30JUN08:
Oil to be USD200 by 30OCT08
USA Inflation to be 7.5% by 30OCT08 23APR08:
Next Rights Issue:
HBOS...yes
All & Lec ... 17APR08: Oil to be USD127 by 30SEP08
...16MAY08 losing my touch 27FEB08:
2 Banks go bust by 30JUN08
BS down, whose next? ... 20NOV07: Northern Crock to be sold for 15p
Nationalized 01NOV07: Oil to be USD103 EOM
...peaked too soon The Big Crash: 17OCT07
...well it's here 08OCT07:
SEC to fine Goldman for pricing issues
...still waiting 15JUN07: ML to buy-out BS
JPM got there first
Hedge funds are divided into groups. These are called strategies and styles. Investors like that. Hedge funds don't but they will do anything for a quiet life. The problem is most of these groupings are not working in the current climate so newbie managers are looking to new types of trading strategy. Take inflation. A number of newly launched funds state their aim is to use inflation to produce alpha. It is all pretty meaningless but investors' get excited. We try and move on and supply new product to customers. All businesses do that.
However, the fundamental distinguishing feature of hedge funds is we short. We sell stocks we have borrowed and buy back when (hopefully) the price has fallen. We make a profit on a falling stock price.
So when I read about shorting being akin to devil worshiping, especially with the spreading of false rumors to dump the price, the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. [Editor: That must make you look even more unattractive]. Suffering from such self doubt about the industry I am in is causing me to think more than usual. One of the worst traits a hedgie can have is to be emotional. We don't do tears or touchy feeley (unless we are paying for it) as this causes "process disjunct". I just made that phrase up. This is another symptom of financial reporting. It all sounds so dull so has to be spiced up with bizarre phrases.
Today I attempted to find hedge fund related stories with strange phrases. I tried. But didn't find any.
Long: Hot summer days, massages and working in the nude.
Short: Sleep deprivation, asking too many questions and banks with useless CEO's.
CITIGROUP'S private banking division, which globally has $28bn assets under management, has ceased taking new UK customers because of concerns over its anti-money laundering procedures, City A.M. can reveal.
Leaked internal documents show that Citibank International Personal Bank (IPB) this week barred its staff from opening new accounts after an intenal review found its anti-money laundering system required “urgent focus”.
IPB, which has 170,000 customers globally, has been in discussions with the Financial Services Authority and will provide the City watchdog with weekly updates until it is resolved.
Fintag says Truly shocking. Citi is the world's largest money launderer (source: market rumor) and has been since the term was invented. What will all those Russians do now? Oh that's rightj invest in London real estate and Icelandic banks.
Douglas Steger, the former owner of the American Financial Capital Corporation, a business that raised money for hedge funds, pleaded guilty to a tax shelter conspiracy on Thursday and agreed to cooperate in a federal investigation.
Mr. Steger, 54, of Northfield, Ill., admitted that he and others, including an unidentified bank employee, helped sell 36 illegal tax shelters for “high net worth clients” of the bank. An assistant United States attorney, Stanley J. Okula, told a Manhattan federal judge that Mr. Steger was cooperating in a federal inquiry.
Fintag says Tell me, does such thing as a legal shelter exist?
SHORT-SELLING COSTS DOUBLE AS INVESTORS ARE DRAWN TO NEW STRATEGY
The parlous state of the equity markets on both sides of the Atlantic has sent investors piling into the controversial practice of shorting, which has driven fees to more than double in just nine months.
The price of borrowing stock in London's blue-chip companies has risen twofold since last October, according to Data Explorers, which specialises in stock-lending information, and went up as much as four times in January.
Fintag says Stock lending fees have gone up because nobody wants to be long in anything. Lansdowne Partners have the largest short book in Europe. Blame them.
I feel dirty and ashamed to be undertaking in the controversial practice of shorting. I need to find redemption.
It is perhaps the most alarming sign of the credit crunch yet.
The fall - actual or expected - in bonuses in London's financial community, the City, is apparently starting to have drastic knock-on domestic effects: increasing numbers of long-suffering wives of high-earning, hard-working bankers and hedge fund managers are turning to their divorce lawyers for advice on how to protect their own interests.
A fifth of all high earners in the City knows a colleague who has been on the receiving end of divorce proceedings since the economic downturn started, according to research commissioned by Sandra Davis, a partner at Mishcon de Reya, the law firm that represented Diana, Princess of Wales, among other high-flying divorcees.
Fintag says Why do people get married? What is the correlation between marriage / divorce and the S&P 500? Do the magic circle of divorce lawyers collude on fees?
SLIDE IN HOUSE PRICES IS THE WORST SINCE THE GREAT DEPRESSION
Britain is now in the midst of the worst housing slide since the Great Depression, economists declared after house price inflation dropped to the lowest level since comparable records began.
Britain is now in the midst of the worst housing slide since the Great Depression Halifax figures show house prices have fallen by 8.7pc in the year to June
Figures from Halifax, the UK's biggest mortgage lender, showed house prices have fallen by 8.7pc in the year to June, confirming that the property crunch is more severe than the last housing crash in the early 1990s. Hours before, the Bank of England voted to leave rates unchanged at 5pc.
Fintag says Good news. At last people will stop treating residential property as an investment.
