28JAN09:
Q1-09 DOW: 8900
Q2-09 DOW: 7250
Q3-09 DOW: 5810
Q4-09 DOW: 3960
CITI NATIONALIZED
OBAMA GETS SICK 27AUG09:
Mini Crash 21SEP09 Predicted correctly:
Bailout=Bonuses
Demise of Bear Stearns
Demise of Lehman Bros.
Demise of AIG
Subprime would cause problems
Date of 2007 crash
CRAs were to blame
G20 riots were a party
Northern Rock run
Northern Rock Nationalization
HBOS and RBS demise
UBS really was Useless
His to do list is enormous and quite complex too. Expectations are high that he will be able to conjure up magical powers to sort out the horrendous mess the west is in. The markets are in a state of heightened paranoia and waiting for signals to react to. Where interest rates are almost zero, dividend yields take on a different meaning but I am not sure we are living in an income only or capital only world.
Long term investors, depending when they bought must be looking for income in the short term and then capital appreciation in the longer term. Or maybe not. As a short termist who pretends to his investors to be long termist, it appears that investors are no longer interested in fancy named funds but capital guarantees and libor + anything.
I think they have had enough of losses and sitting on cash. Entertaining clients, dealing and growing is what I want. Investors seem not to.
Let us hope Obama can conjure up some magic beans that enable 2009 to restore some stability otherwise the consequences could be dire. [Editor: Like what?]
A mass online protest movement is gathering pace after Facebook banned some breastfeeding photos from the social network site.
Angry mothers even picketed the Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto, California, in a live "nurse-in" to complain about a ban on photos of mothers suckling their children that exposed too much of the mother's breast. Hundreds of women have had their pictures removed without warning and have been informed that they may be barred from using the site.
Fintag says Reminds me of the time I drew a breastfeeding Ben Bernanke and was sent hate mail. Something so natural and beautiful too, why all the fuss. You maybe wondering what this has to do with hedge funds. Well given most of my readers are on vacation, I thought I would lighten up the news. The serious point is we are all living in a moral vacuum and struggling as a result to know what is fair and what is not. Hedge Funds suffer too as investors are starting to tell me what I can and cannot invest in.
A world of know it alls.
LEHMAN CHIEFS DESTROYED $75BN OF BANK'S VALUE IN HOURS
The bosses of Lehman Brothers destroyed as much as $75 billion (£51.3 billion) of the company's value by rushing the stricken investment bank into a surprise bankruptcy filing, an analysis by Lehman's liquidators has found.
Bryan Marsal, co-chief executive of Alvarez & Marsal, the company that is restructuring Lehman, described the surprise bankruptcy filing on September 15 as "an unconscionable waste of value" that robbed the bank's unsecured creditors of much of the $200 billion they are owed.
Fintag says That is rather dramatic. I think Fuld et al had trashed the true value of Lehman long before this and we can blame, if blame is what is required, Hanky and Benny for saving a rotten insurance company instead. Goldman Sachs wanted it too, so AIG was saved.
big ritholz says " AIG's Financial Products Division "
POUND HEADS TOWARDS PARITY WITH EURO IN THIN FESTIVE VOLUMES
Sterling sank as low as to 97.97p against the euro in early trading in London as figures showed that UK home prices continued to fall in December.
Adarsh Sinha, currency strategist at Barclays Capital, said sterling could reach parity, or a one-for-one exchange rate, in the coming days. The main reason would be the low volume of people trading the pound between Christmas and New Year, he said.
Fintag says And when the ECB drops its rates, GBP will rise ...or not. For those of you who were at Christmas parties, here is a summary of the UK:
Shares subject to the US shorting ban in September suffered a "marked degradation" in liquidity when short sellers were limited in their activities, according to a leading US academic, who has added further weight to the argument that such initiatives have failed to halt financial stocks' slide.
Fintag says It can be a burden being right all the time.
The US Treasury has unveiled a $6bn (£4.1bn) rescue package for GMAC - the troubled car loan arm of General Motors and Chrysler's owner, Cerberus.
The move - to encourage GMAC to offer funding to would-be vehicle buyers - is the latest aimed at easing the severity of the economic downturn.
Fintag says A tax rebate then? Propping up lame duck industries never works. Never. But homelessness and anarchy is not a great alternative. Let us hope this cash isn't being used to cover Madoff losses.
