Wall Street Billionaires Are Starting to Bet On A Trump Win
'A reduction in the activist antitrust stance of the Biden-Harris administration will unleash productivity.'
President Donald Trump warned in the lead-up to the 2020 election that the stock market would crash in the event that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were afforded an opportunity to lead the nation. When the crash did not come immediately, the liberal media laughed off his warning as politically charged nonsense.
Again, earlier this year, Trump warned that the market would be headed for trouble under the Harris-Biden administration, and again he was mocked like the Cassandra of Greek legend.
Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at CFRA Research, was among the many who shrugged off Trump's doomsaying, telling CNN, "Fear sells."
The X account for what is now the Harris campaign shared a post in May mocking Trump's warning. President Joe Biden re-shared the post along with a meme insinuating Trump was a loser.
Months later, it became clear that Trump's fears, though premature, were justified.
A dismal Labor Department job report landed Friday, fueling fears of a coming recession and sparking a market selloff. Amid the U.S. market nosedive Friday, Trump responded on Truth Social, writing, "Kamalanomics."
'Of course there is a massive market downturn. Kamala is even worse than Crooked Joe.'
Markets tanked again Monday morning. Blaze News noted that the Dow opened down more than 1,000 points and as of mid-morning hovered about -2.6% overall. The tech-heavy Nasdaq, meanwhile, was down over 560 points or 3.36%.
The Chicago Board Options Exchange's Volatility Index (VIX), which reflects the market's expectations for the relative strength of near-term price changes of the S&P 500 Index, has shot up 170% since Friday and is poised for its biggest single day rise on record, according to Reuters.
Trump spared no time swapping out his warnings for blame.
"STOCK MARKETS ARE CRASHING, JOB NUMBERS ARE TERRIBLE, WE ARE HEADING TO WORLD WAR III, AND WE HAVE TWO OF THE MOST INCOMPETENT 'LEADERS' IN HISTORY. THIS IS NOT GOOD!!!" Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Trump later wrote, "Of course there is a massive market downturn. Kamala is even worse than Crooked Joe. Markets will NEVER accept the Radical Left Lunatic that DESTROYED San Francisco and California, as a whole. Next move, THE GREAT DEPRESSION OF 2024! You can’t play games with MARKETS. KAMALA CRASH!!!"
Having clearly settled on the alliterative put-down, Trump again took to Truth Social, writing, "VOTERS HAVE A CHOICE — TRUMP PROSPERITY, OR THE KAMALA CRASH & GREAT DEPRESSION OF 2024, NOT TO MENTION THE PROBABILITY OF WORLD WAR lll IF THESE VERY STUPID PEOPLE REMAIN IN OFFICE. REMEMBER, TRUMP WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING!!!"
Trump's running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), took to X to note that this "moment could set off a real economic calamity around the globe. It requires steady leadership — the kind President Trump delivered for four years. Kamala Harris is too afraid to answer media questions and cannot lead us in these troubled times."
Rather than acknowledge the market bloodbath, the Democratic Party elected instead to celebrate Harris' record Monday, lauding her and her former running mate for "one of the greatest economic comebacks of any administration."
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The 1792 Exchange, a corporate bias watchdog seeking to restore political neutrality in the boardroom and to altogether combat woke capital, has released another damning batch of insights into the extent of the ideological capture at America's Fortune 10 companies.
The watchdog's recent analysis — critical additions to a growing database that tracks the political preferences of board members and leaders inside Fortune 250 companies' C-suites — indicates that executives from America's top 10 companies, taken in aggregate, direct the super-majority of their political giving to Democrats. The 1792 Exchange further highlighted various public remarks suggestive of executives' prioritization of left-wing activism in the name of so-called stakeholders over results and returns for those shareholders who have everything on the line.
The 1792 Exchange indicated that executives from Fortune 10 companies give 77% of their political donations to Democrats and only 23% to Republicans. The political bias is especially clear at Amazon, Apple, and Alphabet, where the ratio of political giving to Democrats over Republicans apparently exceeds 9:1. Of the three corporate behemoths, 97%, 97%, and 95% of political donations went to Democrats, respectively.
