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NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Justice and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission have both held investigations into whether Bank of America (BAC) engaged in improper trading by doing its own futures trades ahead of executing large orders for clients, according to a regulatory filing. The June 2013 disclosure, which Reuters recently reviewed on a website run by the securities industry regulator FINRA, sheds light on the basis for a warning by the Federal Bureau of Investigation on January 8. The warning, in the form of an intelligence bulletin to regulators and security officers at financial services firms,...

Looks like David Kostin, equity strategist with Goldman SachsGS -1.78%, got some pushback from clients after a recent note asserted U.S. stocks look pricey. The strategist shot back in a note published late last week ahead of the holiday weekend. “We received a barrage of questions” on the call for caution, he wrote. “Most client responses attempted to justify personal expectations for continued multiple expansion in 2014.”

A major peculiarity of Obama's recent promises involving his upcoming "Year of Action" is that the chief enemy he's sworn to overcome is none other than... Barack Obama. Consider "income inequality." As far as this can be said to actually exist, it's a function of certain sectors of the financial industry reaping massive windfalls over the past few years while the rest of the country has stagnated under the burden of the recession. So who is responsible for this state of affairs? Consider the trillion and a half dollars handed over to the banks and other financial institutions shortly after...

Are business people more corrupt than those in government? Hollywood loves to portray those in business as the baddies and those in government as the good guys. Exhibit A is the new movie, “The Wolf of Wall Street,” the largely true story of con man Jordan Belfort. Belfort and his cronies formed a firm to sell stock in startup and small companies they knew little or nothing about. In order to sell the stock, they would make claims about the companies that they thought the potential buyers wanted to hear, whether the statements were true or not. If a company...

Despite his best efforts, the president who vowed to conquer Wall Street and revive opportunity for everyday Americans on Main Street has this to show for his first five years in office: U.S. stock markets are in record territory, posting 30 percent gains just last year, and Wall Street is home once again to the biggest concentration of billionaires on earth, while wages for the middle class have barely kept up with inflation. As President Obama prepares to lay out an economic agenda to address this disappointing state of affairs in his State of the Union address this month, his...

The Wolf of Wall Street has been making a lot of waves out of Hollywood (for one thing, apparently there are some 500 f-bombs in the movie).I have a story that's way more profane, and much more decadent than anything that movie has to say...

The traffic scandal that has engulfed Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie may strengthen the prospects of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who has always been the default candidate for the GOP establishment and Wall Street.

Five years have passed since the onset of what is sometimes called the Great Recession. While the economy has slowly improved, there are still millions of Americans leading lives of quiet desperation: without jobs, without resources, without hope. Who was to blame? Was it simply a result of negligence, of the kind of inordinate risk-taking commonly called a “bubble,” of an imprudent but innocent failure to maintain adequate reserves for a rainy day? Or was it the result, at least in part, of fraudulent practices, of dubious mortgages portrayed as sound risks and packaged into ever more esoteric financial instruments,...

Investment & Finance Thread 2014 New Year(Jan. 6 - Jan. 13 edition) Anyone want more stuff or less stuff posted here please let me know.Ping list -- on or off let me know here or via freep-mail. If I missed you then Freep-mail me.  The list of everyone's links is here.  Open invitation continues always for input on ideas for the thread, this being a joint effort works well.   Keywords: financial, WallStreet, stockmarket.  2013 was an amazing year-- stocks up 30%+ w/ metals tanking like 40%.  Don't know about you but I spent most of it ready to bail out...

I went to see Wolf with a friend who has zero investments. As we watched the film, which for all its 3-hour length flew by in a compulsively sickening but sustained high-wire act of what's next?, he commented that he owns no securities. Now, watching this debauchery, he would never invest with this species of human infection. When I spoke with my account manager after the film, I admit that even I -- much more sophisticated than my friend, if far less knowledgeable than almost anyone in finance -- also spoke with some shaded caution, as the film reminded me...

Bitcoin technology has the potential to revolutionise the way we buy and sell property, enforce legal documents and even place bets, according to a new report from financial services and investment firm Wedbush Securities. The system of decentralized trust, meaning that there is no central authority, that underpins bitcoin could have applications beyond the payments world that is most commonly associated with the cryptocurrency, write the report’s authors Gil Luria and Aaron Turner. The report reads: “We see the potential for bitcoin technology to digitize and decentralize trust. The implications of eliminating the need for centralized trust may go beyond...

