Image via Flickr/ Alex Proimos

The Nasdaq composite and the S&P 500 index have soared to new 52-week highs. The last stock market correction that occurred lasted about 11 trading days into the August 7 bottom. Last week, almost every trader and investor had their eyes on the central bankers’ comments from Jackson Hole, Wyo. Apparently, the central bankers did not say anything to spook the markets ahead of the U.S. Labor Day holiday, so at this time, everything looks great for the major stock indexes to trade higher into the end of the month. Below, I list three reasons why this current stock rally will likely end soon and cause the month of September to be a month to remember.

1. Geopolitical events could have a negative effect on the stock market in September. So far, the major stock indexes have climbed the wall of worry when it comes to the major geopolitical events taking place around the world, but that will likely end after August is over. The problems in Russia and the Ukraine are not likely to improve anytime soon; tensions will certainly build before any resolution or peace treaty takes place. There are major problems in the Middle East that do not seem likely to end anytime soon. In addition, the Ebola virus is also a huge negative that could negatively affect trade around the world in the coming months should the disease continue to spread.

2. Any weakness in the USD/JPY will disrupt the current carry trade that fuels the liquidity for the major stock indexes in the United States, Europe and Japan. You see, the weaker Japanese yen has helped the large financial institutions buy stock indexes like the S&P 500 Index and the Nasdaq Composite. This is a very leveraged trade and helps provide liquidity for the stock markets around the world. Everyone knows that Japan is diluting its currency at an alarming rate. This is why the stock market now rallies when the USD/JPY currency pair rises and declines when the currency pair sells off. A weak U.S. Dollar Index will now hurt the stock markets, primarily due to the yen carry trade. Recently, there have been many countries talking about getting rid of the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency. If nations such as Russia, China, Brazil and others start to trade without using the U.S. dollar, it could spell problems for the stock market down the road.

3. Stock market complacency is now at an all-time high. Just think about this: there has not been a 10.0 percent stock market correction in over two years now. Every stock market dip has been viewed as a buying opportunity. Investors believe that central bankers will just continue to stimulate markets via money printing if stocks decline. Currently, the Federal Reserve is tapering its QE-3 program, and is expected to end the QE-3 program this October at the next FOMC meeting. The last time the Federal Reserve ended a quantitative easing program, the major stock indexes staged a correction of more than 10.0 percent. Could this happen again? This has also been the best year for new stock offerings (IPOs) since the tech bubble in 2000. If that is not a sign that the investing world is as complacent as ever, nothing is. Get ready—this September is certainly going to be an interesting month.

Disclosure: This article was written by Nicholas Santiago. Nicholas Santiago is a co-founder of In The Money Stocks. Nicholas Santiago and In The Money Stocks represent that Nicholas Santiago does not own any stocks mentioned in this article at the time this article was submitted.

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Screen Junkies presents a video you will not expect based on its title. “The Wolf of Wall Street: Just the ‘F’ Words” does not feature a single “f*ck.” Instead, you hear the movie’s f-words that got brushed to the wayside–lots of “fifty percents,” “fugazis,” and, by the end, “FBIs.” This is a rare opportunity to hear Leo DiCaprio’s finance-fueled rage-fest without the swearing… except, of course, for the one they had to sneak in there at the end. Who could resist Benif******hana?!

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screen shot via CNBC

There may be no way to analyze the risks of high-frequency trading on Wall Street, Mark Cuban told CNBC’s “Halftime Report” on March 31. The billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks told the financial news network the amount of risk is simply “unquantifiable.” In Cuban’s estimation, there is not enough upside to the practice to allow it to continue apace.

Speaking on the day MichaelLewis’s Flash Boys was released, Cuban warned about the same risks from Wall Street Lewis highlighted in a March 30 interview on CBS’s “60 Minutes.”

Cuban: Risks Bigger Than Any Investors

According to Cuban, the risks involved with high-frequency trading could affect nations as a whole.

The risk isn’t so much about the small investor,” Cuban told CNBC. “The risk is all these different high-frequency traders playing a game with their algorithms, trying to trick each other, to get in front of each other to make that trade.”

As the world’s most advanced traders do battle with these tools, Cuban said they do nothing except benefit a few while the risks remain vast.

[W]hat I do know is that high-frequency trading does nothing to stimulate or support capital formation in markets,” Cuban said on “Halftime Report”, adding that “the idea of owning a share of stock in the company is supposed to be about ownership in that company.”

Flash Boys and High Frequency Trading

The appearance of Moneyball author MichaelLewis on “60 Minutes” March 30 has brought the excesses Cuban addressed to the attention of the mainstream press. Calling the U.S. stock “rigged,” Lewis detailed how high-frequency traders use legal tactics to trim fractions off prices, adding up to millions or more in the course of a year.

