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
Now the US has decided to interfere with capitalism by ramming a huge lever into the largest cog of all, the unexpected rears its ugly head. Banks don't want any government bail out money and are trying to hand it back. They are however hampered by the small print of the bail out agreements which require the banks to raise equity to replace the bail outs, something they are not able to do in these cash poor markets. Now the long arm of the Fed is probing and grasping at the internal workings of Goldmorgan Stanley, it has opened the toy box and the electorate are rushing around wanting to play with toys they have never seen before.
Goldman Sachs have said they cannot operate properly, that is behave like they used to without the preying eyes of the US government. Barclays in the UK has tried in vein to avoid crawling to mummy state and is selling its ETF business to Goldman. Now think about it. Goldman is semi nationalized so the US government is buying a UK business and indirectly bailing out a UK bank.
I have to hand it to Barclays outsmarting both Goldman and the US government. At least us Brits are still good at something ...
China called for the creation of a new currency to eventually replace the dollar as the world's standard, proposing a sweeping overhaul of global finance that reflects developing nations' growing unhappiness with the U.S. role in the world economy.
The unusual proposal, made by central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan in an essay released Monday in Beijing, is part of China's increasingly assertive approach to shaping the global response to the financial crisis.
Fintag says And why not fiddle? But of course this is a bit silly as China owns a lot of USD denominated debt. Or is it? Discuss ...
U.S. securities regulators are working on an updated version of the so-called uptick rule to regulate a type of trading blamed for dramatic declines in stocks, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters on Monday.
The updated version of the Depression-era rule is expected to account for changes in the market, including the advent of decimalization, which allows stocks to be traded in much smaller increments, the sources said.
Fintag says Pulling out of the hat the tricks of old. The hated uptick rule ...although it did work for many years in controlling volatility, it is just fiddling.
China's leaders may press at the Group of 20 summit for specific steps to protect its more than $1 trillion of dollar assets as U.S. fiscal policies risk sparking a “currency war,” a senior Chinese researcher said.
The dollar weakened after the Federal Reserve said March 18 it would buy as much as $300 billion of Treasuries and the U.S. this week outlined plans to buy as much as $1 trillion of illiquid bank assets.
The Governor of the Bank of England laid bare tensions between Gordon Brown and the Treasury yesterday by warning that Britain could not afford a second economic stimulus in the Budget.
Mervyn King threw caution to the wind as he sided with Alistair Darling and the CBI against Downing Street in raising strong doubts over any prospect of another round of “significant fiscal expansion” next month.
Rank: 1 James Simons Renaissance Technologies Est. 2008 earnings: $2.5 billion Est. 2007 earnings: $2.8 billion
Rank: 2 John Paulson Paulson & Company Est. 2008 earnings: $2 billion Est. 2007 earnings: $3.7 billion
Rank: 3 John D. Arnold Centaurus Energy Est. 2008 earnings: $1.5 billion Est. 2007 earnings: $480 million
Rank: 4 George Soros Soros Fund Management Est. 2008 earnings: $1.1 billion Est. 2007 earnings: $2.9 billion
Rank: 5 Ray Dalio Bridgewater Associates Est. 2008 earnings: $780 million Est. 2007 earnings: $400 million
Rank: 6 Bruce Kovner Caxton Associates Est. 2008 earnings: $640 million Est. 2007 earnings: $100 million
Rank: 7 David Shaw D.E. Shaw & Company Est. 2008 earnings: $275 million Est. 2007 earnings: $210 million
Rank: 8 Stanley Druckenmiller Duquesne Capital Management Est. 2008 earnings: $260 million Est. 2007 earnings: Not available
Rank: 9 (tie) David Harding, Winton Capital Management Est. 2008 earnings: $250 million Est. 2007 earnings: $225 million
Rank: 9 (tie) John Taylor Jr. FX Concepts Est. 2008 earnings: $250 million Est. 2007 earnings: Not available
Rank: 9 (tie) Alan Howard Brevan Howard Asset Management Est. 2008 earnings: $250 million Est. 2007 earnings: $245 million
Fintag says I missed out again. Phew! Who wants to be on a list that shows off ones big assets? Temptation, greed and envy are the new order for 2009 so be careful is all I can say. Do you know how much it cost to respray my car? A lot. Here is a picture of it being towed away (alas, the white paint was poured on the front so you cannot see it)...
But what happened to Ken and John Griffin and Steve Cohen?
Luckily for his investors, this bid looks better timed than his personal indulgences.
Of course, that is a low bar of comparison. Cohen bought his dead fish from Charles Saatchi - one of the largest predators of the contemporary art ecosystem - at the top of the cycle. The original formaldehyde-injected shark rotted over time, forcing Cohen to shell out over $100,000 for a new creature.
Fintag says Damien Hirst. The biggest crook of the last 20 years. He makes Dick Fuld look like a fluffy puppy.
financial news says " Managed accounts gain ground among hedge funds "
When the Federal Reserve announced last week it was buying $300 billion in long-term Treasury notes, the move was viewed as one of the safer bets the central bank has made recently.
