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Cryptocurrencies are important but there is a lot more than Bitcoin reshaping commerce

Cryptocurrency use could give U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions an excuse to crack down on state-legal pot firms, an industry lawyer warns.

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• President Donald Trump loves to take credit for stock records, but his influence on the market has been questioned in recent months.
• His impact remains undeniable in one area, however: companies that have the highest exposure to small and midsize customers.

President Donald Trump participated in one of his favorite pastimes over the weekend: taking credit for the latest stock market records.

"The reason our stock market is so successful is because of me," Trump told reporters on Air Force One. "I've always been great with money, I've always been great with jobs, that's what I do."

Whether he's correct is a complicated question. We here at Business Insider have not been shy about throwing water on Trump's claims that he's catalyzed record stock gains, at least in recent months. We've also conducted an in-depth investigation into alternative explanations for a surging market.

But despite our skepticism, new analysis from Goldman Sachs suggests that one area of the market is definitely still thriving as a so-called Trump trade: companies with high exposure to small and midsize businesses.

A Goldman-maintained index tracking the group has skyrocketed 38% since the election, almost double the return for the benchmark S&P 500. And it has done so largely on the prospect of less regulation for smaller companies, an outlook that pushed the NFIB Small Business Optimism Index to a 12-year high in the months after Trumps victory.

"Small business owners have been thrilled at the prospect of deregulation under the Trump administration," said David Kostin, the chief US equity strategist at Goldman.

Also notable in the chart above is the lighter blue line, showing the postelection performance of the more small-cap-focused Russell 2000 index and the S&P 500. After spiking versus the benchmark in the months immediately after the election, the Russell has simply matched the performance of its large-cap peers ever since.

Overall, it's clear that investors are still looking for Trump trades to ride higher as the president continues to make boisterous claims. And while the pickings may be slimmer than in the past, there are still opportunities out there, if you know where to look.

SEE ALSO: BAML: Investors are still getting one key thing wrong about the market

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• American men who have only a high school diploma have seen a reversal of fortunes over the last few decades.
• While real wages have increased over the last several decades for those who have a higher level of education, they have held flat or fallen for those with lower levels of education.
• There is no single catalyst for the decline in lower-skilled and middle-skilled labor, and this is a long-term problem that is weighing on the US economy.

Several decades ago, regular Americans could get by with a decent job and a decent wage with only a high school diploma.

But things are very different today.

In a note to clients, Bank of America Merrill Lynch's Michelle Meyer and Anna Zhou shared a chart showing trends in real wages broken down by levels of educational attainment from the 1970s to today.

While real wages have increased over the last several decades for those who have a higher level of education, they have held flat or fallen for those with lower levels of education. As you can see in the chart below, those who have a college degree or higher have seen wages climb, while those who have less than a high school education, a high school diploma, or some college without a bachelor's degree have fared worse.

"Wage growth has been slow to recover [since the Great Recession] on aggregate with only 2.4% yoy nominal wage growth as of October. However, there are differences by education with relative weakness for less educated men," Meyer and Zhou said. "This shows the demand shift away from this population, leaving them on the fringe of the labor force."

There's also been a huge dip in prime-age male labor force participation. The fraction of men aged 25-65 who are working or actively seeking work has steadily dropped over the years, which you can see below. (Note that this chart goes from 1948 to 2014, going back further than the above chart.)

Putting those two trends together, we see an unusual situation where we have both lower wages and less labor supply. This is contrary to economics  101, which tells us that if there are fewer people available to do a job, they can theoretically command a higher salary, even in lower- and middle-skilled professions.

And, so, that brings us to demand. The Council of Economic Advisers under the Obama Administration noted in a report in 2016 that the demand for low- and middle-skilled workers has declined in recent decades, which has pushed less-educated workers out of the labor market while at the same time holding down wages:

"A number of studies have identified declining labor market opportunities for low-skilled workers and related stagnant real wage growth as the most likely explanation for the decline of prime-age male labor force participation, at least for the period in the mid-to-late 1970s and 1980s (Juhn, et. al. 1991; Juhn and Potter 2006). More recently, economists have suggested that a relative decline in labor demand for occupations that are middle-skilled or middle-paying may have begun contributing to the decline in the participation in the 1990s (Aaronson et al. 2014). As demand for these middle-skilled workers has fallen, they may have displaced lower-skilled workers from their lower-skilled jobs (Beaudry, Green, and Sand 2016), leading some lower-skilled workers to leave the labor force. Aaronson et al. (2014) find that, since 1985, participation rates for less-educated adults fell further in States with greater declines in middle-skilled employment shares."

There is no single catalyst for the decline in lower-skilled and middle-skilled labor. There is some empirical evidence, however, suggesting that globalization and automation have at least partially contributed to this phenomenon recently. America's high incarceration rates might also be a contributing factor.

It's also worth mentioning that male education levels have stagnated relative to those of women in the US. This, in turn, makes women more competitive applicants for a variety of jobs — especially those in the services sector.

"These forces have, among other things, eliminated the large numbers of American manufacturing jobs over a number of decades ... leaving many people — mostly men — unable to find new ones," the report from the CEA said.

So, not only are men losing jobs amid demand shifts, but they are not getting back into the labor force.

SEE ALSO: Marrying less and dying sooner — how the downward spiral of manufacturing is hurting American men

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NOW WATCH: THE BOTTOM LINE: A market warning, the big bitcoin debate and a deep dive on tech heavyweights

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• Mega-deal M&A transactions worth over $10 billion are surging back after a largely dormant first half off the year.
• Wall Street bankers say an improving global economy and confidence in the regulatory environment are playing a role. 
• The looming threat of super-corporations like Amazon has many large companies evaluating whether they can be an end-game winner — and whether they need to strike a deal to get there. 

