing to national security concerns".

China is the big unknown here, said Dewardric L. McNeal on CNBC. What worried me most was the zero revenue from Nvidia's China-specific H20 chip. Alas, US-China tensions are holding it back, just as one of China's challengers, Cambricon Technologies, is "surging". Another likely brake on Nvidia's growth is the vast amount of electricity required to power the AI revolution, said The Economist. An "unstoppable force" is about to come up against "an immovable object. Or at least an object that has not moved much in decades – America's power grid."

Nvidia now trades at a price-to-forwardearnings multiple of 33, a little more than Microsoft or Oracle, but with faster-growing profits, said Lex in the FT. On the PEG ratio (price to earnings, adjusted for growth) it "looks positively cheap". The snag is that the bulk of its current $4.4 trillion valuation rests on "punchy" assumptions about post-2030 revenues. And its 72% gross margin, higher than Apple ever achieved, is an "open invitation to competitors". Huang tells "a compelling story about the world AI will create", and Nvidia's central role in it. "But for now it really is just a story."

Warren Buffett is retiring. The 94-year-old "Oracle of Omaha" led Berkshire Hathaway for more than a half-century, accruing a fortune and ascending to the status of capitalist-cultural icon along the way.

Buffett is the "greatest investor of all time," said Nir Kaissar at Bloomberg. Investing is a "notoriously difficult endeavor," and even those who can beat the market's rate of return usually only do so "for a short time or by a modest amount." But the market value of Berkshire's shares grew by nearly 20% a year between 1964 and 2024 — nearly double the 10.4% rate of the S&P 500 over the same period. And Buffett did that while showing "you don't need a fancy Wall Street address to be a great investor."

'One in a million'

The Omahan was an "anchor of endurance" in an "age of insecurity," biographer Roger Lowenstein said at The New York Times. But the investment numbers don't measure the fullness of Buffett's impact: He was also "among the greatest corporate leaders" of his era, bolstering the financial system by investing in Goldman Sachs during the 2008 financial crisis. That made Buffett the "capitalist version of a national security blanket."

There is a danger that other CEOs will learn the wrong lesson from Buffett's tenure, said the Financial Times. His 55 years atop Berkshire made him the "longest-serving chief in the S&P 500." Research, though, shows "there is such a thing as too long." The average CEO's value starts to decline after about 14 years. Buffett, in other words, is a "happy outlier" in the corporate world. The moral is that "bosses like Berkshire Hathaway's are one in a million."

Buffett's "great fortune was not being born today," said Megan McArdle at The Washington Post. He was born in 1930, right after the stock market crash that launched the Great Depression, leaving "traumatized investors" cautious about investing a generation later when his career began. And he was good at spotting undervalued companies before "computers made it much easier to spot pricing anomalies" and erased that advantage. Buffett would likely be a success if he started out now, but it's fair to "doubt he'd become one of the richest people in the world."

Stewards and dreamers

Some observers have criticized Buffett for a "lack of ambition," Maxwell Meyer said at The Free Press. The billionaire has "no space company" or other side gigs and has "lived in the same modest house since the 1960s." Instead of being a pioneer, Buffett has been a "steward for the people whose money he's looked after for all these years." There is no shame in that. "We need stewards every bit as much as we need dreamers."

Greg Abel, Buffett's longtime heir apparent, will take over Berkshire at the end of 2025. The question now is how "anyone other than Warren Buffett can profitably operate a sprawling amalgamation" of companies under Berkshire's brands, said Fortune. The company relied "as much on Buffett's magnetic personality as his investment acumen." That "intangible asset" may be difficult for Abel to replace.

Indices of economic uncertainty have skyrocketed above even the 2020 pandemic or the 2008 global financial crisis, as Donald Trump intensifies his trade war, said Gillian Tett in the FT. It could yet get worse. Amid all the tariff shocks, there is another question hovering. "Could Trump's assault on free trade lead to attacks on free capital flows too?" Put another way, "might tariffs on goods be a prelude to tariffs on money"?

Until recently, the notion would have seemed crazy. After all, foreign capital inflows benefit both US companies and the public purse, helping to fund America's $36 trillion national debt. But an opposite theory, advanced by the maverick economist Michael Pettis, has gained traction among "a trio" of influential Trump advisers. A new plan dubbed the "Mar-a-Lago accord", after Trump's Florida resort – and reportedly supported by Vice-President J.D. Vance, treasury secretary Scott Bessent and the chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, Stephen Miran – wouldn't just upend US economic policy, but completely "reset global trade and finance".

The basic problem, as proponents see it, is that the US dollar is too expensive, said John Rapley in The Globe and Mail (Canada). Having risen by some 40% against other major currencies since the 2008 crisis, it has made US exports expensive for foreigners and imports cheap for Americans. "Put it all together and you have a rising trade deficit that now exceeds $1 trillion a year."

Supporters of devaluation cite a 1985 precedent, when the Reagan administration negotiated the Plaza Accord with Britain, Japan, France and West Germany to strengthen their currencies against the dollar. But this is a completely different beast. For a start, it is unlikely to be consensual: China would resist, and probably the Europeans too. And while the 1985 deal merely weakened the dollar, the Mar-a-Lago plan includes a possible US debt restructuring too – potentially forcing foreign governments to swap some of their reserve dollars for long-term bonds, using Trump's favourite "carrot-and-stick" tactics.

The accord is riven with contradictions. It advises weakening the dollar, yet keeping it strong enough to remain the world's reserve currency; and raising import prices, yet reducing inflation. Even Miran, its author, concedes the risks are "substantial", said Ruth Sunderland in the Daily Mail. The plan may become "a blueprint for Maga" – or may never see the light of day. But even if other nations agree on the need for such a fundamental rebalancing, is a mercurial president who thinks "he can bully, abuse and alienate friends and foes with impunity" really "the man to carry it out"?

What happened

U.S. stocks suffered their worst day in more than 18 months yesterday after lackluster results from Tesla and Google owner Alphabet fueled fears over the high valuations of large technology companies.

Who said what

Losses in both the S&P 500, which dropped 2.3%, and Nasdaq Composite, which fell 3.6%, were largely "driven by big tech stocks" including Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple and Tesla, said the Financial Times. Tech — and artificial intelligence stocks in particular — has "driven the bulk of market gains this year."

Tesla reporting a 45% drop in profits for the spring and Alphabet's fall of 5% could "feed concerns” that the broader market has become too reliant on the so-called "magnificent seven" technology stocks, said Charlie McElligott, an analyst at Nomura, to the Times.

What next?

Analysts have questioned whether the companies that have been responsible for the majority of the S&P 500's record run this year are now too expensive. Some investors are "moving their money away from Big Tech to smaller companies," said The Telegraph. Asian shares dropped in morning trading today.

Like the rise and fall of a stock ticker, one notable Wall Street trend from a few years ago has made its way back into the zeitgeist: meme stocks. They first came onto the scene in 2021 with stocks like GameStop, which created such a fervor that Sony Pictures made an entire film about the company's rise to the top called "Dumb Money." 

So it is perhaps unsurprising that GameStop was among the first meme stocks to see a resurgence earlier this May, along with other prior meme stocks such as AMC Theaters. But just as quickly as they rose, the meme stocks fell. "Investor appetite for 'meme stocks' may already be waning," CBS News said, just days after they returned to the scene.  

So what exactly are meme stocks, and what makes them unique on Wall Street? And why are they back in the conversation after a yearslong hiatus?  

What are meme stocks? 

Meme stocks are "shares of a company that have gained viral popularity due to heightened social sentiment," said Investopedia. This rise in social standing is typically the result of "activity online, particularly on social media platforms." Oftentimes, this is accomplished through communities on these social media platforms that can "dedicate heavy research and resources toward a particular stock," such as Reddit and X.

Companies that become meme stocks "have usually performed poorly in recent years, and attracted attention from short-sellers — investors who effectively bet on the price of a share going down further," said Forbes. Part of their appeal is that these stocks are often perceived as underdogs, but there is "little connection between a company's meme stock status and its actual performance." 

What are some notable meme stocks? 

The aforementioned GameStop is likely the company most associated with meme stocks. In January 2021, the company underwent a short squeeze, or a "flood of retail trading that drove its shares to extreme highs, which in turn squeezed short sellers who had bet against it," said the financial services publication Seeking Alpha. This then drove the price of GameStop way up on Wall Street; on Jan. 27, 2021, the company had its largest-ever single-day stock gain of more than 134%, according to Seeking Alpha. At one point during the rush, GameStop was even worth more than American Airlines. But the pandemonium of the stock soon ran dry, and by March 2021 the company had leveled out. 

Other notable meme stocks have included the also-aforementioned AMC, as well as companies like Carvana, Kodak and Beyond Meat. Trump Media & Technology Group, the media holding company formed by Donald Trump, has also been identified by Axios and other publications as a meme stock.  

Why are they back in the news? 

As with 2021, the current resurgence of meme stocks can be partially traced back to one man: financial investor Keith Gill. Known by his online persona Roaring Kitty, Gill had gone quiet after the 2021 boom, but recently "made a triumphant return to the internet with a single post that sent GameStop and other meme stocks soaring," said Quartz. 

Gill "drove the first short-squeeze of the video game retailer's stock in early 2021," and by simply emerging back online with a post on May 12, 2024, shares of GameStop "soared once again ... closing out the trading day up almost 75%," said Quartz. Gill, whose financial prowess was the impetus for the aforementioned Sony Pictures film, has singlehandedly caused shifts in the stock market, and his return has got some people talking about "potential for a new meme stock renaissance."

This time around, though, companies "have more shares trading in the market than they did in 2021, which could lessen the chances of what's called a 'short squeeze,'" said Nick Battista, the director of market intelligence at financial network tastylive, to The Associated Press. This means that there is likely to be less of a frenzy around the stocks now. 