After all, the Fed has either bought or announced plans to spend trillions of dollars on troubled mortgages and other types of questionable consumer debt in the past year. At the same time, the Fed has been loaning money to banks and companies that couldn't get funding elsewhere.
Fintag says More importantly, is AAA a relevant score anymore? Surely we should look at the CDS spreads which give a better indication.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc is prepared to pay back the U.S. government's $10 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program investment as soon as allowed by regulators, but some hurdles remain, a person familiar with the situation said on Tuesday.
And while the investment bank is considering reducing or hedging its roughly $6 billion stake in Industrial and Commercial Bank of China ICBC Ltd , such a move has no bearing on its repayment plans, the person said.
Fintag says If Goldman wriggle out then Obama will look very stupid. Oh, he already does. [Editor: No more fiddling metaphors?]
Bob Diamond, the high-profile president of Barclays, is among key executives who stand to make millions of pounds if the bank sells iShares, the fast-growing asset management business, for as much as $6.5bn.
Even though Mr Diamond saw his total remuneration fall 99 per cent last year, from £21.1m to £250,000 and his shares lost £49.7m in value, he is set to be a beneficiary alongside other senior employees at Barclays Global Investors if the bank sells iShares, which is part of BGI.
Fintag says Well Bobby Geezer didn't get a bonus last year (and neither did his employees) so he needs to fiddle big time.
HEDGE FUND INVESTORS SEE RECORD REDEMPTIONS IN '09
The hedge fund industry is facing even bigger redemptions this year than those suffered last year, according to a new survey.
Fully one-third of hedge fund investors expect more than $200 billion to be pulled from the industry this year, almost 30% more than the record $155 billion outflow that hit the industry last year. More than four in five investors say that redemptions are the biggest issue faced by hedge funds, according to the Deutsche Bank survey.
Fintag says I know I have covered this about 10 times before. But I have to re-read it just in case of the inevitable.
DIFFERING OUTLOOKS FOR INFLATION ASSIST BREVAN HOWARD'S ALLURE
If hedge funds have a bad name, that is no fault of Brevan Howard. Yesterday's full-year results from BH Macro - the FTSE 250 vehicle that gives ordinary investors direct access to the Brevan Howard Master Fund - demonstrated why it is now London's largest listed hedge fund. Its net asset value (NAV) rose 23.2 per cent last year, nearly twice the gain recorded by BlueCrest All Blue, its nearest competitor, taking its annualised return since float to 27 per cent. Equally impressive, the current year has also started well - up 9 per cent in January and February.
BH's outsize returns can be pinned on its strategy of taking short-term bets on two asset classes - currencies and interest rates - in which volatility has been high and whose performance is uncorrelated to equities. Further, it takes a large number of relatively small positions - meaning that no single bet has the potential to bring it down - while the extensive use of futures and options serves to limit any losses.
Fintag says Yesterday the UK's inflation rate went down ...and up. Thankfully no deflation yet so my body wax can wait for a little while longer (hat tip to a fintagger for reminding of the new running down Regent Street naked etiquette).
38 comments
anonymous said ...
First!
I know you hate spelling, but please run a checker once in a while. Makes it hard to focus on the content. Preying=prying, vein=vain, to name but two
25 Mar 09 - 08:53 gmt
Corrector said ...
anonymous I suspect you are a pedantic cnut
25 Mar 09 - 09:36 gmt
anonymous said ...
My respect to the guy who went from hedge fund to pizza delivery. Unlike many on Wall Street or in the City he had the courage to set up his own business and when he failed to revise his expectations down. I wish him well.
25 Mar 09 - 09:47 gmt
MsR said ...
@anon9.47 Yes respect but let's remember that the majority of people out there don't have the wherewithall to set up anything, let alone survive. And that's how the normal folk live. But yes at least he's not sitting mourning his past life.
25 Mar 09 - 09:58 gmt
Moron said ...
I LOVE PIZZA:))))
25 Mar 09 - 09:59 gmt
anonymous said ...
Errrm, didn't we have that BH article yesterday?
@Moron: What's your call for the day?
P.S. Apologies if you're getting this twice - Internet Explorer is not my friend.
25 Mar 09 - 10:05 gmt
anonymous said ...
It's the new Amercian Dream - every rich kid has an equal opportunity to become dirt-poor.
25 Mar 09 - 10:08 gmt
Moron said ...
call is down mate...loads of charts showing gradual rollovers.....i called the rally correctly (check the archives of this site) but made a mistake by not playing the upside.....will not lose this opportunity to short a whole bunch of garbage that has gone up 30-40% in weeks!!!
25 Mar 09 - 10:18 gmt
anonymous said ...