No year-end film has stirred up as much talk as Paramount’s “The Wolf of Wall Street,” which looks at American greed and excesses. The three-hour film has earned $34 million since it opened Christmas Day, with supporters embracing its originality and daring, but some fretting that the film celebrates the self-obsessed lifestyle of convicted con man Jordan Belfort. In an interview with Variety, Leonardo DiCaprio, a producer and star of the pic, talked about the challenges and rewards of making a film that is “outside the box” in its subject matter and approach. Here are excerpts of the interview, with...

Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street -- a rollicking three-hour black comedy based on the true story of debaucherous con man Jordan Belfort -- has become one of the most controversial films in the director's 50 year career. The filmmaker, who has nothing left to prove after directing 23 narrative features including such classics as Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and Goodfellas, sees Belfort has part of a long tradition of the American confidence man who "takes your trust, takes your confidence and betrays you." While critics and moviegoers argue over whether Scorsese is celebrating Belfort or exposing...

A renowned Wall Street tycoon gave away his entire $800 million fortune before falling to his death in a suicide jump this week.

In a recent long-form article on the troubles that the banking and investment sectors have had with the destructive policies coming out of the White House, unnamed Democrats told Politico that Rahm Emanuel and, most especially, Valerie Jarrett were not only entirely unresponsive to their concerns, but they actually lacked any knowledge about the industries for which they were tasked with crafting policy--and earned no "respect" because of it. Things got so bad that representatives of the financial sectors just stopped having meetings with the White House because any such meetings were pointless. The December 11 article, "Lament of the...

Lobbyists are minting money from the surge in government regulations. Top K Street officials say their regulatory work has accelerated in recent years thanks to the sprawling rule-making from the healthcare and financial reform laws. “We’re in this situation now, where we have this strong executive branch [that is] taking full advantage of being able to do whatever they want,” said Rich Gold, a partner at Holland & Knight. While revenue from traditional lobbying work has flatlined, K Street firms say their regulatory practices are thriving. Several lobbyists said federal agencies are increasingly “where all the action is.” The increase...

Investment & Finance Thread (Dec. 16 - Jan. 6 edition) Anyone want more stuff or less stuff posted here please let me know.Ping list -- on or off let me know here or via freep-mail. If I missed you then Freep-mail me.  The list of everyone's links is here.  Open invitation continues always for input on ideas for the thread, this being a joint effort works well.   Keywords: financial, WallStreet, stockmarket  Everyone's taking the holidays off so we'll resume thing next year and all the very best to you and yours!   Until then, this week's econ reports here, Last week's stocks: 

The Big Apple’s fabled Wall Street district steadily is becoming more of a tourist hub than a financial hub. New York’s share of jobs in the securities industry dipped below 20 percent earlier this year to an all-time low, according to government statistics. Moreover, jobs lost after the financial crisis are being replaced in the city at less than half the rate of the rest of the country. Two decades ago, New York had 30 percent of all such jobs.

Investment & Finance Thread (Dec. 9 - Dec. 13 edition)Last week's stocks rebounded in shaky volume.    This week's econ reports here, earnings reports:   Anyone want more stuff or less stuff posted here please let me know. Ping list -- on or off let me know here or via freep-mail. If I missed you then Freep-mail me.  The list of everyone's links is here.  Open invitation continues always for input on ideas for the thread, this being a joint effort works well.   Keywords: financial, WallStreet, stockmarket

This is the Weekly Investment & Finance Thread (Dec. 2 - Dec. 6 edition)---- work in progress.Last week's stocks saw new highs.  This week's reports include:Dec 2 ISM Index, Construction Spending, Auto Sales Dec 3 Truck Sales, MBA Mortgage Index, MBA Mortgage Purchase Index Dec 4 ADP Employment Change, Trade Balance, New Home Sales , ISM Services, Crude Inventories, Fed's Beige Book Dec 5 Challenger Job Cuts, Initial Claims, Continuing Claims, GDP - Second Estimate Q3, GDP Deflator - Second Estimate Q3, Factory Orders, Natural Gas Inventories Dec 6 Nonfarm Payrolls, Nonfarm Private Payrolls, Unemployment Rate, Hourly Earnings, Average Workweek, Personal...