Indeed, just days after Gill's online post, shares of both GameStop and AMC plummeted, with AMC falling 16% while GameStop gave up nearly half of its recent gains to fall 20%. Although meme stocks "[generate] a lot of market engagement, which is ultimately a good thing ... the volatility in these stocks is extreme," JJ Kinahan, the CEO of IG North America, said to Reuters. 

Reddit users will be able to buy shares in the social media platform when it goes public next week.

Dubbed the "front page of the internet", Reddit is "gearing up for its much-anticipated stock market debut". It could reach a valuation of up to $6.4 billion (£5 billion) in its US initial public offering (IPO), said City A.M..

Traders and the "historic" New York Stock Exchange trading floor will be "decked out in Reddit's white and orange colour scheme" for the IPO, sources have told the Financial Times. But the company has never made a profit and some commentators believe it does not make for an attractive investment.

What is Reddit?

Reddit, which was founded almost two decades ago, is an online forum where users can post questions and comment on subjects that interest them. It hosts thousands of niche discussion groups, called subreddits, which are set up and moderated by volunteers.

It has become the "internet talking shop", said The Times. "With its basic style and quirky, sometimes offensive threads", it "feels like a throwback to the early days of the internet". Visiting it is "rather like being in a digital pub", except with "more readily available pornography".

Reddit has "often courted controversy", including in 2021 when its users sent the share price of GameStop, a struggling video games business, up by more than 700% during four "frantic days of trading" under a thread entitled WallStreetBets.

Why is it floating?

Reddit has recorded losses every year since its launch, including more than $90 million last year. It makes most of its income (its revenue was $804 million last year) through advertising, although it recently agreed a deal with Google that allows the technology giant to access Reddit data to train its artificial intelligence (AI) models.

So the platform is "trying to secure an anchor investor as it pitches its fast-growing advertising business and the promise of revenues from selling its data", said the FT.

But the forum's users have a "deep sense of ownership over the communities they create on Reddit", wrote co-founder Steve Huffman in a letter to prospective investors. The company wants "this sense of ownership to be reflected in real ownership – for our users to be our owners. Becoming a public company makes this possible."

What does it mean for the future?

Reddit plans to price its initial public offering on 20 March and start trading the following day, two sources told the Financial Times. "The company is targeting between $31 and $34 a share, translating to a valuation of as much as $6.5bn."

The high valuation earns Reddit an "Unattractive Stock Rating", said Forbes. The magazine expects a $5 billion valuation, and while this is half the $10 billion private market valuation seen in 2021 when interest rates were zero and money was cheap, it "remains much too high", it said.

The company "has never been profitable and should not be a publicly traded company" as it "may never monetize its platform without angering its users". Its business model is "inescapably built on a catch-22: make money or please users".

This view was bolstered by the reactions of some Reddit users, said the BBC. When news of the IPO broke last month, users wrote that it was the "beginning of the end", "good while it lasted", and said the site's owners had "ruined it".

In an IPO filing to US regulators last month, Reddit revealed its losses had come down to $90.8 million (£72 million) while revenues had grown by 21% to $804 million (£634 million) in 2023. Therefore, said the FT, its debut will be "closely watched" as a "gauge of the appetite for tech listings".

The moneyed classes are starting to make their peace with Donald Trump.

CNBC reported that Wall Street executives had hoped for a different nominee from the GOP, but the former president's seemingly unstoppable momentum means that many "have made a calculated decision not to speak out against him" — and might even support Trump in the general election against President Joe Biden. Why? It's a business decision. "They think of themselves as stewards of other people's money and they don't want to take a position that divides their workforce, their investors and their customers," said one expert.

Among Wall Street's not-so-never-Trumpers: JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon. He's not running for president himself — at least not this year — but Business Insider reported that Dimon is saying respectful things about Trump. "He's kind of right about NATO. Kind of right about immigration," Dimon said during an interview during the World Economic Forum at Davos. "He grew the economy quite well. Tax reform worked. He was right about some of China."

"It's painful for me to admit this, but Wall Street is basically nonchalant to this election," Anthony Scaramucci, who very briefly served in the Trump administration, told The Hill. More than nonchalant, perhaps. "Trump is the billionaires' candidate," James Downie argued at MSNBC. Whatever the former president's faults, "he would deliver these millionaires and billionaires more massive tax cuts." That wealth might insulate the ultra-rich from the effects of a second Trump presidency. "The rest of us, though, won't be so lucky."

'Wall Street likes predictability'

"Dimon's selective memory seems to begin and end with Trump cutting taxes for him, his corporation, and his golfing buddies," Will Bunch added at The Philadelphia Inquirer. The blitheness of the billionaire class overlooks the Jan. 6 insurrection, among other Trump-era follies. But there's long been a "symbiotic relationship" between authoritarian movements and Big Business. "The nation's top capitalists seem too tunnel-focused on the next quarter's profits to know their history."

Actually, The New York Post editorialized, Dimon had it right: "Former President Donald Trump — or the GOP in general — was right about a lot." Voters had their reason for choosing Trump and still do. "The border crisis, the economy, and Biden's feeble leadership" offer compelling reasons to return to the former president. One thing that's clear: "Jamie Dimon has seen the light."

But a broader embrace from Dimon's colleagues may come grudgingly. After all, C-suite execs have "dreamed" of a Trump alternative, Politico reported: "Wall Street likes predictability." That's not exactly Trump's strong suit. "Markets are increasingly wary of how U.S. political disruptions can ripple across the global financial system." That's why some business leaders are still hoping for a surge from Nikki Haley, the only major Republican left in the contest. "The street still hopes for somebody else," said one top GOP donor. 

Gaming out the impact

Even on Wall Street, though, it ain't over until it's over. Haley is still in the race, for now. Assuming her candidacy survives the New Hampshire primary, The Hill reported, a quartet of "Wall Street billionaires" plan to host a New York fundraiser for the former South Carolina governor on Jan. 30. Tickets start at $3,300 apiece. 

Still, a number of CEOs think it's best to plan for a second Trump presidency. "Wall Street is already starting to game out the impact of Trump's possible return to the White House," Bloomberg reported. And some analysts are optimistic about what that could mean for the economy. "Traders are recognizing that Trump's impact on trade and geopolitics is for different reasons, at least initially, positive for the dollar," said one strategist. Markets initially plunged after Trump shockingly won the White House in 2016. That probably won't happen should he win again in 2024. Investors are prepared this time. Said one strategist: "We wouldn't expect the same volatility as we saw in 2016."

Looking to invest your time in some Wall Street films? Hollywood has produced no shortage of excellent ones, including biting satires of capitalism and movies that revel in the schadenfreude of seeing corrupt businessmen get what’s coming to them. With a new entry in this subgenre hitting theaters, let's take a look back at some of the best movies ever made about Wall Street.

'Dumb Money'

To the moon! "I, Tonya" director Craig Gillespie tackles very recent events with this hilarious new dramedy about the 2021 GameStop short squeeze, in which retail traders backed the company en masse to the chagrin of hedge funds who bet against it. The film follows numerous characters who are tied up in the saga, including financial analyst Keith Gill (Paul Dano) and several of his followers around the country, played by America Ferrera, Anthony Ramos, Myha'la Herrold and Talia Ryder. Gillespie's most impressive accomplishment is using skillful editing to ensure these actors never feel like they're in different movies despite not sharing a single scene. Their stories are smoothly intertwined, underlining how the individual investors are all part of a larger battle against the Wall Street elite and are driven by solidarity with those they don't know. The movie also manages to make countless scenes of people looking at computers and phones exciting. It perhaps relies a bit too heavily on real footage for a non-documentary, and not all of its characters are equally well-served. But "Dumb Money" is still an energetic and inspiring dramatization of this crazy true story that makes the case for bringing it to the screen so soon. 

'Trading Places'

Who would have thought a goofy Eddie Murphy comedy might have a tangible impact on financial laws? One of the films that helped make Murphy a major star, 1983's "Trading Places" sees two rich businessmen debate whether a person's social status is a product of their genes or their environmental circumstances. So they put the question to the test, scheming to have a poor man, played by Murphy, and a wealthy man, played by Dan Aykroyd, switch places. Hilarity ensues until the two join forces to get back at the businessmen with a plot of their own, bankrupting them by driving the price of frozen concentrated orange juice futures up after obtaining a government report. Years later, Commodity Futures Trading Commission chief Gary Gensler pointed out in 2010 congressional testimony that using misappropriated government information for profit like the characters do in the movie "actually is not illegal." But as The Atlantic notes, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act was enacted later that year, and a section targeting this kind of insider trading is known as the "Eddie Murphy Rule." Now that's cultural impact. 

'American Psycho'

You like Huey Lewis and the News? You'll never listen to them the same way again after watching Mary Harron’s darkly funny "American Psycho," one of the all-time great satires of Wall Street. Christian Bale stars as Patrick Bateman, an investment banker who's secretly a brutal serial killer, and he delivers an utterly chilling performance. But the movie really shines thanks to its sharp skewering of the vapid nature of Bateman and his colleagues' lives and their obsession with material things. Look no further than the iconic, absurd scene where they competitively compare business cards that look virtually identical. The Wall Street yuppies use the same credit cards, dress the same way, and go to the same barber, and their conformity is taken to such an extreme that they're easily confused for one another. It's a twisted American classic and a videotape you won't want to return. 

