Letter to my broker [View all]

I live in Germany and my retirement savings are in US taxable accounts. This means that everything I take out is taxed as income both in the US and in Germany. We have to be careful not to pull too much but want to drawdown a lot of our savings. I wrote a note to my stock advisor asking, half in jest, if there was a Trump trade tracking fund. Sort of like the S+P 500 tracking funds.

She said she has heard chatter about it but mostly the trades would come too late to get the benefit of his short or long sales. Oh well. Below id part of a reply I sent to her about Trump's trading and the SEC.

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Anyway, the major problem I, and I'm sure others involved with investing, have is why are the US stock markets doing so well internationally? I think a big reason is the trust other countries and people have that the market is fair. The market is transparent. The market isn't subject to the whims of teh countries leadership.

China has a problem because you have to trust that Xi won't change the favoured state of the company you invest in or place currency controls on your ability to change investments.

I think this suspicious trading is hurting that trust and transparency. The winners are Trump and who ever he shares his plans with. This degrades the market. It hurts all investors who can't be sure that they have one of the most level playing fields in the world.

The government prosecuted and jailed Martha Stewart for a $500 profit several years back. The profits here are millions. Real people have lost money from this. Yet nothing has been heard from the SEC. This is one of the reasons we are moving money from the US.