if you missed the post on the investment brokerage sector last week, you might want to review it by clicking here.  here’s the updated chart showing that this sector continues to be in near free-fall mode, with the entire sector down nearly 24% in less than just about the last 7 weeks.  i was going to post some of the individual charts of concern as i’d imagine the majority of people reading this post have money at one or more of the following brokerage firms.  however, since most of the charts look very similar, here are a few of the names that warrant following closely, especially if you have accounts with any of them.  keep in mind that some brokerages firms, like fidelity, do not trade publicly but just by deductive reasoning alone, if not the closely intertwined relationship between all firms in the sector, one can assume that if the following firms run into any serious issues, then most other brokerage firms will as well.

again, i do not want to promote any fear-mongering.  i just call ’em like i see ’em and i think the recent price action in this sector is something to monitor very closely as a collapse of this sector would be beyond catastrophic to the global financial system, especially considering the US (& many other gov’ts) essentially already went “all in” to save the banking sector and have used up basically all their dry powder, and then some.

PJC- Piper Jaffray; SCHW- Charles Schwab; COWN- Cown Group; LPLA- LPL Investments; IBKR- Interactive Brokers; AMTD- TD  Ameritrade Holding Corp; GFIC- GFI Group; NMR- Nomura Holdings; ETFC- E-Trade Financial Corp; MS- Morgan Stanley

one final note: could the selling in this sector over the last 7 weeks and the JPM $2 billion (for now) trading loss just be coincidental?  sure, anything is possible but remember that these guys can’t hide their losses and derivatives exposure as easy and for as long as the behemoth banks (JPM, C, GS, DB, CS, etc..) who can play the shell game much longer and successfully by moving things around among their complex web of global subsidiaries and departments.