'Margin Call'

If you ever wanted to watch two hours of people slowly realizing just how screwed they are, "Margin Call" is the movie for you. The 2011 film takes place at a Wall Street investment bank in 2008 and depicts the chaos that unfolds after an employee makes a horrifying discovery: A model reveals that the entire institution is at risk of imminent collapse. What follows is an anxiety-inducing 24 hours as character after character processes the gravity of this information, and they must decide whether to compromise their morals by selling bad assets to save the bank while knowingly harming countless people in the process. The film is like a slow-motion car crash showing what happens when Wall Street's careless behavior comes back to bite it — or, more accurately, comes back to bite everyone else. It's also a reminder that Ted Mosby was right that nothing good happens after 2 a.m. 

'Wall Street'

Could there be a more quintessentially '80s movie moment than Michael Douglas' Gordon Gekko declaring that greed is good? The actor delivers the performance of his career, which won him an Academy Award, in this 1987 Oliver Stone classic. Charlie Sheen stars as Bud Fox, a junior stockbroker who worships financier Gordon Gekko and manages to work his way into his orbit. But the unethical Gekko is like the devil on Bud’s shoulder, leading him down a dark path into insider trading that corrupts everything around him and has disastrous consequences. The film is a crucial text to understanding the unrestrained greed that characterized the 1980s, and Martin Sheen sneakily delivers one of his best performances as Bud's father, the movie’s voice of reason. "Wall Street," for lack of a better word, is good. 

'The Wolf of Wall Street'

If you took Oliver Stone's "Wall Street" and injected it with several pounds of cocaine, you'd get Martin Scorsese's unhinged 2013 masterpiece "The Wolf of Wall Street." Leonardo DiCaprio stars as a stockbroker, Jordan Belfort, who increasingly loses his soul as he rises through the world of Wall Street. Scorsese depicts his climb and spectacular fall, portraying the debauchery of Belfort's lifestyle in a shockingly graphic fashion and showing viewers things they’ll immediately wish to unsee. It's the "Goodfellas" of Wall Street movies and just as addictively watchable, featuring the performance that probably should have won DiCaprio the Oscar. A sequence involving quaaludes is also perhaps the funniest single scene in a Scorsese movie. In the end, "The Wolf of Wall Street" also chastises the audience that would still buy what Belfort is selling despite everything he did, a point only strengthened by the fact that certain viewers have inexplicably come away from the film seeing him as a hero. 

'The Big Short'

Adam McKay has a tendency to talk down to his audience. But unlike with his films "Vice" and "Don't Look Up," this was a strength in "The Big Short," in which he breaks down complicated financial concepts in an easy-to-understand and highly entertaining fashion. The film takes place in the lead-up to the 2008 financial crisis and centers on a group of real people who saw the disaster coming, allowing them to make a fortune by betting against the big banks. Along the way, McKay brings in A-listers like Margot Robbie and Selena Gomez to break the fourth wall and explain terms like mortgage-backed securities, which is genuinely educational while effectively parodying America's inclination to pay more attention to what a celebrity has to say than an expert in the field. Monologues about collateralized debt obligations have never been so fun. 

A financial meme account run by an anonymous former Wall Street banker has become essential viewing for hundreds of thousands of people in the industry.

The viral posts of the “finmeme-lord” known as Litquidity are “comedic cocaine to banking executives and trading floor interns”, said the Financial Times (FT). Litquidity has amassed more than 790,000 followers on Instagram and more than 330,000 on Twitter with content that takes aim at “everything from monetary policy to bad loafers” in the “eminently lampoonable industry”, the paper added.

But while these posts are “hoovered up by those who love Wall Street and those who love to hate it”, little is known about the figure behind the account.

Who is Litquidity?

The popularity of Litquidity in part “fuelled by the mystery of his identity”, said the FT. “Litquidity could be, and he was, the analyst toiling in the next cubicle, or the associate doling out tedious work about to blow up your Friday-night plans.”

In a 2021 interview with New York Magazine via Zoom “with the video turned off”, the anonymous creator said that he had grown up in Florida, attended an Ivy League school and “went on to work at a couple of big banks and a private-equity firm”.

He started his now-viral Instagram account in 2017, when he was in his 20s and working in private equity, and was reportedly “inspired by a Greek-life parody blog he’d followed as a frat guy in college”.

“It was just going to be a funny thing,” he said, a satire of the “partyish lifestyle” of finance bros. “So, you know, lit is a word for that.”

From satire to ‘Wall Street advocacy’

Given his “niche content”, Litquidity initially expected his account to stay “small”, according to the financial news website Benzinga. In an interview with the site last year, he recalled: “I thought, 'how many people would actually be interested in following investment banking humour and anything Wall Street-related?’”

His early posts focused on “the late nights, Sisyphean workloads and megalomaniacal managers that he and his peers faced”, said Fast Company. But when the Covid-19 pandemic struck “amid one of the biggest bull markets in history”, Litquidity’s posts about financial trends and so-called “meme stocks” proved to be “especially potent”.

As well as capturing the financial market zeitgeist, the magazine added, the meme account also began to turn into “something of an advocacy tool for Wall Street analysts”, tracking salary increases, bonus announcements and even the punishing working conditions endured by some Goldman Sachs analysts.

Now in his 30s, Litquidity has gained an online status as an “astute commentator”, said the FT.

But finance has needed “little help satirising itself” in recent years, the paper continued. The industry has been turned upside down by “meme stocks, cryptocurrency, Goldman Sachs chief David Solomon moonlighting as a DJ, the Miami boom, Sam Bankman-Fried and the collapse of FTX, Dogecoin (an actual joke currency), Elon Musk and Twitter, a Twitter-fuelled bank run, as well as Jeff Bezos’s bizarre turn as a cowboy-boot-wearing bodybuilder”.

Litquidity told the FT that “the market going to shit made everything much easier for me”.

What next for Litquidity?

The meme-maker’s ambitions “go well beyond skewering Goldman Sachs interns for emptying their bank accounts on Hamptons summer rentals”, or mocking “crypto bros for going all in on not-so-stablecoins”, said Fast Company.

Litquidity told the magazine that he planned to build a finance-focused version of Barstool Sports, a media brand valued at more than $400 million that creates pop culture and sports content.

He also writes a popular daily Wall Street newsletter, “Exec Sum”, and has hosted a weekly podcast, “Big Swinging Decks”, about rumours and trends in the financial industry.

Litquidity sells merchandise too, satirising disgraced and defunct financial institutions such as Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns.

His other ventures include a deal signed in January with headhunting firm Whitney Partners. And according to the FT, Litquidity is “an angel investor and works as a venture capital scout for Bain Capital Ventures”.

The former banker told the paper that having diversified, he was no longer so anxious about whether his memes get laughs. “Now I’ve derisked, so I don’t have to give a shit if the meme is not funny,” he said.

The Week’s daily round-up highlights the five best opinion pieces from across the British and international media, with excerpts from each.

1. Joseph Harker in The Guardian

on the tools to defeat racism

‘Black Lives Matter’ risks becoming an empty slogan. It’s not enough to defeat racism

“If I hear one more white person say ‘Black Lives Matter’ I think my head will explode. The slogan, powerful when first popularised by black people after the shooting of Trayvon Martin in 2012 in the US, has now become so ubiquitous as to have lost almost all meaning. A way for people to endlessly repeat ‘I hate racism’ while doing nothing to actually stop it. White people, I assume you don’t like the idea of other people being treated as inferior just because of the colour of their skin. But that’s such a basic sentiment that you shouldn’t be giving yourself a buzz from saying it. When even Boris Johnson can say ‘Black Lives Matter’ – the same Boris Johnson who talks of African piccaninnies, of ‘bank robber’ burqa wearers, who leads a party riven by Islamophobia but refuses a proper investigation into it, and who was part of a government that deported black British citizens, and continues the injustice of the hostile environment to this day – well, you know the slogan’s cultural appropriation is complete.”

2. Tom Peck in The Independent

on the UK’s coronavirus death toll

It’s not ‘too early’ for Boris Johnson to admit he’s wrong – he’s just too much of a coward

Perhaps the lesson we can all learn is that old one from science, about Brownian motion, just by watching the daily Downing Street briefing, where the blame for everything having gone so utterly wrong seems to move in random around the screen under the heavy and continuous bombardment in all directions from molecules of utter bulls***. This country has been debating for a while whether or not it has ‘had enough of experts’. Boris Johnson likes nothing more than to say he has been ‘guided by the science’, even when almost every other country in Europe, if not the world, was guided by its science in the complete opposite direction... It is not the passing of insufficient time that is preventing Boris Johnson from doing the same. It is an insufficient supply of moral courage.

3. Tim Dawson in The Daily Telegraph

on the ‘cancelling’ of an award-winning British comedy

No good comedy will survive the progressive purge that has killed Little Britain

“Hauling Vicky Pollard and Bubbles Devere out of the iPlayer and dropping them into the metaphorical harbour, may seem like a liberal victory, but the reality is the opposite. For a start, this knee-jerk decision – taken, presumably, by metropolitan executives desperate to appease the rioters we saw deface Churchill’s monument at the weekend – sets a dangerous precedent. If Little Britain, not so long ago BBC Comedy’s star attraction, can be reduced overnight to cultural contraband, what next?... It is a depressing development, the latest antediluvian skirmish in the UK’s increasingly bitter culture war. Britain’s inimitable, cheeky, self-deprecating sense of humour is not just famous throughout the world but – as international sales of everything from Keeping Up Appearances to, yes, Little Britain demonstrate – widely exportable. It is part of our global image; an image we are all too enthusiastically, and all too callously, dismantling. A nation that can no longer laugh at itself is a nation no longer at ease with itself. Erasing our culture, high and low, sends out completely the wrong signal.”

4. Gerard Baker in The Times

on an unexpected share price bounceback

Can Wall Street defy the prophets of doom?