Two outliers among the Fortune 10 in this regard are Chevron and Walmart, where 81% and 69% of political donations from executives and board members went to Republicans.
Matt Buckham, vice president for programs at the 1792 Exchange, told Blaze News, "What we see is instead of having a fair representation of viewpoints, instead of having a clear understanding that we are serving the shareholder, we see a massive tilt of 'We favor one party’s political opinions, one party’s ideas, one party’s ideology.'"
Buckham suggested that these executives should alternatively be focused on the business — on "doing what's good for the shareholder, what's good for the customer, and making the best product or service possible. Activism is the complete opposite of that."
"We don't want them to take harmful, left-wing, Democratic activist viewpoints and ideologies and incorporate them in a business with the pretense that it's helping the shareholders," continued Buckham. "We're trying to help companies avoid another Bud Light moment."
In an apparent effort to signal its woke alignment, Bud Light collaborated last year with transvestite influencer Dylan Mulvaney, celebrating his supposed "365 Days of Girlhood." The leftist activism hurt the company and shareholders by extension.
A boycott reacting to the company's apparent mockery of women successfully took Bud Light out of the ranking of America's list of top 10 beers, cost Anheuser-Busch tens of billions in market value, and prompted a purge of corporate employees. According to the Harvard Business Review, Bud Light's sales decline persisted for around eight months.
It is unclear whether the executives at America's Fortune 10 companies — Walmart, Amazon, ExxonMobil, Apple, UnitedHealth Group, CVS, Berkshire Hathaway, Alphabet, McKesson, and Chevron — have taken the Bud Light lesson to heart. It is clear, however, that many are predisposed to a potentially costly leftward drift.
Referencing public statements made by company directors in recent months and years, the 1792 Exchange report indicated that ESG and DEI are baked into executives' conversations and considerations.
The report highlighted, for instance, former PepsiCo. CEO and current Amazon Audit Committee chairman Indra Nooyi's sense that discriminatory hiring policies are the way forward.
"You have to put some quotas and numbers in place to get the appropriate critical mass of diverse people in," Nooyi is quoted as saying at a 2022 leadership event in Dubai. "Don't look at quotas as something bad. It's bad if it's not in the early stages. So if it's in the early stages, start with a quota. Insist that the numbers get to 25[-]30% diverse people."
"[Inclusion] starts with numbers and then becomes a mindset," continued Nooyi.
Nooyi is evidently not the only race obsessive with priorities besides profitability at Amazon.
Andy Jassy, the company's president and CEO, reportedly said, "If you knew what a lot of the senior leaders at Amazon spend their time on when they're not at work. They spend their time on issues of racial equality. People are very passionate about it. I spend a lot of my time on that, too, so I care a lot about it."
It appears even the directors at ExxonMobil have waved on the leftist march through corporate institutions.
The 1792 Exchange highlighted how Gregory Goff, an independent director at the oil giant since 2021, is among those who have bought into stakeholder capitalism contra shareholder capitalism.
"I would hope that a director or directors would never compromise those plans and [ESG] programs by maybe challenging how much money is being spent on the things that are the most important to do," said Goff.
Things are no better at the UnitedHealth Group where the company's so-called chief innovation officer Dame Vivian Hunt appears to be of the mindset that the company must embrace an activist role. Huntnoted at an Imperial College Business School conference, "We want to lead responsibly. Stakeholder capitalism is a framework to do so. It's new harmony with a brain, a balance sheet, as well as a heart."
Over at Google's parent company Alphabet, board member Roger Ferguson Jr., is apparently of the mind that capitalism is broken and needs to be fixed.
"Business leaders must embrace a new definition of capitalism that puts a greater emphasis on social responsibility and equity," Ferguson said at a 2021 gala where he was being honored. "The Business Roundtable took meaningful steps toward that goal when it redefined the purpose of the corporation to include a commitment to all stakeholders."