@Corrector - One doesn't have to be a pedant to wish for rudimentary spelling mistakes to be corrected. Please suck my fat one
25 Mar 09 - 10:35 gmt
anonymous said ...
Sadly, most spell checkers wouldn't have picked up those mistakes from Fin, because the words he wrote do actually exist. The kind of checking required to flag those errors should have been performed by the Editor.
25 Mar 09 - 10:45 gmt
Bennies said ...
@anonymous - Spelling checkers are hard to come by these days. Have some consideration.
Massive respect to the Pizza dude, but who does his wife think she is? How about getting a job as well? With that pretty face she could make loads of money.
25 Mar 09 - 10:46 gmt
Peedantik Anun said ...
@anon: u mizzed a phulstop.
Please suck my fat one. < phulstop
25 Mar 09 - 10:47 gmt
AthenaDelphi said ...
Hello everbody. Anyone miss me? If I feel the love, I'll only post short comments, sporadically.
guys out there in Mayfair, wanna have fun? just walk through Burlington arcade from north to south (towards the Ritz) and make sure you whistle. A prick will come out of nowhere to tell you to stop whistling. Apparently it is forbidden to whistle in the arcade!!! Ain't that funny being told off by a security jerk not to whistle. I obviously carried on whistling and he kept on following me repeating I should stop whistling. Try it, it's too funny. This is England, this is London. What next?
25 Mar 09 - 12:08 gmt
MsR said ...
@Moron: The pizza at Lombardis in NY is very nice I think.
25 Mar 09 - 12:09 gmt
boring1 said ...
what about the $800bn of amero the US shipped to china last year? (Oct 01)
25 Mar 09 - 12:14 gmt
Top Cat said ...
@the elegant whistler - I love it! I'm going down there later, once this rain stops. Perhaps a gaggle of Fintaggers should all go there at once and whistle?
25 Mar 09 - 12:48 gmt
Moron said ...
the pizza delivery video is very sad....I have more sympathy for his poor suffering wife than for that loser though.....u have a family to support.....go out and make it happen no matter what it takes......don't take the easiest way out working at a pizza place and then sit at home and whine....pathetic !!!!
25 Mar 09 - 13:16 gmt
Anonymous Bull said ...
Has Panta been banned from this blog? U don't see his irreverent comments on here anymore. Instead we have the Moron and Jaa show....morecambe and wise they ain't....maybe steptoe and son..lol
25 Mar 09 - 13:36 gmt
Moron said ...
shut up!!!
25 Mar 09 - 13:37 gmt
MsR said ...
@moron seems they both waited too long for fate to intervene but I think that happens with people who aren't used to things going bad. In fairness I think the tone of the interviewer encouraged whining responses..it was lame. Still many of us live on the edge in different ways, waiting for projects to happen or we don't pay bills. Except for people like you of course
25 Mar 09 - 13:41 gmt
Jaa said ...
"you dirty ol man, you dusgust me"
25 Mar 09 - 14:08 gmt
JLobb said ...
re: Burlington Arcade: What if one is whistling whilst having his shoes shined? Is that also against the rules?
25 Mar 09 - 14:43 gmt
anonymous said ...
it seems to me the market is on an upward sloping trajectory
25 Mar 09 - 15:29 gmt
anonymous said ...
re Panta, you mean 'irrelevant' not 'irreverant' surely. Anyways this blog is no place for unemployed brokers
25 Mar 09 - 15:31 gmt
damiendamien said ...
I am going straight to Burlington Arcade. Will update tomorrow.
25 Mar 09 - 16:02 gmt
anonymous said ...
who the fu)k whistles? although i know what i'm doing on the way back home tonight! hahaha classic banter the elegant whistler. love it.
25 Mar 09 - 16:48 gmt
anonymous said ...
Moron down £11
25 Mar 09 - 16:49 gmt
Moron said ...
12.263 actually:))
25 Mar 09 - 16:54 gmt
anonymous said ...
hahha yup
25 Mar 09 - 16:54 gmt
anonymous said ...
man so little interest today
25 Mar 09 - 16:55 gmt
fitzcaraldo said ...
@anon 15:29: I think anyone's comments should be welcome - if you reduce the universe of eligible commentators to those still with a job you might miss some of the most relevant comments - also: some people who are not employed are self-employed!
25 Mar 09 - 16:55 gmt
anonymous said ...
hey moron, how are you finding the costs of shorting?
25 Mar 09 - 17:36 gmt
Moron said ...
more than the costs mate...the difficulty to borrow many small caps is the problem!!!!
25 Mar 09 - 18:02 gmt
anonymous said ...
Yeah, it is not easy being short. But consider the alternative....
25 Mar 09 - 23:16 gmt
Hanky Paulson said ...
America is the best. We let people live in their mansions without paying so they can learn the skilled craft of pizza delivery. What does that tell you about our banks? They don't need any money! Of course it could mean that by foreclosing on all the non performing loans they might show that they are insolvent. Better to wait for Tiny Tim's plan.
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