“The growing band of Americans who apparently identify as socialists must be shaking their heads this week at the affirmation of heartless capitalism they’re watching play out in the markets. For the last three months the US has been afflicted by pandemic, death, mass unemployment, collapsing family incomes, skyrocketing bankruptcies and, most recently, the biggest outbreak of civil unrest in 50 years, with cities in turmoil and the raw and open wounds in American society exposed once again. But on Wall Street, it’s Morning in America. As neighbourhoods burn and a repentant Hollywood censors Gone With The Wind, capitalists are lighting fireworks and leading dancing choruses of We’re in The Money... The turnaround in fortunes, even as uncertainty about the economic outlook, the pandemic and political and social unrest persists, has been head-spinning and has caught some of the most successful investors off-guard.”

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5. Michael Tomasky in The New York Times

on the question that confounds political commentators

Why Does Trump Lie?

“Mr. Trump’s lies are different. Not just in quantity, but also in quality. He lies for a different purpose than every other president — yes, even, I would argue, Richard Nixon, the biggest presidential prevaricator until Mr. Trump came along. What is that difference? In a nutshell, it is this: Our democracy has, to use a word that former Vice President Joe Biden employed in his powerful June 2 speech in Philadelphia, certain guardrails that, as Mr. Biden put it, ‘have helped make possible this nation’s path to a more perfect union, a union that constantly requires reform and rededication.’ Every president before Mr. Trump has been mindful of those guardrails. When they lied, they lied out of respect for those guardrails. Mr. Trump lies to crush those guardrails into scrap metal.”

Financial markets bucked widespread political turmoil and mounting fears the global economy could be overheating to post record highs in 2019.

Looking ahead to the next twelve months, “investors are expecting 2020 to bring further rising asset prices and lively merger activity” says Graeme Wearden in The Guardian “but Brexit, the US presidential election and the US trade war with China could all spring nasty surprises over the next 12 months and give the long-running bull market a jolt.”

“For the professional prognosticators and market mavens of Wall Street and beyond, there is at least one easy prediction to make about the next 12 months: Investors are going to earn less. A lot less, probably” says Bloomberg.

“’The double-digit returns of 2019 will be hard to repeat’ is a phrase littering almost every investment outlook for global markets in 2020” says the financial wire service, and “despite the trade war, political turmoil and more, virtually all major assets just posted a once-a-decade performance, and even uber-bulls know the chances of repeating the feat are slim”.

Listen to The Week discussing investing in 2019 in our podcast

On Wall Street, stocks “face several obstacles to growth in the new year” says CNN. “The Federal Reserve has stopped cutting interest rates. The economic jolt from tax cuts has run out. Despite some progress, the United States still doesn't have a trade deal with China” reports the news networking meaning stocks are entering 2020 “with a bit less of a tailwind than they had in 2019”.

“Investors still have plenty to be optimistic about, though” it adds.

In the UK, warnings about continued economic stagnation in 2020 have not stopped stock market experts from predicting the FTSE 100 could break through the 8,000 mark for the first time.

“With Boris Johnson pledging to take Britain out of the EU on January 31, the US presidential election in November, and trade tensions ebbing and flowing, it looks set to be an eventful year” says This is Money but having surged by 12.1% in 2019 and 39.3% in the last decade, “analysts believe the blue-chip benchmark will break records”.

“Investors will realise UK shares trade are at low valuations and flock back to sectors that performed poorly in 2019 – utilities, banks, insurers” says Helal Miah, analyst at The Share Centre.

AJ Bell’s Russ Mould says “Brexit must still be resolved and doubts hover over the health of the global economy. Were the UK to strike a trade deal with the EU, Washington and Beijing to settle their differences and governments abandon austerity, the outlook for next year could look very different.’

Yet The Daily Telegraph warns that “when consensus emerges among experts about the direction of stock markets – it is often a signal that something unexpected is about to happen”.

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The Week’s daily round-up highlights the five best opinion pieces from across the British and international media, with excerpts from each.

1. Hugo Rifkind in The Times

on immature voting

In the end we’re all tactical voters, aren’t we?

“Probably, though, we all ought to just grow up a bit. Tactical voting is the child born when an archaic voting system gets into bed with an informed electorate. The first British electoral contest in which it probably played an undeniable role was the Greenwich by-election of 1987 when a few thousand Tory voters swung behind the SDP’s Rosie Barnes to beat off Labour. Reading back, much of the political establishment seems to have regarded this as a dangerous and probably immoral development of electoral strategy, not a million miles away from cheating.”

2. Michael Deacon in The Telegraph

on a less-than-glowing sendoff

John Bercow had gone at last... and his wannabe successors utterly trashed him

“Funny, isn’t it. On Thursday last week, MPs spent three solid hours paying lavish tribute to John Bercow. He was, they gushed, ‘a transformative Speaker’, ‘truly impartial’, ‘such a good human being’ who had ‘touched the lives of hundreds of thousands’... Then on Monday – the very next parliamentary sitting day – MPs burst into deafening cheers as his wannabe successors took turns to trash him as a one-sided, interfering, egotistical gasbag. None of them referred to Mr Bercow by name, but it was perfectly clear who they were talking about.”

3. Ted Rall in The Japan Times

on an unspoken controversy in US politics

The killing of al-Baghdadi: Illegal, disgusting and degenerate

“We have come a long way since 1981, when President Ronald Reagan, a conservative Republican, signed Executive Order 12333, which states: ‘No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination.’ E.O. 12333 — which remains in force — was part of the aftermath of the Church Committee hearings of the 1970s, which exposed assassinations and other illegal acts committed by the CIA in Latin America and elsewhere at the height of the Cold War. American spooks conspired to murder political adversaries and heads of state, mainly on the left, all over the world. Back then, the political class had the grace to pretend to be ashamed.”

4. Paul Krugman in The New York Times

on bankers unable to take criticism

Attack of the Wall Street snowflakes

“What, after all, does modern finance actually do for the economy? Unlike the robber barons of yore, today’s Wall Street tycoons don’t build anything tangible. They don’t even direct money to the people who actually are building the industries of the future. The vast expansion of credit in America after around 1980 basically involved a surge in consumer debt rather than new money for business investment. Moreover, there is growing evidence that when the financial sector gets too big it actually acts as a drag on the economy — and America is well past that point.”

5. Eliora Katz in Tablet Magazine

on the growing disillusionment with Tehran

The revolt against Iran

“While the majority of Iraqis share the same Shiite religious faith practiced in Iran, it is precisely in Iraq’s Shiite strongholds where the revolt against Iranian rule has taken root. Motivated more by national self-interest than, religious ideology, Iraq’s protesters hold the Iranian-dominated political establishment accountable for their country’s decay. These feelings have not developed overnight. Protests erupted last year in the oil rich city of Basra, when Iran turned off a power line in the region. Basra residents repeated ‘Iran out!’ as they burned Iranian flags, the Iranian consulate, and headquarters of Iran-linked militias.”

US stock markets reached record highs in early trading yesterday, as optimism over the prospect of a US-China trade deal rose again.

On a historic day on the markets, the S&P 500 rose above 3,066.95 points and the Nasdaq also hit a new record of 8,444.99 points.

“That's nothing new,” says CNN. “Stocks hit new records last week. But this time the Dow is joining the record-setting club.” The Dow Jones was up 0.46% in early trading.

Fox News reports that the spikes came after the Chinese Foreign Ministry announced that Donald Trump and Xi Jinping have remained in contact while negotiators agree the final language for the “phase one” of the trade agreement between the two natios.

“Stock Market hits RECORD HIGH. Spend your money well!” tweeted Donald Trump.

Pierre Veyrett, technical analyst at ActivTrades, told The Guardian this optimism is “likely to keep on supporting stock prices around the globe this week, especially if US and Chinese data is in line with or continues to beat expectations like last week’s solid non-farm payroll reports”.

Markets around the world rose in response to the Wall Street lead. India’s stock market closed at a new record high, Britain’s FTSE 100 gained more than 1% and the pan-European Stoxx 600 index reached a 21-month high.

However, less positive news for the US came in the form of factory orders data, which fell by 0.6% in September - worse than the 0.1% fall in August, and also worse than the 0.5% decline predicted by experts. The news dampened excitement among traders.

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The S&P 500 index opened at a new all-time high after positive comments from both sides of the US-China trade war.

On an upbeat day on Wall Street, the S&P 500 gained 15 points or 0.4% to hit 3,038 points, a new record level.

Meanwhile, the Dow Jones industrial average opened higher, up 112 points or 0.4%, while the tech-focused Nasdaq index gained 0.5%.

US President Donald Trump had earlier told reporters he expected to ink a significant part of the trade deal with China earlier than expected.

“We are looking probably to be ahead of schedule to sign a very big portion of the China deal, we’ll call it phase one but it’s a very big portion,” he said.

Earlier, China’s commerce ministry had said that technical talks about the phase one trade deal text with Washington were “basically completed”.

Neil Wilson of Markets.com said that stock market “bulls” were pushing Wall Street higher. He said it’s a “remarkable achievement against faltering corporate earnings, a festering (if not quite total) trade war, and softer macro data everywhere you look”.

Urging a degree of caution, he added that: “the bar on a US-China trade deal had been set so low that the market seems content with this pretty puny agreement”.

The Guardian was also measured in its assessment of the deal. “This is only for a phase one trade deal, which might reset relations between the two sides and could lift some tariff,” it said. “A full-blown agreement, tackling stickier issues such as forced technology transfers and China’s subsidies, is some distance off.”

However, Reuters points out that sentiment over the positive signs around the trade dispute was not the only factor at play on the markets. It explains that “rising bets on a third rate cut by the Federal Reserve” have also fuelled optimism among Wall Street traders.

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The FTSE 100 has reached its highest level this year after the US and China agreed to restart trade talks over the weekend. It climbed to 7530 during Monday's session, its peak since the end of September.