Paul Tice, an adjunct professor of finance at the Leonard N. Stern School of Business at New York University, indicated in his recent book, "The Race to Zero: How ESG Investing Will Crater the Global Financial System," that stakeholder capitalism theory, which began making the rounds in management circles around the 1960s, "argues that modern enterprises must serve not only shareholders but all company stakeholders — including employees, suppliers, and customers as well as the state, the economy, and society at large."
Tice suggested that stakeholder capitalism, particularly the kind championed by Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum, is built upon a corporatism "doubtless influenced by an engineering flow-chart mindset and a Prussian need to order society" that is "basically a collectivist political ideology with a dark lineage."
Buckham told Blaze News, "There's no end to what a stakeholder is or who a stakeholder is, so anybody and everybody can be one, they're loud."
"We're just saying [to company executives], 'Stop listening to everybody. Focus on your company — on what you do well, who you actually serve as the shareholder — and your company will do well," continued Buckham.
Just as Consumers' Research provides consumers with insights into how they can avoid giving woke companies their hard-earned cash, the 1792 Exchange — named in tribute to the founding of the first American stock exchange in 1792 — seeks to both chasten top executives and help investors "make sure that they know what's going on in the companies they're invested in."
Buckham indicated that the 1792 Exchange will keep furnishing investors with insights so they can avoid woke companies and have a hand in turning things around for the better.
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President Biden signed the first veto of his administration Monday, derailing a bipartisan bill that would have disallowed pension fund managers from considering factors like climate change and social justice when investing.
"President Biden’s first veto is against a bipartisan bill that protects retirement savings from political interference," House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said in a statement Monday.
"It is clear that President Biden wants Wall Street to use your hard-earned money not to grow your savings, but to fund a far-left political agenda. That will hurt seniors and workers, especially after President Biden’s reckless spending caused record inflation and rapid interest rate hikes," McCarthy also said.
The bill passed the Democrat-controlled Senate 50-46 March 1. The House version passed February 28 with every Republican and a single Democrat, Maine's Rep. Jared Golden, voting for it. Because overriding vetoes requires a two-thirds majority of both chambers, it is likely that the rule allowing ESG investing will remain.
"This Administration continues to prioritize their radical policy agenda over the economic, energy and national security needs of our country, and it is absolutely infuriating," said Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), one of two Democrat senators who voted for the bill. Sen. Jon Tester of Montana was the other.
Manchin added that the Biden administration was engaged in an "unrelenting campaign to advance a radical social and environmental agenda" that exacerbates economic problems of Biden's own making.
The vetoed legislation was aimed at reversing a rule allowing pension fund managers to take environmental, social, and corporate governance factors into account when investing retirees' funds.
Some Republicans refer to ESG strategies as "woke investing" or "woke capitalism."
Last week, for example, House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) said Silicon Valley Bank was "one of the most woke banks" because of its "ESG-type" policies, the Washington Post reported. The Post describes "woke capitalism" as a "hot-button issue" related to ESG investing.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a Republican, announced an 18-state alliance to "push back against President Biden's environmental, social, corporate governance (ESG) agenda that is destabilizing the American economy and the global financial system."
"We as freedom loving states can work together and leverage our state pension funds to force change in how major asset managers invest the money of hardworking Americans, ensuring corporations are focused on maximizing shareholder value, rather than the proliferation of woke ideology," a March 16 joint statement from the 18 states said.
ESG factors can include divesting from fossil fuels, supporting LGBTQ+ rights, ensuring diversity among board members, taking stances on human rights issues, setting policies based on climate change, and more, according to Investopedia.
"This bill would risk your retirement savings by making it illegal to consider risk factors MAGA House Republicans don't like," the tweet also said.
"Your plan manager should be able to protect your hard-earned savings — whether Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene likes it or not."