Cuban has never been shy about criticizing such trading practices in the past. In the billionaire investor’s view, “…owning a share of stock is supposed to be about owning equity in a company, and I think we’ve lost track of that,” he told CNBC. “And that’s a real problem.”

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In Moneyball, author Michael Lewis told the tale of the Oakland A’s GM using statistics to gain an advantage over teams more flush with cash. Lewis’s new book Flash Boys tells a different story – one where the Wall Street traders flush with cash are the ones with superior information. Instead of outsmarting baseball teams, these characters play in what Lewis calls the “rigged” U.S. stock market. Everyone from small-time investors to hedge fund managers lose in this game.

Lewis appeared on CBS’s “60 Minutes” on March 30 to explain the premise of his new book titled, Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt. Lewis says the legal system of high-frequency trading is no less dangerous and unethical than the excesses that brought down financial markets ahead of the Great Recession. Then as now, limited understanding of advanced Wall Street trader techniques allows a select few with the technology to bilk millions out of investors on a daily basis.

“The United States stock market — the most iconic market in global capitalism — is rigged,” he said in the interview.

The Moneyball and Liar’s Poker author told “60 Minutes” on March 30 the cheat takes place in the processing of stock trades between the New York exchanges and the servers across the river in New Jersey. While average investors do not have access to prices for bids and other in-depth data, there is no way to profit from information about the rest of the activity on the market.

Enter the top traders working at the NYSE and NASDAQ. They have access to the information and the means to exploit it, Lewis says. In the estimation of one hedge fund manager, the difference “was costing [the hedge fund] $300 million a year.”

Lewis opens up more at length in the “60 Minutes” video. The former Bloomberg reporter’s Flash Boys goes on sale March 31.

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screen shot via Twitter/GSElevator

The man behind the notorious Goldman Sachs Elevator Twitter account has lost his book deal. The book, “Straight to Hell: True Tales of Deviance and Success in the World of Investment Banking,” was set to tell the stories of Goldman Sachs insiders, as overheard in the firm’s elevators by a mystery man.

As of last week, that man’s identity was revealed to be John Lefevre, a former Citi banker who never actually worked at Goldman. Touchstone, a division of Simon and Schuster, cancelled Lefevre’s contract after news reports circulated that he was never employed by the firm he tweeted about.

In a statement regarding the cancelled deal, Simon and Schuster said,

In light of information that has recently come to our attention since acquiring John Lefevre’s STRAIGHT TO HELL, Touchstone has decided to cancel its publication of this work.”

The news comes as a surprise to Lefevre, who told Business Insider, “It’s just a comical mystery to me.” According to Lefevre, Touchstone had continued to stand by his project amid the media frenzy.

Just two days ago Lefevre authored a post on Business Insider, where he met claims that he’s a fraud or hoax with a laugh. He said, “My focus has been to entertain and enlighten, without being completely devoid of substance and insight.”

The real Goldman Sachs might have had the last laugh with this epic tweet:

Guess elevators go up and down, http://t.co/xkDPZgaCI8

— Goldman Sachs (@GoldmanSachs) March 6, 2014

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Image via Twitter/TheStalwart

After three years, the man behind the notorious @GSElevator Twitter account has been revealed. As it turns out, the man who shared comments purportedly heard in the halls and elevators of the offices of Wall Street giant Goldman Sachs, never actually worked for the firm that he abbreviated in his Twitter handle.

The account has racked up more than 600,000 followers and includes Tweets such as:

#1: Tattoos aren't my thing. That'd be like putting a bumper sticker on a Lamborghini.

— GSElevator (@GSElevator) October 15, 2013

#1: Poor people eat so much fast food you'd think their time was valuable.

— GSElevator (@GSElevator) September 24, 2013

The @GSElevator account was started by 34-year old Texas resident John Lefevre, who said the scandal began as “a joke to entertain myself.” Though he never worked for Sachs, he did have ties to the industry as a former bond executive with CitiGroup.

Despite never becoming an official employee of the company, Lefevre was offered a job as head of debt syndicate at Goldman Sach’s Hong Kong office in 2010, according to the NY Times. Lefevre insists that he and Sachs “cordially agreed to part ways to avoid a public mess,” as his previous employer had him bound to a noncompete agreement and threatened legal action against both Lefevre and Sachs.

EXCLUSIVE: Here's a photo of the man behind @gselevator http://t.co/xhkYrVRd6S pic.twitter.com/29v82pUzry

— Joe Weisenthal (@TheStalwart) February 25, 2014

Lefevre has been questioned as to whether he misrepresented himself as an employee of Goldman Sachs through his tweets. He defends that he never actually said that he worked for the firm in any of the tweets, nor were they implicit attacks solely on one company. As Lefevre sees it, “The stories aren’t about Goldman Sachs in particular. It was about the culture in general.”