Thawing relations between Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping have eased fears over the escalation of a damaging dispute between the world's two leading economies.

Amid a global stock market rally, Wall Street indexes were also significantly higher, with the S&P 500 hitting an all-time high as it surpassed a previous record set in June.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.97%, or 258.15 points higher, to 26,858.11. The Nasdaq jumped 1.67%, or 133.39 points, to 8,139.63 and the S&P 500 gained 0.58% to 2,941.76 - the new intraday record.

“Investors are relieved that Donald Trump and Xi Jinping backed away from a deeper trade war, agreeing to restart negotiations during their meeting at the G20 last week,” says The Guardian.

Scott Brown, chief economist at Raymond James, said: “Any step towards a trade resolution, and it doesn't have to be a lot of progress - just a step, is viewed very positively by markets.

“And investors at this point are trying to focus on the positive in hopes that there will be some trade resolution down the line.”

However, Fawad Razaqzada, Market Analyst at Forex.com, has sounded a note of caution. “If this latest trade optimism fades completely, the focus will turn very quickly to the ailing global economy,” he said.

“As such, the S&P’s latest breakout to a new all-time high could be brief, especially as some of the positivity regarding trade talks was already priced in.”

CNN is also at pains to try and temper the optimism. “The fragile truce does little to alleviate pressure on a global economy wounded by earlier exchanges of fire that hit manufacturing and trade,” writes Charles Riley.

It's a wonder no one figured this out sooner.

Marcus Epstein has a history of associating with far-right groups and white nationalists while writing racially provocative pieces across conservative sites. Yet over the past two years, he seemingly dropped that history as he adopted the name "Mark Epstein" and wrote op-eds for The Wall Street Journal, The Hill, Forbes, and other publications — and the Journal has a very odd explanation for how it happened, BuzzFeed News reports.

Epstein previously worked for former Colorado congressmember Tom Tancredo, who espoused xenophobic views himself, and founded what BuzzFeed News calls a "nativist political club" with white supremacist Richard Spencer in the mid-2000s. Under his full name, Epstein also wrote a series of provocative, race-related op-eds for the anti-immigration website VDare.

But on the Journal's website, Mark Epstein is only identified as an "antitrust attorney and freelance writer" and largely writes in opposition to big tech regulation. Epstein gets that designation because that's the way "we know Mark Epstein," the Journal said in a statement to BuzzFeed News, adding that "we are not aware that he has written under any other byline." A spokesperson for The Hill said "we would never knowingly post material from a racist writer and have no information identifying this writer as such." Forbes, meanwhile, said Epstein's byline appeared "without permission as a co-author on one of our contributor’s posts" and that it would take Epstein's post down for further review.

Epstein explained the pseudonym to BuzzFeed News as a way to "move past the media-internet driven outrage culture" surrounding his past actions, including a dismissed 2007 misdemeanor assault charge. He also said he has "never been white nationalist nor held their beliefs." Read more at BuzzFeed News.

New York has superseded London as the pre-eminent global financial capital because of turmoil caused by Brexit, leading financial services executives have said in a survey.

Consultancy firm Duff & Phelps released its 2019 Global Regulatory Outlook survey yesterday, having asked 183 leaders in private equity, hedge funds, asset management, brokerage, banking, and policy/government their opinion on the location of the world’s top financial centre.

As CNBC reports “London and New York switched places in the ranking from 2018, with 52% of respondents choosing New York as the globe’s financial hub, while 36% chose London. Last year, 42% chose New York and 53% chose London.”

“Last year, Brexit cast a shadow of uncertainty over the United Kingdom’s economy; it has now escalated to a full-blown crisis,” the report said.

“British government ministers said last week that the UK financial sector would emerge stronger from Brexit”, Reuters notes. However, it also adds that “Duff & Phelps said Dublin, Frankfurt and Luxembourg also fared better this year as the European Union’s financial industry searches for a new hub.”

Sky News quotes EY's UK financial services managing partner, Omar Ali, who said: "The subdued economic picture, Brexit uncertainty and the emergence of some longer-term trends such as the decline in car ownership and continued high house prices are all taking their toll."

Also mentioned in the report are other potential future contenders for the position. “Looking ahead… globalisation’s diffusion of influence begins to be apparent: 12 percent of respondents expect Hong Kong to be the world’sd preeminent financial centre five years from now, a stark contrast to the 3 percent who held this opinion just a year ago.”

The report goes on to address global anti-money laundering and financial terrorism countering efforts, concluding that weakness in that area is not an issue of resourcing but of inter-institutional coordination, as well as further issues pertaining to financial regulation.

This is not the first time Brexit has spelled bad news for the City. Last year, according to Sky News, a “Z/Yen Global Financial Centres Index showed New York overtaking the UK's capital.” The think tank’s index also found that "Zurich, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Vienna, and Milan moved up the rankings significantly. These centres may be the main beneficiaries of the uncertainty caused by Brexit.”

Goldman Sachs has become the latest corporate behemoth to relax its office dress code, part of a wider trend that could soon see the traditional suit and tie become extinct.

In a memo to staff, management issued new guidelines emphasising a “firmwide flexible dress code” to take into account a “changing nature of workplaces generally in favour of a more casual environment”.

“So does this mean it's the beginning of the end for the traditional suit and tie?” asks the BBC.

The company's move for “a more chill dress code” is fitting with other banks such as JP Morgan, Bustle says, “who are looking to address the needs and expectations of a younger work force”.

This makes sense, especially as the BBC reports a massive 75% of Goldman’ employees are born after 1981.

“This is a generational thing,” one senior Goldman banker told eFinancialCareers. “[CEO David Soloman’s] doing it to keep talent. Most of the GS bankers are now under the age of 30 anyway.”

The trend is even extending to the rarified heights of the City of London Corporation, which in January decreed that its formal City banquets needn’t be black tie but also encompass “lounge suits”.

“The timing of Goldman Sachs’ announcement couldn’t be more in step with the current mood of men’s style” says Stephen Doig in the Daily Telegraph, noting there “has there been a tectonic shift over the last decade in what constitutes the idea of 'formal dress', with suiting taken apart at the seams and re-invigorated in a more dynamic way.”

“The shift has also come about as a reaction to the crash of a decade ago [when] bankers and their traditional pinstriped attire were toxic” he says.

This is not to say the high-flying world of Wall Street banking is ready to embrace the de rigeur T-shirts and jeans approach of their Silicon Valley counterparts, but it nevertheless represents a culture shift in what is still a conservative and male-dominated environment.

But while the recent shift at Goldman has been driven by changing workplace attitudes and, at least partly, attributed to new new chief executive David Solomon, who moonlights as a DJ, it could also be indicative of something more deep-rooted.

“Everything in the financial world moves in cycles. If you were to track an index of casualness in City and Wall Street dress codes it would almost certainly mirror the rise and fall of stock market booms and bust,” says Ben Wright in the Daily Telegraph.

He cites the 1986 Big Bang which deregulated the City of London, the Dot Com bubble of the late 1990s and the run-up to the 2008 financial crash as times when business dress trends foreshadowed an economic downturn.

“Financial crises tend to come round every ten years,” he concludes. “It’s been nearly ten-and-a-half since Lehman Brothers went bust. Stock markets have enjoyed a record bull run. And now Goldman Sachs is telling its staff to dress casually. If that’s not a sell signal, I don’t know what is.”

US politicians from both sides of of the political divide have bucked recent partisan bickering and united around an unlikely issue to lambast Wall Street for the booming practice of share buybacks.

The practice sees companies with spare money repurchase their own shares from the market, putting cash directly back into investor’s pockets while at the same time improving the value of the shares.

“They have very much been a feature of the post financial crisis era,” says Michael Mackenzie in the Financial Times.

According to TrimTabs data, the value of stock repurchases announced by US companies surged to more than $1 trillion last year, around seven times the amount in 2009.

“The trend is spreading, too” says the Daily Telegraph. Just last week in the UK, blue-chip heavyweights Glencore, Relx and Lloyds all announced that they would sink billions of pounds into buybacks.

“For the past several decades, the goals of American businesses has become benefitting shareholders. Given that just 10% of the wealthiest Americans own 84% of all corporate stocks, this “shareholder primacy” model tends to benefit those who already have means,” says Eillie Anzilotti for Fast Company.

“This is in contrast to how companies previously directed profits, into growing the company and increasing worker salaries,” she adds.

A report published last week from Lenore Palladino, senior economist at The Roosevelt Institute think tank, argues the shift toward shareholder primacy, not coincidentally tracks along with corporate attacks on unions, which played a significant role in protecting worker prosperity.

CNN Business says “the steady drumbeat of buybacks comes despite the political backlash against the tactic”, which has united the left and right in opposition at what has been described as “corporate cocaine”.

Republican senator Marco Rubio has announced plans to overhaul the tax status of the practice, while far-Left presidential candidate Bernie Sanders penned an op-ed in the New York Times in which he said “corporate boardrooms have become obsessed with maximising only shareholder earnings to the detriment of workers and the long-term strength of their companies”.

“Should Washington follow through on one proposal of taxing buybacks at a higher rate, or veer left and ban them unless a company bolsters pay for its employees, the outcome will resonate globally,” says Mackenzie.

“But the politicians are missing a key point” he writes. “Buybacks often reflect the fact that a strong business model is generating a surfeit of cash, a situation that tends to attract activist investors demanding higher dividends and buybacks, as was the case with Apple. For the long term health of the economy, it’s far better that excess cash is returned to investors.”

Global stocks continued to slide this morning as a selling frenzy swept across markets from the US to Japan, fuelled by factors including trade tensions from the US-China trade war, worries about slowing economic growth and a massive drop in tech shares.