Broadcom announced its $130 billion takeover intentions for Qualcomm. Disney was revealed to be discussing a bid for most of 20th Century Fox, a deal that could cost $40 billion. Asset manager Brookfield was reported to be in the early stages of a bid for shopping mall investor GGP, a $20 billion company.  

All within the span of a week. 

Not long before that, power companies Dynegy and Vistra completed an all-stock merger worth more than $10 billion, and Rockwell Automation rejected a nearly $30 billion takeover bid from Emerson Electric. 

Is the mega-deal back? 

The year started off in a frigid climate for large mergers and acquisitions. Only five M&A transactions valued at north of $10 billion were announced in the first half of the year, with a combined transaction value of $84 billion, according to data compiled by Thomson Reuters.  

But corporate boardrooms of the US' largest companies have worked up an appetite for mega-deals in the back half of 2017. Eight deals or attempted deals valued at more than $10 billion a piece — and a combined value of $245 billion — have been announced so far since July, already dwarfing the front half of the year with seven weeks yet to go.

While mega-deals are still well off the firecracker pace from recent years, the rebound of late is a sign of increasing confidence in global economic conditions and a favorable regulatory environment. But it also highlights the rapidly dawning realization that technological disruption poses an existential threat even to industry giants.

The specter of a global-super corporation like Amazon, Google, or Walmart entering a new industry at a whim has previously fearsome conglomerates with market capitalizations in the tens of billions feeling rather small and acknowledging that maintaining the status quo is now a risky bet. 

"If you're not acting proactively, aggressively to evolve your business and change your business, you’re likely falling behind — and that realization is happening at a greater pace," Chris Ventresca, global cohead of M&A at JPMorgan, told Business Insider. "Therefore, people are more willing to consider deals that they may not have considered in years past."

The cool off

Why did mega-dealmaking cool off so much at the beginning of the year?

Small M&A activity — deals worth less than $10 billion — remained strong, with $490 billion across 6,900 transactions, according to Thomson Reuters. That eclipsed small-deal volume in the first half of 2015 and 2016. 

It was the large deals that lagged behind. 

One explanation for the hesitancy was the nascent administration of President Trump, who had made a habit after his election of tweet-shaming companies which made strategic moves that resulted in fewer jobs for hardworking Americans. 

How would his regulators respond to large mergers that stood to benefit from synergies and cost cutting?

Such concerns began to ebb by summer. The President's ability to smack stock prices with a single tweet quickly waned, and his social media salvos shifted focus toward more pressing concerns, such as the Russia investigation, the healthcare debate, and North Korea's "Little Rocket Man." 

More importantly, big deals started to trickle through without arousing attention from the Department of Justice. 

In April, medical devices company Beckton Dickinson bought surgical supplies manufacturer CR Bard for $24.2 billion. In June, Amazon sent tremors through corporate boardrooms when it swooped in to buy Whole Foods for $13.6 billion. In July, Discovery Communications announced a $14.6 billion takeover of fellow media company Scripps Networks Interactive. 

The consolidations went uncontested, and more followed.  

"Over the summer there was a number of big, strategic combinations and they didn’t seem to meet with a lot of regulatory or political resistance," Mark McMaster, vice chairman of investment banking at Lazard, told Business Insider.

"It appears we're in a regulatory environment where Washington is going to allow pure-play companies to continue to get larger," he added.

The $85 billion merger between AT&T and Time Warner — announced in 2016 before Trump was elected — may be the exception, with regulators suggesting they'd file suit to block the deal. Reports have been mixed about whether the DoJ demanded the sale of Turner Broadcasting, the division that owns CNN.

By summer, CEOs also grew more confident that global economies were in sync and robust growth would continue. 

With stock markets setting record highs and equity valuations soaring, this helped make the math on mergers more palatable. 

Multiples may be elevated, but the premium is more justifiable with an upward sloping global economy.

"Things that may have felt expensive suddenly feel less expensive when you model in an improving global economy,” said Ventresca, noting that optimism on this front had improved from even six or nine months ago.   

Deals also seem more palatable if a company can tap the low-interest debt markets or use their own inflated equity to finance a deal. 

If companies swap shares in a deal, the fact that stock prices are inflated can be neutralized, MacMaster noted. 

The Amazon effect

Aside from giving investors and business leaders some confidence on the regulatory front, the Amazon takeover of Whole Foods more importantly served as a wake up call. 

Grocery stocks plummeted after the deal was announced, and pharmacy stocks took a hit as well.

Even large companies tens of billions in market capitalization began to confront the possibility that super-corporations like Amazon could wake up on a given day and upend their industry. 

This forced firms to frankly assess their deficiencies and evaluate whether they have enough to be an end-game winner in their sector.

That's why you're seeing more mega-deals that establish a firmer footing within an industry.

That might be why Disney — facing threates from Netflix and Amazon — isn't certain it can win purely by growing within. Acquiring 20th Century Fox would give them a major leg up. And CVS Health's reported $66 billion takeover plans for Aetna has everything to do with staying one step ahead of Amazon. 

"Companies are feeling the pressure of creating end-game winners within their various sectors and are willing to take a longer-term view of whether they have the pieces of the puzzle to be that end-game winner," Ventresca said. "And they're acknowledging that if they don’t, they might not have the luxury of time and building it on an organic, greenfield basis."

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