Investment bank stocks had one of their best days on Friday after President Trump signed an executive order to start rolling back the 2010 Dodd-Frank bill, which was passed in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.
One of the biggest gainers today was Goldman Sachs Group with a whopping 4.57 percent gain on the day, closing at $240.95. This was one of the biggest one-day spikes in GS shares, second only to the 5.94% surge on November 9, 2016, which was driven by Trump’s electoral victory.
As of today, Goldman shares are only about $10 away from taking out the all-time high at $250.70, recorded on October 29, 2007.
According to Trump administration officials, the Dodd-Frank legislation imposed excessive regulatory burdens on U.S. financial firms.
Along with changes to Dodd-Frank, President Trump also signed a memorandum asking the Labour Department to halt the “fiduciary rule,” which requires financial advisers to steer retirees to financial products that would be in their best interest, and not ones with the highest commissions.
The fiduciary rule was passed by the Obama administration, and was scheduled to go into effect in April of this year. This particular piece of legislation was opposed by most financial firms on the grounds that retirees would be shoehorned into low-risk investments that would be detrimental to retiree’s bottom lines over the long term.
Former Goldman Sachs president Gary Cohn, who recently left Goldman with a $100+ million payout to head the White House National Economic Council, told the WSJ in an interview that “banks are going to be able to price product more efficiently and more effectively to consumers.”
“Americans are going to have better choices and Americans are going to have better products because we’re not going to burden the banks with literally hundreds of billions of dollars of regulatory costs every year,” he added.
Shares of other top investment banks also posted significant gains on Friday; JPMorgan Chase closed with a 3.06% gain at $87.18; Bank of America share closed with a 2.51% gain at $23.29, Morgan Stanley jumped by 5.46% to close at $44.43; Citigroup closed at $57.76, a gain of 3.18%.
Goldman building photo by Click-see
