2017 Mar 21^st

Sean Spicer, the president’s contact with the press,says to the press what Trump wants him to say to the press and he must “say it with feeling.” That means he must say it as if he believes it; that surely requires a person with supreme acting ability because  Spicer’s recent comments about the role of Manafort and Flynn in Trump’s presidential campaigns were alt-facts.

Consider what Spicer said at his press conference: It was that Manafort, during the campaign, “played a very limited role for a very limited amount of time.”

Manafort, of course, ran Trump’s campaign for several months last year after original campaign manager Corey Lewandowski resigned amid controversy over his manhandling of a female Breitbart reporter. Manafort later resigned in August, while he was facing scrutiny for his ties to pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine. Spicer goes on to try to pooh-pooh any questions about  Manafort and General Flynn who, he assures everyone, were mere irrelevant hangers on in the Trump campaign.

“So to start to look at some individual who was there for a short period of time, or separately individuals who really didn’t play a role in the campaign, and to suggest that those are the basis for anything is a bit ridiculous,” Spicer chided reporters Monday.

Spicer even went on to describe Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn, forced to resign after it was revealed that he spoke with the Russian ambassador about lifting sanctions during the transition, as a “volunteer of the campaign.” Never mind that General Flynn was Trump’s National Security Adviser and that he accompanied Trump everywhere he went.

How much money do you suppose Spicer was paid to ditch his credibility?

Are the wheels beginning to come off the Trumpmobile? Not yet but the lug nuts are getting loose and if things don’t get fixed it won’t be long. Symptoms are easy to find; we can begin with the stock market; it took a powder today with the Dow dropping over 230 points. OK, so a correction was overdue; this market had been on a tear because Trump had promised all kinds of economic goodies. Maybe there has been some recent reevaluation of Trump’s ability to deal with economic issues and stop tweeting about committee leaks.

The fact that the President is being investigated by the FBI to see if he collaborated with Russia during his election campaign might make any sane investor more than a bit nervous. There is a market “nervousness indicator.” You can buy a form of market insurance to protect your profits. These are called put options and they give you the right to sell your stock at a particular price for a particular time period. You own IBM selling at about 173 dollars a share. You can buy puts on that stock at 170 that will give you the right to sell your IBM at 170 a share no matter how low the market price of the stock goes. The purchaser will be the person from whom you bought the puts. He is required to have the money available if you want to sell him your stock. There are traders who keep track of the total volume of put options sold, the more puts sold, the more nervous are stockholders. Right now, the volume of put options traded is very, very high, so traders are very, very nervous

Another indicator of nervousness is the price of gold and that too has shot up. Whatever can it mean? It means look out below.