Partners Group, a Switzerland-based global alternative asset shop, is beefing ups its risk management with a new unit. The new group combines the portfolio management and risk management activities with those of the former alternative strategies unit.
Tilman Trommsdorff, partner, will take responsibility for the new department. He will be appointed as member of the executive board effective Jan. 1. As a result of this organizational change, Michel Jacquemai, partner and head of the former alternative strategies unit, will no longer be a member of the executive board of Partners Group, but he will continue his responsibilities within absolute return strategies.
Fintag says Litigators, recovery accountants, compliance officers and risk managers; safe as houses.
WHEN HEDGE FUNDERS ARE SENT HOME, CAREFUL TENDING IS IN ORDER
When setting up home offices, Mr. Madigan's colleagues enter into people's private domains and sit with them for hours, talking through the various systems, explaining how they work and how to respond when something fails. His code of professionalism requires that the tech specialists try to avoid personal conversations, but every once in a while, after all those hours of working in tandem, they can't avoid it. Mr. Cabezas was getting ready to leave one former banker's apartment after setting up the last system for a home office when the client confessed that he was really going to miss having co-workers, that collegiality, that sense of community. Mr. Cabezas assured him that with instant messaging and e-mail and video conferencing, he'd surely feel in touch — in technology, the promise of comfort.
Fellow Shareholders, I speak to you today as a 28 year employee, a shareholder and the son of one of the founding fathers of Merrill Lynch.
On January 6th, 1914, Charlie Merrill opened a one man shop just a few blocks from where we are today. A year later he was joined by his friend, Eddie Lynch and the first Merrill, Lynch & Co. was launched. One year later, my father joined the firm straight out of Amherst College. Thus began a wonderful partnership and friendship that lasted a life time....
Investigators believe that Bernard Madoff has stuffed hundreds of millions of dollars in Ponzi profits into offshore tax havens from which they could prove tricky to recover.
In the weeks since his Dec. 11 arrest, forensic accountants have been scouring Madoff's books as federal officials ready an indictment against the hated hedge-funder, who remains under house arrest in his $7 million Upper East Side penthouse.
Fintag says Delaware perhaps? I wonder what Obama thinks of that.
BLUEGOLD, CLIVE CAPITAL BEAT MOST HEDGE FUNDS IN COMMODITY ROUT
The biggest-ever decline in commodities turned Pierre Andurand and Chris Levett into this year's heroes for investors.
Andurand's $1.1 billion BlueGold Capital Management LLP hedge fund in London almost tripled between its February debut and November by betting on higher oil prices in the first half of 2008 and then reversing the strategy, the 31-year-old manager said. Levett's $3 billion London-based Clive Capital LLP returned 44 percent in the first 11 months of the year.
Fintag says Londonders of course. Well done for showing us all how a hedge fund should be run (Levett - you owe me a drink).
A brief, two-hour session of thin trading volumes and choppy buying activity brought to a close the worst ever year for shares on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
Although the half-day session - and indeed the entire month of December - finished on a positive note, the modest gains came nowhere close to offsetting the 42 per cent decline suffered by the Nikkei 225 Index since the start of the year.
Fintag says Nasty.
5 comments
FiveFreddy said ...
hedge funds has now become a bad word (at least in that small town of mine)...like mafia or OC...I now refer to it as "this thing of ours" and tell my friends and familly I work in waste management disposal (not far off actually).
Growing and dealing eh? quite litteraly a good recession proof idea !
Happy New Year !
FF
30 Dec 08 - 10:03 gmt
Davros said ...
11.56 and no comments? These surely are the end times.
30 Dec 08 - 11:56 gmt
bored said ...
well, other than the one above yours...
there's very few people working in the City today, quite possibly a sign of the future
30 Dec 08 - 13:32 gmt
anonymous said ...
DOn't be pessimistic, you two ...
30 Dec 08 - 16:45 gmt
anonymous said ...
Obama in Germany said "We will make the waters in the ocean go down."
Now I know he was referring to melting ice and the oceans rising to swallow little sand reefs like the Cayman Islands and stopping global warming.
Obama is young and has stamina. He CAN do anything and the markets should take their cues from that speech! Buy, spend, and be full of hope.
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