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With Inauguration Day here, politics and government policy will continue to be a focus area for the markets. Over the past few months, President Trump has outlined a number of areas for potential changes in government policy.

During each corporate earnings season, it is not unusual for companies to comment on subjects that had an impact on their earnings and revenues for a given quarter or may have an impact on earnings and revenues for future quarters. While the majority of S&P 500 companies will report earnings results for Q4 2016 over the next few weeks, approximately 8% of the companies in the index (42 companies) have already reported earnings results for the fourth quarter (through Wednesday). Have companies in the S&P 500 been commenting on government policies that may change under the Trump administration during their earnings conference calls for the fourth quarter?

To answer this question, FactSet searched for the terms “Trump” and “administration” in the conference call tran

A friend I haven’t heard from in many years since he left the USA wrote me. He closed the letter in an unusual way, saying:

PS — USA has gone completely bonkers these days? or what the heck is going on over there? would love to pick your mind over a glass of wine. someday!

I’m not intending on writing on politics as a regular habit at Aleph Blog, and most of what I am going to say is economics-related, so please bear with me.  Hopefully this will get it out of my system.

To my friend,

There are a lot of frustrated people in the US.  Though you’ve been gone a long time, you used to know me pretty well; after all, I trained you on economic matters.

Let me give a list of reasons why I think people are frustrated, then explain how that affects their political calculations, and finally explain why they have mostly misdiagnosed the issues, and won’t get what they want regardless of who is elected.

The electorate is frustrated because:

• Living standards have declined for the lower 80% of so

For those who found themselves busy fertilizing their lawns and Spring cleaning this weekend, you missed a market-moving decision as Cyprus announced (quite conveniently after Fridays close) an unprecedented levy on all bank deposits of 6.75% for accounts below $100,000 euros, and 9.9% for $100,00 euros and above.  OUCH

Adding insult to injury, if you lived in Cyprus and needed cash from an ATM machine, you were out of luck as  Cypriots awoke to find bank transfers already frozen as the government prepares to seize the assets when their banks re-open on the 19th although the glimmer of hope exists the final vote tomorrow could fail (there must be a joke there somewhere about PIIGS and flying).

All the talk from EU politicians.  All the promises that the Euro would be fine.  All of the money printing.  All of the haircuts already taken.  Blah blah blah blah.......and here we go again.

My hats off to whomever bought the enormous volume in VXX end of Feburary.  (click on chart to