For three years, Lefevre managed to keep his identity anonymous, taking measures to scrub mentions of his name across the Internet. Still, his mischievous actions and alter-ego did not stop publisher Touchstone from offering Lefevre a publishing deal worth six figures to write a book based on the Twitter stories, according to CNBC.

Goldman Sachs appeared to have a sense of humor about the whole thing. “We are pleased to report that the official ban on talking in elevators will be lifted effective immediately,” the investment bank giant said in a statement.

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Image via Shutterstock

Almost everyday on TV we hear one person or another calling for a major market top. While most of these forecasts have not worked out very well there will be a time when the stock market does top out and stage a meaningful decline. Listed below are three potential problems that could lead to a meaningful stock market top and a real correction of 20 percent or more.

1. The currency market holds all of the cards. At this time, the most important currency pair to follow is the USD/JPY (U.S. Dollar verse the Japanese Yen). Obviously, when the USD/JPY chart declines it means the Japanese Yen is strengthening against the U.S. Dollar. When this happens liquidity comes out of the stock market. The reason that this happens is because the highly leveraged institutional traders are all betting on a weaker Japanese yen, so when the USD/JPY chart declines the institutions lose buying power and can no longer support stocks in the United States, Europe, and Japan. Recently, countries such as Turkey, South Africa, and India have raised interest rates to try and strengthen their currency against the U.S. Dollar for fear of a currency crisis. This could repeat again this year, so keep your eyes open for more currency problems around the world.

2. China has faced a lot of problems regarding their shadow banking system. Shadow banking is unregulated high-yield lending that largely takes place off banks’ balance sheets in China. This problem is very similar to the U.S. sub-prime crisis back in 2007. This shadow banking problem has not been solved yet despite the efforts by the Chinese central bank. This is certainly an issue that could trouble the Chinese economy in 2014.

3. Traders and investors must watch for potential conflict between Japan and China. Last year, both countries claimed ownership of a group of islands in the East China Sea. Leaders from both countries have recently mentioned that the relationship between the two countries is very poor. It is also important to remember that China is the second largest economy in the world. China also holds a lot of U.S. debt. Japan is the third largest economy in the world behind China so any conflict would result in serious problems for the global economy.

Disclosure: This article is written by Nicholas Santiago. Nicholas Santiago is a co-founder of In The Money Stocks. Nicholas Santiago and In The Money Stocks represent that Nicholas Santiago does own physical gold and silver at the time the article was submitted.

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screen shot via CNN

Say what you will about Jordan Belfort, but despite defrauding investors of millions of dollars, he still seems to think of himself as a pretty stand-up guy. The wolf of Wall Street appeared on CNN last night in an interview with Piers Morgan and held his own against a slew of questions.

The interview went over every topic related to The Wolf of Wall Street, from Belfort’s interactions with Leonardo DiCaprio to his reaction to the film.

Belfort told Morgan that after seeing the movie for the first time, he was “speechless… in a good way.” He said, “I’d come to terms with my old life. I wrote this book, and that was a cathartic experience for me.”

He added that he wants people to view the film as “controversial more than notorious.” Yes, it glamorizes his lifestyle, but it also shows his downfall. At the end of the movie, viewers see Belfort losing everything and going to jail, and he thinks his life story is well-known enough that people won’t try to emulate him. In Belfort’s own words, the film is “a cautionary tale.”

That said, he also wants people to walk away from the movie with some positive messages.

“I think there’s a lot of great things to glean from the movie. I think that hopefully when people see this, they can say, ‘There are some things in there that, wow, really are inspiring’: starting from nothing, the stuff with selling and motivation. I think that does inspire, and I think it should move people but they need to get it in the context that if you’re not doing it with ethics and integrity, it’s a disaster for yourself and everyone around you.”

Let’s recap: Belfort stole millions of dollars from Wall Street investors, wrote a book bragging about his copious amounts of drug use and regular interactions with prostitutes, served some time in jail, and still owes nearly $100 million in retribution. After all that, he decided to make a television appearance calling his life “inspiring,” and he managed to say it with a straight face. No wonder he became a motivational speaker.

Later in the interview, Morgan questioned Belfort about the real effects his actions had on people. Proving once again that everything comes down to money with him, Belfort said it never even occurred to him to apologize to his victims.

“I’ve never really considered it before,” he said. “But I think a better way for me is the next fifteen years to go around the world and continue to speak and do my stuff. All the money that flows in. I think actions speak louder than words. I think by doing what I’m doing here by turning over 100 percent of the profits is probably the most genuine thing I can do.”

Sure, paying back some of the money is a great start, but I think plenty of the victims would also appreciate an apology.