The Nasdaq - the world’s second-largest stock exchange in terms of market capitalisation - bore the brunt of the sell-off of tech stocks including Apple, Microsoft and Google owner Alphabet. By the time trading drew to a close last night, the tech-heavy exchange had fallen by 4.4%, its largest one-day drop in seven years.

Meanwhile, the Dow Jones shed more than 600 points, while the S&P 500 Index fell by 3.1% - erasing all of the gains for 2018 in both markets, reports CNBC.

“Against a backdrop of rising interest rates and growing trade tensions, a feeling that the best days of the economic cycle were in the past was taking hold,” says the Financial Times.

European tech stocks were also hit by the global sell-off. The Europe-wide Stoxx 600 fell by 1%, while London’s FTSE 100 lost 1.1%.

Asian investors joined in the market rout, with South Korea’s Kospi index and Japan’s Topix on track to record their worst numbers since the 2008 financial crisis.

Asian stocks have now lost almost $5trn this year, according to Bloomberg. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index - a broad measure of stocks across the region - had dropped by around 2% as of Thursday afternoon, “taking its slide from a January peak to 22%”, the news site reports.

However, leading investment firm Nomura Asset Management believes the Asian downturn is temporary, as “Chinese companies are in strong financial shape and have the capacity to buy back shares and boost dividends”, Bloomberg adds.

When it comes to the global scene, Kelvin Tay, regional chief investment officer at UBS Wealth Management in Singapore, says that a host of factors are contributing to poor sentiment, including “rising rates, weak third-quarter corporate results, tensions in the European Union over the Italian fiscal stand-off and Brexit, and US-China trade concerns”.

“The market is trying to decide if the solid global economic fundamentals we’ve had till now are starting to give way to a period of weaker growth,” he said.

Stock markets around the globe have suffered heavy losses, following a dramatic plunge on Wall Street that saw the US Dow Jones Index drop by more than 3.15%, it’s steepest single-day fall since early February.

The BBC reports that the fall on Wall Street was precipitated in part by the US Federal Reserve decision to raise interest rates, “a move that tends to make it more expensive for companies to borrow, hurting bottom lines and turning stocks into a less attractive investment”.

Rising bond yields, fears of a global economic slowdown and escalating trade tensions between the US and a number of its trading partners also contributed to the steep losses, the Wall Street Journal says.

Donald Trump played down the plunge on US markets as a “correction”, while also repeating his ongoing criticism of the US Fed decision to raise interest rates.

“Actually it’s a correction that we’ve been waiting for a long time, but I really disagree with what the Fed is doing. I think the Fed has gone crazy,” Trump said.

US stocks went into “free fall” yesterday, sparking large scale sell-offs on Asian markets this morning.

The Dow Jones suffered its largest single-day point decline in history, plunging by almost 1,600 points before buyers bought back in to “limit the damage”, says CNN.

At the closing bell, the Dow was still down by 1,175 points, a drop of 4.6% that erased all of the gains made by US markets so far this year. It’s the biggest fall in percentage terms since “Black Monday” in August 2011.

Other US indices reflected the drop in the Dow, with the S&P 500 index falling by 4.1% and the Nasdaq by 3.7%.

Investors reacting to recent global equity losses, and concerns that a number of central banks look likely to raise interest rates to curb inflationary pressures from surging global economies contributed to the drop.

“Economic news from the US has been stronger than anticipated,” David Kuo, chief executive of financial services advisory Motley Fool, told the BBC. “So, perversely, the market correction has been caused by positive economic news.”

Asian markets followed suit, with Japan’s Nikkei hit particularly hard, losing more than 6.6% of its value. Hong Kong shares also suffered losses of almost 5%t, and Australian shares fell by more than 3%.

Fidelity Investments dismissed two high-level executives in the past few weeks amid sexual harassment complaints, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post reported Sunday, and the Los Angeles Times and New Orleans Times-Picayune published reports of serial sexual harassment against a Hollywood writer/director and a New Orleans celebrity restaurateur, respectively. The investigations of sexual misconduct in some cases predated the revelations of alleged sexual assault by Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, but they were published after a Weinstein-prompted #MeToo campaign in which women shared their harassment stories over social media.

At Fidelity, portfolio manager C. Robert Chow resigned earlier in October after colleagues accused him of making inappropriate sexual comments, and tech fund manager Gavin Baker was fired for allegedly harassing a 26-year-old female employee, the Post reports. Both men worked in Fidelity's stock-picking unit, and after an emergency meeting last week, Fidelity reportedly hired an outside consultant to audit behavior in the powerful division.

At least 38 women, meanwhile, told the Los Angeles Times that director James Toback had sexually harassed them, usually involving some form of aggressive masturbation. Toback has been making movies since 1974 and got an Oscar nomination for his Bugsy screenplay, but since he wasn't a household name, "Toback always kept his credentials handy when he introduced himself to women" around Manhattan, typically saying he could advance their careers, writes Glenn Whipp at the L.A. Times.

Twenty-four women told The Times-Picayune, meanwhile, that they were victims of sexual harassment at restaurants tied to celebrity chef and restaurateur John Besh. One women filed a federal employment discrimination complaint saying Besh himself coerced her into a sexual relations — he said it was consensual. The women collectively "described a company where several male coworkers and bosses touched female employees without consent, made suggestive comments about their appearance, and — in a few cases — tried to leverage positions of authority for sex," The Times-Picayune says.

Global markets hit another all-time high yesterday, with the receding threat of political instability in the EU boosting investors' confidence.

On Monday, the CBOE Volatility Index, dubbed the Vix Index and considered Wall Street's "fear gauge", fell to its lowest level since 1993, bolstered by last weekend's French presidential election result and solid corporate earnings, says Reuters.

Volatility in the US equity market "has dissipated as stock investors whistled past geopolitical unknowns from populist politics to heightened threats from North Korea", says Bloomberg.

While trade agreements, tax reform and the future of financial regulation may hang in the balance, "investors have instead focused on one of the best global earnings seasons in a decade and signs of economic growth".

However, not everyone has welcomed this newfound confidence. Adrienne Murphy, chief market analyst at online traders AvaTrade, told the Daily Telegraph that with nationalism and populism still spreading, she was "surprised the Vix was so low".

Piers Curran, head of trading at Amplify Trading, also said the current volatility level "was not sustainable", while George Goncalves, a fixed income strategist at Nomura, issued a note of caution to his clients.

He said: "Complacency has returned in such quick fashion that it's starting to feel like 2005-06, when nothing seemed to faze the broader markets."

With Emmanuel Macron's victory over Marine Le Pen in the French elections, "the EU and the euro have dodged a bullet, but geopolitical risks are continuing to proliferate", says Nouriel Roubini, an economist known as "Dr Doom", in The Guardian.

As examples, he cites the continuing populist backlash against globalisation, Russia's expansionist agenda and North Korea threatening a military conflict on the Korean peninsula.

"It is worth asking if investors are underestimating the potential for one or more of these conflicts to trigger a more serious crisis, and what it would take to shock them out of their complacency if they are", he adds.

If Hillary Clinton wins the White House, she may not be able to rely on progressives in government to facilitate her transition and agenda. For that, she can thank the content of thousands of emails hacked from campaign chair John Podesta's Gmail account that WikiLeaks continues to publish daily.

The emails see Clinton staff and confidants taking a dismissive posture toward those on their left, Politico reports, calling progressives and their causes "puritanical," "naive," and "dumb." Some progressives were even labeled "freaks" who should "get a life," and Podesta called Sen. Bernie Sanders a "doofus" for wanting stronger environmental regulations than those in the Paris climate change accord.

But worse than the personal insults are the Wall Street speech transcript excerpts the emails also include, which find Clinton assuring her audience she is more center than left. "We were already kind of suspicious of where Hillary's instincts were," Politico quotes an unnamed "influential liberal Democratic operative" as saying, "but now we see that she is who we thought she was. The honeymoon is going to be tight and small and maybe nonexistent" if she is elected.

The Clinton campaign response emphasized their candidate's history of working "with progressive allies to aggressively develop serious and thorough plans to make real change." Throughout her primary campaign, Clinton cast herself as a "progressive who gets things done" in an attempt to mediate between her record and the more left-wing votes she then sought to wrest from Sanders.

Transcripts of closed-door speeches Hillary Clinton gave to Wall Street bankers were published by WikiLeaks Friday as attachments to leaked emails from Clinton campaign staff, sharing with the public content the Democratic nominee refused to release herself.

In comments at a 2013 conference sponsored by Goldman Sachs, Clinton expressed concern about digital security threats, particularly from China and Russia, the latter of which is officially accused of interfering with the 2016 election by leaking hacked information to sites like WikiLeaks. Clinton described disabling her devices while traveling abroad to avoid hacking, but FBI Director James Comey has since said she did no such thing.

The documents also see campaign staff discussing how to deal with off-message speech excerpts — "policy positions that we should give an extra scrub" — to avoid bad press. One quote, for example, has Clinton describing her "solid middle class upbringing" at another Goldman event. "And now, obviously, I'm kind of far removed because the life I've lived and the economic, you know, fortunes that my husband and I now enjoy," she adds, "but I haven't forgotten it." Clinton's staff labeled the excerpt, "CLINTON ADMITS SHE IS OUT OF TOUCH."

Next week, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is holding a fundraiser at the Harvard Club in Manhattan where the cost of entry is $1,000 apiece; $2,700 will get you a ticket to a VIP reception with Ted Cruz and his wife, Heidi, and $25,000 makes you an event chairman. Cruz's target is Wall Street bankers. He needs their contributions to compete with Donald Trump in the final sprint to the Republican convention, Ben White reports at Politico. And Cruz is not popular on Wall Street, despite the fact that his wife is on leave from a position at Goldman Sachs.