Biden appended a video to the tweet which shows him signing paperwork. A title burned into the footage says, "President Biden vetoes extreme MAGA limitations on retirement funds."
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A coalition of Republican governors has signed on to a statement denouncing ESG investing, the spread of which they describe as a "threat" to the U.S. economy and individual liberty.
"The proliferation of ESG throughout America is a direct threat to the American economy, individual economic freedom, and our way of life, putting investment decisions in the hands of the woke mob to bypass the ballot box and inject political ideology into investment decisions, corporate governance, and the everyday economy," the governors declare.
"We as freedom loving states can work together and leverage our state pension funds to force change in how major asset managers invest the money of hardworking Americans, ensuring corporations are focused on maximizing shareholder value, rather than the proliferation of woke ideology," the statement reads.
The governors of Florida, Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming are backing the statement.
The document lists various policies that the state leaders could pursue in their efforts to battle ESG investing practices, including "blocking the use of ESG in all investment decisions at the state and local level, ensuring that only financial factors are considered to maximize the return on investment" and "banning the financial sector from considering so called 'Social Credit Scores' in banking and lending practices aimed to prevent citizens from obtaining financial services like loans, lines of credit, and bank accounts."
"At my direction, Florida has led the way in combatting the pernicious effects of the ESG regime by directing our state pension fund managers to reject ESG and instead focus on obtaining the highest return on investment for Florida’s taxpayers and retirees," Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said, according to a press release. "We will not stand idly by as the stability of our country’s economy is threatened by woke executives who put their political agenda ahead of their clients’ finances."
BlackRock chairman and CEO Larry Fink, who adheres to the dogmas of climate alarmism, claims that the issue of climate is pertinent to the field of investing.
"For years now, we have viewed climate risk as an investment risk," Fink wrote in his annual chairman's letter to investors. "Anyone can see the impact of climate change in the natural disasters in California or Florida, in Pakistan, across Europe and Australia, and in many other places around the world. There's more flooding, more wildfires, and more intense storms. In fact, it's hard to find a part of our ecology – or our economy – that's not affected."
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Vivek Ramaswamy, author of the book "Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America's Social Justice Scam," is involved in launching an asset management firm that will press companies to stick to excelling in business without wading into cultural and political issues.
Ramaswamy is co-founder and executive chairman of Strive Asset Management, a company that has raised more than $20 million and anticipates offering its first product later this year in the third quarter, according to what appears to be a company press release.
At #Strive, we set out to restore the voices of everyday citizens by leading companies to focus on excellence over politics. Read on about our story here. More to come!https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220509006251/en/Depoliticizing-Corporate-America-Strive-Asset-Management-Launches-To-Advance-Excellence-Capitalism-Over-%E2%80%98Stakeholder-Capitalism%E2%80%99\u00a0\u2026— Strive (@Strive) 1652203800
Strive will seek to challenge major asset managers BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street, which oversee around $20 trillion of assets. The press release pegged the figure at more than $20 trillion, while the Wall Street Journal stated the three outfits manage $20 trillion in assets.
"Over the last two years, I have traveled the country and listened to the concerns of everyday Americans who want to be heard in the places where they shop, work and invest," Ramaswamy said, according to the press release. "We want iconic American brands like Disney, Coca-Cola and Exxon, and U.S. tech giants like Twitter, Facebook, Amazon and Google to deliver high-quality products that improve our lives, not controversial political ideologies that divide us. The Big 3 asset managers have fueled this polarizing new trend in corporate America, and that's why we're going to compete with them head-on to refocus American companies on the shared pursuit of excellence over politics."
Many Americans have been displeased by companies staking out political and cultural positions that directly clash with their own views, but Strive will urge companies to stick to doing business.
"We will tell oil companies to be excellent oil companies and coal companies to be excellent coal companies and solar companies to be excellent solar companies," Ramaswamy said, according to the Wall Street Journal. "A majority of Americans want companies to stay out of politics," he said. "They want to have a separate space for where they shop, where they work, and where they invest from the places where they cast their ballots or engage in their political debates."
