Coop

 

A good friend yesterday morning sent us Leon Cooperman’s open letter to President Obama, which was circulating Wall Street. It was a fine letter, complete with the word, “minions”. I love that word:

But what I can justifiably hold you accountable for is your and your minions’ role in setting the tenor of the rancorous debate now roiling us that smacks of what so many have characterized as “class warfare”.

It reminds me of all the mind-numbing, party-line toting, young whippersnappers in control of our market structure with little respect for a capital markets model that has been the envy of the world for centuries, the last post-JOK NMS 4 years notwithstanding. But I digress…

Later on in the day we were treated to 14 minutes of Mr. Cooperman’s viewpoints on CNBC with Scott Wapner. And it was a treat! Mr. Cooperman is a hedge fund legend, a titan if you will, in the same genre as Julian Robertson and George Soros. He is smart. A self-made man, while he attributes much of his success in his Obama letter to “luck”, we respectfully add that the harder he worked, the “luckier” he got.

Watch the video clip from CNBC here! And please pay special attention at the 8:29 mark in; Christmas came early for us at Themis:

The high frequency traders are turning the best capital market in the world into a casino, and they are scaring the public, and it is not in the public interest.


He is, of course, correct. Despite the month-end much-needed rally this week, ICI data shows that retail investors have withdrawn $3.7 billion from domestic equity funds yet again this past week, for the 14th straight week, and a total of $214 billion since the beginning of 2010.