Cruz, who has already taken in $12 million from the financial industry, has criticized Wall Street "crony capitalism" and government bailouts for "rich Wall Street banks," and bankers have noticed. "There are a few reasons Wall Street won't fully back him," a senior investment banker at a blue chip firm told White. "The first is his hard stance on social issues like abortion and gay marriage. The second is his general unlikability and the fact that he probably can't win. And the third is all the bashing he's done of Wall Street despite Heidi and everything else. People remember that."

But Cruz will probably rake in campaign cash on Monday anyway, in part because Wall Street dislikes and fears Donald Trump more — and many don't believe that Cruz would sink down-ballot Republicans as much as Trump would. You can read more about Cruz's Wall Street endeavors, and some choice quotes about Cruz from bankers, at Politico.

Before Hillary Clinton was railing on big banks in a race for the Democratic presidential nomination against notoriously anti-Wall Street candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), she was getting paid by the big banks to give talks. Now, those private talks are threatening to make a second — and very public — appearance as the push grows for Clinton to release transcripts.

While some argue that the remarks are nothing but the "boilerplate, happy talk that highly paid speakers generally offer to their hosts," others worry that Clinton's speech, if released, could easily be taken out of context by Sanders, who has already been slamming her for her Wall Street connections.

According to one attendee at Clinton's October 2013 speech to Goldman Sachs executives and tech industry leaders, Clinton's remarks then were a far cry from what she's saying on campaign trail now. "It was pretty glowing about us," the attendee told Politico of the speech. "It's so far from what she sounds like as a candidate now. It was like a rah-rah speech. She sounded more like a Goldman Sachs managing director." Clinton, Politico reports, got $225,000 for the talk, during which she not once criticized Goldman or Wall Street over the financial crisis.

While the question of whether the release will happen remains up in the air, the attendee at Clinton's 2013 speech is pretty confident it won't. "It would bury her against Sanders," the attendee told Politico. "It really makes her look like an ally of the firm."

Read the full story over at Politico.

Joe Biden joked that he might want a job with Wall Street giant Goldman Sachs after his term is up this time next year. The vice president was speaking at a dinner hosted by the bank in advance of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Wednesday.

"I’m not qualified, but I may be coming back to you," he said to Goldman representatives at the event, adding that he has "never been gainfully employed before."

While Biden may have only been kidding, Goldman in particular is emblematic of the "revolving door" between Wall Street and the federal government, frequently serving as a destination for former federal officials and a hiring pool for new ones. Former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush both picked treasury secretaries from the bank's ranks, and Goldman was also the source of several lesser-known Obama appointees.

Bernie Sanders appeared to have shut Hillary Clinton down when the conversation at the Democratic debate shifted toward Wall Street reform, saying flatly that Clinton's defense of her record against big banks was "not good enough."

"Why over her political career has Wall Street been a major — the major — contributor to Hillary Clinton?" Sanders demanded to know.

But Clinton was ready in her defense, slamming Sanders by saying, "He has basically used his answer to impugn my integrity." She added that most of her donors have actually been women, and further bulldozed Sanders by saying she'd read his Wall Street proposal and that "my proposal is tougher […] more effective."

Watch it get heated below. Jeva Lange

Most movies and TV shows would kill for the kind of advance publicity the House Select Committee on Benghazi has gotten, free of charge, for its grilling of Hillary Clinton on Thursday. Not all publicity is good publicity — as committee chairman Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) has lamented — but the consensus in Washington is that Clinton, Gowdy, and their respective parties all have a lot riding on Thursday's testimony. Clinton will likely try to make the committee look like a political hatchet job while trying to avoid damaging her presidential campaign, and Gowdy and his six fellow Republicans will probably try to make Clinton look bad without appearing like they are trying to make her look bad.

Sound like political theater? Well, The Wall Street Journal is breaking out the popcorn with this "viewer's guide to the Benghazi hearings." If you watch below, a pretty excited-looking Shelby Holliday will briefly explain what has happened so far, what to watch for on Thursday, and how those Clinton emails are supposed to fit into the Benghazi rubric. You'll probably need a post-game wrap-up, too, since the hearing could easily last eight hours and might well include more congressional talking than question-asking. Stay tuned. Peter Weber

Quarterly presidential fundraising reports released this week reveal that Wall Street's top picks for president are still Republican Jeb Bush and Democrat Hillary Clinton. Bush collected more than $900,000 from people who work in finance, while Clinton took in just under $700,000. In addition, several Clinton bundlers who hail from the finance industry each raised $100,000 or more.

Wall Street's preference for the dynasty candidates is nothing new: Despite her attempts to strike a populist tone, Clinton has long had close ties to Wall Street. "If it turns out to be Jeb versus Hillary we would love that," said a Wall Street lawyer in 2014, adding that "either outcome would be fine."

Both campaigns also took in the most donations — $3.1 million for Clinton and $845,000 for Bush — from another broadly disliked industry: lawyers.

American stocks took a tumble today after Greek voters resoundingly rejected the austerity measures required by the country's creditors as a precondition for a new bail-out.

US stock-index futures fell overnight as the result of the referendum became clear, and in early trading in New York, stock markets followed the pattern of falls that had been established by Asian and European markets.

The Standard & Poor's 500 Index extended its steepest weekly slump since March, Bloomberg reports. After an hour of trading, the S&P had fallen by 0.5 per cent and the Dow Jones Industrial Average by 0.6 per cent.

Futures in both indexes fell by a greater margin, indicating that traders believe the markets have further yet to fall.

After 61.3 per cent of Greeks voted No in Sunday's referendum, renewed fears that Athens will leave the euro sent markets into jitters around the globe. In London, the FTSE 100 was down 87 points or 1.3 per cent at 3.15pm.

Leading lenders, including JPMorgan Chase & Co., say a Grexit is now the most likely scenario.

Analysts are divided over what will happen next on Wall Street. Equities vice-chairman at Robert W Baird & Co, Patrick Spencer, says: "The uncertainty around Greece and the outcome are the factors really hurting US futures – markets hate uncertainty. There's too much at risk if the Greeks leave the euro."

However, USA Today reports that Paul Hickey, co-founder of Bespoke Investment Group, has told clients not to be alarmed. "There's been no panic of any kind," he said. "Broadly speaking, we think every single market is acting quite rationally."

Meanwhile, news that American employers added fewer jobs than expected last month has dampened expectations that the Federal Reserve will feel confident enough to raise the cost of borrowing in September.

The 223,000 new jobs added to the economy last month fell short of the 230,000 expected by many economists, said The Times this morning. A further dent in confidence came when the job gains for April and May were revised downward by 60,000 jobs, and wage growth was flat for June.

A lone British trader has been charged by US authorities with contributing to the infamous 2010 "flash crash" on Wall Street that wiped billions of dollars off the value of US companies within minutes.

Navinder Singh Sarao, 36, from Hounslow, west London, will appear at Westminster magistrates' court today. He is accused of making $40m over five years by deliberately pushing down the value of leading US shares using illegal trading tactics.

The US Department of Justice wants to extradite him on charges of wire fraud, commodities fraud and market manipulation.

The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which has filed a separate civil claim, has accused him of using an algorithm to flood trading platforms with fake orders, known as spoofing.

"When prices fell as a result, Mr Sarao allegedly sold futures contracts, only to buy them back at a lower price. Conversely, when the market moved back upward as the market activity ceased, Mr Sarao allegedly bought contracts, only to sell them at a higher price," said the commission.

According to the criminal complaint, Sarao also set up a corporate entity on the Caribbean island of Nevis in April 2010 with the firm name Nav Sarao Milking Markets.

He is currently being held by the Metropolitan Police extradition unit.

It is believed to be the first legal action taken against any individual in relation to the flash crash on 6 May 2010, when the Dow Jones industrial average dropped by nearly 1,000 points in 20 minutes.

Prosecutors claim Sarao was "exceptionally active" and trying to push down the shares for nearly two hours before they collapsed.

"Although the major indexes recovered most of the losses, the event was blamed for shaking the confidence of ordinary Americans who put their savings into the stock market," says the New York Times. Five years later, news of Sarao's arrest has "raised anew concerns about how an individual could manage to exert such influence over the world's financial markets", says the newspaper.

Through design or, more likely, happenstance, federal financial regulators are in for a tough, tough week in Washington. And they'll be getting hammered from both sides.

On Monday, former longtime AIG CEO and chairman Hank Greenberg is taking the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department to court, arguing the government was too tough on AIG during the financial crisis of 2008. Meanwhile, over the weekend, two U.S. senators called for an investigation into the Federal Reserve's New York branch after ProPublica and This American Life disclosed secretly recorded tapes purporting to show that Wall Street's top regulator was too lenient on and cozy with large financial firms, especially Goldman Sachs.

The Greenberg case, to be heard before the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington, is actually a class action brought by Greenberg's Starr International, AIG's largest shareholder before the bailout, and 300,000 other former AIG shareholders. Greenberg and his lawyer, David Boies, say that if AIG and the New York Fed had returned then-retired Greenberg's calls and emails in 2008, he could have saved the company without a massive $85 billion loan, which grew to $184.6 billion and a 92 percent stake held by the government, all since repaid. The government's position is that AIG asked for the help to avoid bankruptcy, took the aid voluntarily, and taxpayers took on great risk "to protect and stabilize the United States economy." At stake is more than $40 billion in taxpayer money if Starr and its co-plaintiffs win.

