The sudden stock market rally which began in March of 2009 was driven by secret government moves to buy stocks, according to Charles Biderman, the founder and chief executive of TrimTabs, a research firm that tracks liquidity flows in the market.
Biderman is not a tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist.
“We cannot identify the source of the new money that pushed stock prices up so far so fast,” Biderman said in a statement Tuesday.
The source of approximately $600 billion net new cash necessary to lift the market’s overall capitalization by $6 trillion last year could not be identified by TrimTabs, Biderman said. The money, he said, didn’t come from traditional players such as companies, retail investors, foreign investors, hedge funds or pension funds.
“We know that the U.S. government has spent hundreds of billions of dollars to support the auto industry, the housing market, and the banks and brokers. Why not support the stock market as well?”
The Federal Reserve or the Treasury, Biderman said, could have easily manipulated the stock market by purchasing $60 to $70 billion worth of futures of the S&P 500 Index on a monthly basis.