Houses are for living in.
reuters says " Vulture funds circle ailing housebuilders "
PRENTICE, TOSCAFUND HEDGE FUNDS PLUMMETED IN JUNE, WSJ REPORTS
Two big hedge funds, Prentice Capital Management LP and Toscafund Asset Management LLP, fell sharply in June, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Prentice, a New York City-based firm started in 2005 with funds from SAC Capital Advisors LLC, has dropped 46 percent so far this year; almost half that decline occurred in June as stock and debt investments in retailers dropped, the newspaper said, citing unidentified investors.
Fintag says Fintag reports on a bloomberg story that reports on a WSJ story that reports on some market rumors. Lazy journalists: an oxymoron.
THE SCARE AT LEHMAN: LIKE A DRESS REHEARSAL FOR A RUN ON THE BANK
Today's scare at Lehman Brothers showed us all what a bank-run would look like. The stock plunged 22% while credit default swaps blew out to deathwatch levels. The basis of the scare were a pair of rumors that started circulating yesterday, namely that Pimco and SAC Capital were pulling out of trades with Lehman Brothers because of counter-party risk. Both Pimco and SAC acted quickly to deny the rumors, although skeptics will no doubt parse the denials for hidden verbal escape hatches. Lehman stock recovered to a dime or so above where it had opened.
Fintag says Imagine that. After all these years of Lehman surviving so many problems, it is going to be taken out because it looks like Bear Stearns. Lehman death is the result of Erin Callan putting a curse on the rest of the board. Shame on them.
Last Friday, Eugen Haltiner, chairman of the Swiss Federal Banking Commission (EBK), informed the two banks about plans to raise capital requirements above the already high levels maintained.
Philipp Hildebrand, deputy chairman of the Swiss National Bank and in charge of financial stability, amplified calls for a "leverage ratio" - a regulatory instrument measuring banks' equity relative to total unweighted assets - in line with practice at US commercial banks.
Fintag says UBS. Makes me laugh whenever I hear those 3 letters. UBS failed because internally it didn't allow the workers to do very much. It is a rules based firm. So the incompetent bankers looked at the internal handbook and played with subprime because it wasn't mentioned. And now it is in the Bear Stearns bucket of shame.
The rumors are relentless. Lehman is still highly levered and operates a Bear Stearns model of risk management. That is, no risk management.
They have been bust, along with Merrills and Citi, for months now. They are also US state owned, what anybody tells you. This is a good thing. Failing banks are not good for ones health.
DEALBOOK'S ANDREW ROSS SORKIN VS. DEALBREAKER'S JOHN CARNEY
It's a rumble! So, yesterday, the Times' Andrew Ross Sorkin wrote a column about rumormongering on Wall Street and how some baddies start rumors to manipulate the markets and why doesn't the SEC investigate where the rumors come from? This got DealBreaker's John Carney, whose livelihood is partly dependent on such rumors, kind of worked up, and he wrote a blog post that basically shat all over Sorkin's column, in which he called the Times reporter "Wonderboy" and got all up on his high horse about freedom of speech and how if the government investigated market rumors then "your right to express your doubts about the financial health of a company would suddenly turn on ex post facto decisions of prosecutors, judges, and juries" and if the SEC started investigating every rumor then we would all basically be just one step closer to living in a terrible dystopia.
Fintag says I have a hate - hate relationship with dealbreaker. This time I support them because they, are well, actually I cannot think of any reason. Time I called the SEC and shopped them for journalistic incompetence and plagiarism and spreading rumors that are often made up and come from fintag.
7 comments
anonymous said ...
Barry, what's with the selective bold lettering? Maybe you're trying to get yourself in trouble with Big Brother and his automated scan of the web for subversive text such as 'money launderer', 'Lehman death' etc.?
11 Jul 08 - 14:19 gmt
Dan said ...
Correction: Lazy journalists is redundant, not oxymoronic.
11 Jul 08 - 17:06 gmt
MsR said ...
@ Dan: 'Lazy journalists' may well become redundant but I think it is currently oxymoronic en route to that particular status Dan.
Us word people are pedantic.
11 Jul 08 - 18:06 gmt
anonymous said ...
If you want to be a pedant.....remember "Buffalo bufallo Bufallo bufallo bufallo bufallo Bufallo bufallo" from school?
11 Jul 08 - 20:16 gmt
anonymous said ...
I guess the comments here today have been light due to everyone watching in horror as the diseased Fannie is slipping downwards. I predict that it will not be long before Bernanke notices and injects his wad into Fannie
11 Jul 08 - 20:17 gmt
Finbar said ...
Finnie, Fannie, Lehman - its the rocky horror show; in New York and consensus is that the Treasury cannot afford the $1trillion needed to prop them up
11 Jul 08 - 20:26 gmt
anonymous said ...
Female - you are incorrect AND pedantic. Dan was correct
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CITIGROUP'S private banking division, which globally has $28bn assets under management, has ceased taking new UK customers because of concerns over its anti-money laundering procedures, City A.M. can reveal.
Leaked internal documents show that Citibank International Personal Bank (IPB) this week barred its staff from opening new accounts after an intenal review found its anti-money laundering system required “urgent focus”.
IPB, which has 170,000 customers globally, has been in discussions with the Financial Services Authority and will provide the City watchdog with weekly updates until it is resolved.