The ProPublica/This American Life story features Carmen Segarra, a lawyer brought in to examine the New York Fed's dealings with Goldman Sachs, after a New York Fed–commissioned report found that Wall Street's closest federal regulator was too cozy and deferential to Wall Street's "too big to fail" banks. After seven months, Segarra was fired, she says for refusing to back down on her tough Goldman Sachs report — but before she was dismissed she recorded 46 hours of secret tape. It was these tapes, and the stories they led to, that prompted Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) — both on the Senate Banking Committee — to demand "oversight hearings on the disturbing issues raised by [Friday's] whistleblower report."

You can read the New York Fed's response here, the ProPublic report here, and listen to This American Life's audio version here.

When Taylor Swift isn't shaming her ex-boyfriends and offering life advice to high schoolers through her songs, she's writing for The Wall Street Journal about the current state of the music industry.

Swift has some ideas about how artists can sell more albums: They just need to bare their souls, the way that she does in her music:

If artists just made music that shot audiences "like an arrow through the heart," everything would be solved! Swift realizes that "it isn't as easy today as it was 20 years ago to have a multiplatinum-selling album," but "that should challenge and motivate" artists, not discourage them.

Among Swift's other statements is the odd opinion that "pop sounds like hip-hop," and she closes the article by stating what she'd really love in life: "a nice garden."

Jon Stewart has raged against the paucity of Wall Street bankers serving time for tanking the economy in 2008, but on Tuesday night's Daily Show he did find one top banker in lockup. But what about the "real perpetrators of financial district wrongdoing"? Stewart asked sardonically, as way of introducing the recent arrest of Occupy Wall Street protester Cecily McMillan. That makes the score Wall Street 1, Occupy Wall Street 1, Stewart said. And this is when the fun started.

Stewart's jokes about Occupy Wall Street are great, and Samantha Bee has some great lines about the poor Wall Street elites still suffering from PTID (post-traumatic inconvenience disorder). And by her count, the 1-1 score isn't a good measure of how the 1 percenters are faring against the 99 percent: "By my count, that puts us 98 convicted hippies away from true justice." --Peter Weber

Federal prosecutors are preparing to file criminal charges against at least two of the world's largest banks, The New York Times reports, tackling the "public outcry over the perception that Wall Street giants are 'too big to jail.'" That perception is due largely to the fact that five years after the global economy collapsed under the weight of shady mortgage and lending practices at the world's biggest banks, no top bank or banker has been charged with a crime.

So who are the feds going after? Switzerland's Credit Suisse and France's BNP Paribas, according to The Times' sources. Now, both banks operate in the U.S., and neither's hands are clean in the housing bust, but that's not what the Justice Department and bank regulators are going after them for. The case against Credit Suisse reportedly hinges on its selling tax shelters to Americans, and BNP is accused of conducting business with U.S.-blacklisted countries like Sudan and Iran. Criminal investigations are underway for U.S. banks, but at a less-advanced stage, The Times reports.

If you were inclined toward cynicism, you might suggest that unlike foreign banks, Wall Street giants tend to donate liberally to U.S. politicians in both parties — and they're potential (high-paying) future employers for government bank regulators. But it's probably more likely in this case that prosecutors will have an easier time making the case that Credit Suisse and BNP Paribas actually broke the law.

What Wall Street banks did to the economy and hundred of thousands of unlucky homebuyers may be "criminal" in the figurative sense — as in, "casting Keanu Reeves in that role is criminal" — but proving that bankers committed actual legal crimes is tricky. There's the law, and this other problem: If banks are convicted of a crime, bank regulators may have to pull their charters, which "amounts to a death sentence for a bank," former U.S. prosecutor Daniel Levy tells The Times. A guilty plea by BNP would be the biggest from a bank since junk-bond pioneer Drexel Burnham Lambert in 1989.

Hillary Clinton may be heavily favored to become the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, but she's not without her baggage. Most alarmingly to liberals, Clinton has appeared downright chummy with big business and Wall Street in her long political career, raising concerns about whether she would ignore white collar malfeasance to the detriment of the middle and lower classes.

That concern isn't unfounded, either. And in the latest sign of Clinton's coziness with moneyed interests, an in-depth story from Politico on Monday reports that Wall Street has three favorite candidates in the early 2016 jockeying. Those candidates, in preferred order: Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie — and Clinton.

"If it turns out to be Jeb versus Hillary we would love that and either outcome would be fine," a "top Republican-leaning Wall Street lawyer" told Politico.

This is why progressives are so antsy for a populist candidate to get in the race. Clinton is hardly a "corporations are people" type of politician, but she's no fire-breathing leftist, either.

Today, protesters will gather in New York City's Financial District to mark the second anniversary of the birth of Occupy Wall Street. But with Zuccotti Park cleared of tents and the movement having largely petered out, has anything fundamentally changed over the past two years?

Income inequality certainly has — by growing. Last year, the top 1 percent of Americans took home 19 percent of the country's household income, their biggest share since the Roaring '20s. And any congressional interest in further reforming the financial services industry goes unrealized as the body grapples with how to pass a budget that will keep the government running for another year.

Still, Occupy Wall Street did change how the country talks about the economy, notes Rebecca Solnit in Mother Jones, especially when it comes to "that contagious meme 'the 1 percent.'"

Charles M. Blow, writing in The New York Times, agrees:

Occupy Wall Street might not have upended global capitalism, but it did create easily recognizable talking points. Chanting "we are the 99 percent" is certainly more convenient than sharing a lecture by leftist economist and Occupy Wall Street supporter Joseph Stiglitz.

As for its political impact, it never equaled (or tried to equal) the conservative grassroots movement it was often contrasted with, the Tea Party, by challenging moderate candidates.

That doesn't mean, two years later, that progressive politicians haven't adopted Occupy Wall Street's rhetoric.

Just look at the mayor's race in New York City. Two years ago, Mayor Michael Bloomberg ordered the removal of the protesters from Zuccotti Park. Last week, New Yorkers chose the city's public advocate, Bill de Blasio — who, in 2011, called Occupy a "heartfelt movement that's speaking to what people are feeling all over this country" — as the Democratic candidate for mayor.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) openly supported Occupy Wall Street as a candidate in 2011 and 2012, and has since become the Left's champion on economic issues. President Barack Obama regularly talks about the disproportionate gains of "the top 1 percent," as he did in a speech in July at Knox College.

Robert Reich, former secretary of Labor under President Clinton, notes in The Christian Science Monitor that "Occupy put the issue of the nation's savage inequality on the front pages" and "to that extent, it was a stirring success." But he wonders how it will compare to the women's suffrage and labor union movements:

MICHAEL DOUGLAS gives the performance of his career as Liberace in Steven Soderbergh's film portrait of the flamboyant American pianist, say the critics.

Soderbergh has said that Behind the Candelabra— which was produced by American television network HBO for a paltry $5million — was "too gay" for Hollywood studios, which refused to finance it. Had they been braver, says The Independent's Geoffrey McNab, they would now have a serious Oscar contender on their hands thanks to Douglas's "quite wonderful" portrayal of Liberace.

The 68-year-old actor "captures brilliantly Liberace's showmanship and outrageous camp qualities as well as the darker side of his character without ever lapsing into caricature," writes McNab.

Writing in the London Evening Standard, David Sexton says the "stunningly good film" gave Douglas his "best role for a long time, let's even say ever". The star, who made his name playing macho characters in movies such as Wall Street and Falling Down, wasn't an obvious choice to play the gay pianist. But he combines "genuine glamour" with a "clear view of how tacky and gimcrack Liberace always was, how saggy underneath the wigs, the capes and the glitter".

Sexton also lavishes praise on Douglas's co-star Matt Damon, who plays Scott Thorson, Liberace's live-in lover for five years in the late 1970s. In Damon's hands, he says, the transformation of Thorson from a "good-natured country boy", into a "nightmarish addict" fed a cocktail of drugs by a slimy plastic surgeon played by Rob Lowe, is entirely convincing.

The Daily Telegraph's Robbie Collin agrees that Douglas's Liberace is "one of the greatest performances" the actor has ever given. It combines "slackness and precision into a brilliantly unsettling yet lovable whole: his hair stands as high as the mane on a Chinese lion statue; his voice is a kitten's purr, fringed with reptilian threat".

There is praise too for Soderbergh, who announced his retirement from filmmaking earlier this year. That's too bad, says Collin, because the brilliance of Behind the Candelabra shows "exactly why the industry needs him".

New York City's raid on Occupy Wall Street that cleared the group's Zuccotti Park encampment will cost the city more than $350,000 — and that total could still rise.

On Tuesday, the city announced it would pay $365,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by people whose property was destroyed in that November 2011 raid.

Occupy Wall Street sued the city last year, alleging that police ruined more than 3,000 donated books the group had taken to calling the People's Library. The group sought $47,000 in damages, which the city has agreed to pay in full. The city will also cover $186,350 in legal fees, with Brookfield Properties, Zuccotti Park's owners, covering $16,000 of that total.

"Our clients are pleased," Occupy's attorney, Normal Siegel, told the Village Voice's Nick Pinto. "We had asked for damages of $47,000 for the books and the computers, and we got $47,000. More important — we would not have settled without this — is the language in the settlement. This was not just about money, it was about constitutional rights and the destruction of books."

Without directly admitting fault for the damages — Courthouse News Service's Adam Klasfeld notes that the settlement is written in the passive voice — the city offered a mini mea culpa.

From the settlement:

According to the New York Post, the city hauled away 26 truckloads of books and other belongings from the Zuccotti camp site during the raid. Some 1,000 books were later recovered, less than one-third of the 3,600 that Occupy says were part of the People's Library.

In separate settlements also announced this week, the city agreed to pay $75,000 to Global Revolutions TV, a media outlet that claimed their equipment was broken by police in the raid, and to cover their nearly $50,000 in legal fees. The city also said it would pay $8,500 to Times Up New York, a cycling advocacy non-profit, for damages to their bike-powered generators.