Ramaswamy noted in a tweet that people from the major asset management companies have applied to join Strive.
"Really enjoying the flood of job applicants…including from BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard who say they are 'fed up' with the nonsense. Impressive backgrounds too, I’ll give our competitors some credit there," Ramaswamy tweeted on Tuesday.
Really enjoying the flood of job applicants\u2026including from BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard who say they are \u201cfed up\u201d with the nonsense.\n\nImpressive backgrounds too, I\u2019ll give our competitors some credit there.— Vivek Ramaswamy (@Vivek Ramaswamy) 1652204451
As the World Economic Forum’s "The Great Reset" playbook touts the very scary predication of “you will own nothing and be happy,” the best way to combat that is through doing the exact opposite: ownership via investment. However, with so many financial institutions moving from financial metrics to including social and other metrics (like ESG), how can you invest based on your values?
One recent query we received noted, “As a new investor, I don't want to send my money to the people wrecking my future, but I also don't want to not invest at all.” With that in mind, here are some steps to take to align your investing with your values.
Note and disclaimer: This is not meant as financial advice, just as a starting point for your research, and all financial decisions should be made carefully based on your goals, objectives, and risk profile.
Hire a like-minded financial adviser: During times of uncertainty is where financial advisers really earn their keep. A certified adviser who is a fiduciary will keep in mind your needs as a customer. Seek out an adviser who shares your values and understands the types of companies you do and don’t want to support.
Also, consider researching advisers who are independent and see if their firms have mission statements or initiatives that support or conflict with your values to find the best fit.
KISS: There’s a phrase in business and investing called the KISS principle: “Keep it simple, stupid.” The reality is that even the pros who invest day in and day out have a hard time beating the stock market benchmarks over long periods of time.
This means, for the equity (and debt) portions of your portfolio, using low-cost index funds that provide exposure to many companies and even those that mimic market benchmarks is often a good strategy for parts of your portfolio. Your adviser can help you decide which ones are the best for you and perhaps exclude any that may overexpose you to the types of companies you don’t want to be invested in.
Diversify your portfolio: In addition to the diversification an index or mutual fund can give you, you should have a portfolio that is diversified in terms of asset classes more broadly. One thing to consider is exposure to certain commodities. For example, whether gold or silver or another commodity, these commodities don’t have a point of view and aren’t susceptible to social-engineering attempts like “sustainable investing”!
Timing the market isn't your friend: When things are uncertain, it is tempting to get nervous and pull your money out of investments, like those in the stock market. A certified financial adviser will keep you focused on your long-term plan and remind you that studies have shown just how hard it is to time the market. If you don’t get back in and miss just the 10 best market days of each decade, there is a massive swing in your overall portfolio performance. Staying invested in a diverse portfolio over long periods of time works to create value for most investors.
For any individual investments, evaluate the financials first: While you may want to invest in alignment with your values, that should never be a priority over the quality of the investment. To the extent you are going to invest in individual stocks and bonds, for example, evaluate the business model and financial health of the business first. Once you have screened for that, you can then look to see if the business has values aligned with yours.
Consider alternative investments, where appropriate: If you are a more seasoned investor and/or qualify as a sophisticated investor, you will have access to a range of alternative and private investments that make it easier for you to get to know the management teams and assess their values. Also, building your own business or investing in real estate can also give you both control and returns, but as with all other investments, make sure that your investment is commensurate with your appetite for and wherewithal to take on the financial risk.
Also, be wary of some of the latest Wall Street investment “gimmicks” or areas with a spotty track record, like SPACs or Chinese companies doing reverse mergers into public company shell corporations. Unless you have deep knowledge and conviction around these investments, they have proven quite risky. If you don’t understand something, you shouldn’t be investing in it.
Building your wealth is the best path to economic freedom. While there isn’t today an easy source to quickly find all the investments that may align with your values and fit your risk profile, the above steps can help set you in the right direction.