Today the stock market fell back for several reasons, notably the ruling that his tax records will have to be shown to the NY Attorney-General and Steve Bannon was indicted for fraud over the fund-raiser he ran for building el muro along the Rio Grande. El Presidente is looking like a loser, and unlike his pal Vladimir Putin, Trump is not able to poison his opponent. He also has come out with remarks backing the QAnon conspiracy theory which claims that Democrats are offering sex with children to gain votes, completely without any evidence.

But the real boom killer is a higher number of unemployment applications last week at 1,106,000 when the forecast was for only 923,000.

There is good news and bad and I'll start with the latter.

Banksters

*Our Bank of Nova Scotia is facing fines from both the US Dept of Justice and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission for manipulation of precious metal futures prices. The total bite will be as much as US$ 127 mn. The banks' desk engaged in spoofing to push prices up or down to make more money from orders. BNS was part of the London gold pool and being from the extreme east of Canada it was able to act while US markets were shut.

So much for Canadian nice. There is no point in selling now, and the bank will survive. Scotiabank was downgraded to hold by Canaccord brokers.

*The news also took down Banco Santander (SAN) but to the best of my knowledge it has not done similar tricks. It lost 2%+ starting in Europe. I think SAN is much more careful of its reputation given that it is a family-managed bank. Paulo Santo who does sign his name said coverage of high-flying Apple is biased because its China problems are not discussed. Apple has gained 100% YTD and is a fad share. Its B shares are up.

*Hang Seng Bank, which runs the Hong Kong Stock Index, gained 7.2% and yields 5.54%. HSNGF.

*JP Morgan Chase is planning to offer banking services at US Post Offices which will help cut the deficit run by the service.