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20th Century Fox

The instant classic The Wolf of Wall Street certainly shows a particular side of life in the big leagues. But countless other movies depict working life on the most fast-paces street in the world. Here’s a look back at some of the best Wall Street movies ever made (that may not even take place on Wall Street).

15. Pi

A paranoid yet genius mathematician tries to use numbers to make sense of the world around him. In this 1998 film, his mathematical know-how gains the attention of Wall Street execs and others in the financial sector.

14. Arbitrage

A hedge fund magnate wants to sell his trading empire in this 2012 thriller. Secrets of underhanded trades and personal skeletons in the closet threaten the major sale.

13. Margin Call

Taking place in a single 24-hour period, this 2011 movie shows the immediate reactions of key executives at an investment bank when news first hits regarding the financial crisis.

12. Capitalism: A Love Story

A Michael Moore film that explores the root causes of the global economic meltdown and takes a comical look at the corporate and political shenanigans that culminated in what Moore has described as the biggest robbery in the history of this country the massive transfer of U.S. taxpayer money to private financial institutions.

11. Trading Places

A successful brokerage firm investor and a street hustling con artist have their roles reversed in this 1983 comedy starring Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy.

10. Rogue Trader

This 1999 movie follows an ambitious investment banker played by Ewan McGregor. Breaking rules and left and right to make a profit, he eventually singlehandedly bankrupts the major bank he works for.

9. The Bonfire of the Vanities

A Wall Street bigwig played by Tom Hanks sees his life unravel in this 1990 drama/comedy. A journalist puts his life in the spotlight just as everything goes wrong.

8. Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room

This 2005 documentary about the now-obsolete Enron Corporation details its corrupt business practices and how bad business led to the company’s infamous demise.

7. Too Big to Fail

The 2011 film goes into the nitty gritty details behind the 2008 financial meltdown, giving a behind-the-scenes look at how giant corporations failed and earned themselves the controversial government bailout.
This 2009 Michael Moore documentary takes a look at how corporate interests continue to shape and dominate American life.

6. The Pursuit of Happyness

Based on a true story, this 2006 film shows a struggling, homeless father become an incredibly successful stockbroker on Wall Street. He struggles to make ends meet while following his dreams.

5. American Psycho

Christian Bale stars in this 2000 movie about a Wall Street professional becoming increasingly insane.

4. Glengarry Glen Ross

This 1992 drama takes place in Chicago but has all the makings of a Wall Street movie. It tackles the high-stakes world of real estate, sales and big bonuses.

3. The Wolf of Wall Street

You’ve heard enough about this new movie by now, but it’s still earned a place on the list. It’s about the somewhat fabricated life of big-time Wall Street exec Jordan Belfort and his extravagant lifestyle.

2. Boiler Room

This 2000 film tells the story of a college dropout getting a job as a broker for a suburban investment firm, which puts him on the fast track to success, but the job isn’t as legitimate as it sounds.

1. Wall Street

This 1987 Charlie Sheen classic follows a young stockbroker as he tries to become instantly successful. Inside trading and shady deals abound, giving an early look into modern Wall Street. The movie’s 2010 sequel, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, wasn’t quite a hit.

The post The 15 Best Wall Street Movies Ever Made appeared first on Wall Street Insanity.

Paramount/Wolf Of Wall Street

The Wolf of Wall Street is already infamous for its racy scenes and questionable language. Critics say it glorifies controversial topics like drugs, sex and monetary greed, and the three-hour movie contains more than 500 utterances of the f-word.

While all of this can still make it to the big screen in the United States and most other countries, audiences in the United Arab Emirates will miss out on the full effect. Audiences in places like Dubai get to see just three-quarters of the movie, as censors have cut a full 45 minutes out.

Censors in the UAE typically cut out excessive nudity and scenes deemed blasphemous or harmful to national security, Juma al-Leem, director of media content at the National Media Center, told the Associated Press. However, this is typically done on a case-by-case basis, and the final version often varies by area.

Al-Leem said the heavy edits in this case were done by Gulf Film, a regional distributor of Paramount and Universal titles. While UAE censorship officials did approve of Gulf Film’s edited version, they believed the cuts to be excessive as audiences could no longer “feel the soul of the film.”

Places like Dubai tend to be less conservative than neighboring areas, and many of the cut scenes would have been acceptable to Dubai’s audiences. Al-Leem would have preferred each country to make censorship decisions rather than see everyone in the region with the same heavily edited version.

Moviegoers in Dubai reported that profanities were also erased from the movie. Censors either temporarily muted the sound or actually removed the word by chopping it out of the scene.

Viewers said the heavy censoring left the movie with a jarring effect and a difficult-to-follow plot. According to the AP, one woman wrote on the Facebook page of a Dubai theater company that she and her friend walked out of the movie after just 40 minutes because the movie was incoherent and unwatchable.

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