Stuff about finance & investing

[Zanimivost] robo fx trejderji

poglejte, kako sem aktualen s svojo magistrsko.
če ne bi bil tko etičen, bi tudi jaz najbrž lahko delal minimalno izgubo in prodajal velike obljube :)

Mrs. Robo Jones starts to make an FX impact

Posted by Izabella Kaminska on Sep 30 09:34.

We’ve written about the shifting dynamics in the world of retail forex trading before. In particular, the phasing out of ‘Mrs. Watanabe‘ in favour of ‘Mrs. Robo Jones’ — the western-based punter seeking returns in a zero-rate environment, but doing so with the help of algorithmic tools and so-called FX bots.

These FX bots, peddled on the internet or by the FX platforms themselves, make hugely tempting profitability claims. More often than not though — by guaranteeing relatively predictable trading volumes — they’re only a sure income stream for their creators or the FX platforms they are used on.

10926

And there’s nothing wrong with that.

But, and there is a but, the spot FX market is among the most unregulated markets in the world. Accordingly, there’s little preventing parties privy to those flows from using the information for their own proprietary gain.

It’s the same effect as giving a retail consumer a supermarket loyalty card. Mrs. Robo Jones is happy because she receives X-amount of free money with every successful trade the FX bot executes on her behalf. Her costs appear minimal versus her profits. She thinks she has done well, and is happy to suffer the occasional loss.

But, like with all loyalty cards, it’s her purchasing trends that are actually more valuable to the service providers. As many consumer groups warn, supermarkets adapt their pricing to make the most of the purchasing patterns detected. The information garnered is nearly always worth more than the free spending points given out. In Mrs. Robo Jones’ case, though, her trends are already known to the developers of the programmes she uses.

Meanwhile, the pace of growth in the FX retail sector continues to astound. As the FT reported on Tuesday:

Indeed, dbFX, Deutsche Bank’s online forex trading platform for individuals and small institutions, has seen volumes rise 37 per cent in the year to August 2009.

But can these sorts of developments actually have an effect on wider currency trends? According to the FT article, they’re definitely starting to (our emphasis):

Betsy Waters, global head of dbFX, says retail investing is receiving an additional lift as individuals adopt the high-frequency automated trading systems pioneered by hedge funds.  These computer programs, which use complex algorithms to produce automated trading signals, can be bought and uploaded over the internet by retail investors and plugged into a trading platform.

Indeed, dbFX reports that this trend has exploded in popularity since the start of the year. It says currency trades generated by automated systems have risen from negligible at the start of the year to represent about 20 per cent of its customer flow in August.

Ms Waters says that some of the buy and sell signals generated by these programs now have more influence on FX trading patterns, especially at less liquid times of day, and are dictating moves in the wider market.

And that’s a trend that we expect will only grow in force. Note, after all, that even personal-finance pages in papers like the Telegraph are now encouraging holidaymakers to opt for FX broker platforms over traditional commission-charging exchange points.

http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2009/09/30/74721/mrs-robo-jones-starts-to-make-an-fx-impact/

 

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To elektronsko sporocilo in vse morebitne priloge so poslovna skrivnost in namenjene izkljucno naslovniku. Ce ste sporocilo prejeli pomotoma, Vas prosimo, da obvestite posiljatelja, sporocilo pa takoj unicite. Kakrsnokoli razkritje, distribucija ali kopiranje vsebine sporocila je izrecno prepovedano. Ni nujno, da to sporocilo odraza uradno stalisce druzbe.

Elektronsko sporocilo je pregledano z antivirusnim programom.

 

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[Mnenja] Rosenberg special report: bullish na surovine in (svojo domovino) Kanado

Sicer obnova tega, kar David Rosenberg govori že ves čas, ampak vseeno dobro razlaga svoj case za bullish commodities:

What really caught our eye this time around was that during the vicious selloff in commodities last year, the price of virtually every commodity bottomed at a higher price than during any other recession in the past. Oil, for example, bottomed this cycle at $39.20/bbl (using monthly averages). In the 2001 recession, the oil price bottomed at $19.33/bbl; in 1990, it bottomed at $16.81/bbl; in 1982 at $28.48/bbl; and in 1975 at $10.11/bbl. We bottomed this cycle at levels that were peaks in prior cycles.

The same holds true for copper — it hit its trough at $1.39/pound this time around versus $0.630 in 2001 and $1.00 in 1992. Ditto for the ‘softs’ — soybeans bottomed at $8.48/bushel this time, compared with $4.15 in 2001, $5.42 in the recession of the early 1990s and $5.32 in the early 1980s downturn.

(tukaj me malo moti, da ne upošteva inflacije)
Outlook
Zakaj Kanada?
Zdrav finančni sistem...
2outlook
In še o depreciaciji dolarja, ki je za Američane še edini neizkoriščeni ukrep...
3outlook
Priporočila (treba upoštevat, da z dokaj ameriške perspektive):
4outlook
lpd

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To elektronsko sporocilo in vse morebitne priloge so poslovna skrivnost in namenjene izkljucno naslovniku. Ce ste sporocilo prejeli pomotoma, Vas prosimo, da obvestite posiljatelja, sporocilo pa takoj unicite. Kakrsnokoli razkritje, distribucija ali kopiranje vsebine sporocila je izrecno prepovedano. Ni nujno, da to sporocilo odraza uradno stalisce druzbe.

Elektronsko sporocilo je pregledano z antivirusnim programom.

 

This e-mail and any attachments may contain confidential and/or privileged information and is intended solely for the addressee. If you are not the intended recipient (or have received this e-mail in error) please notify the sender immediately and destroy this e-mail. Any unauthorized copying, disclosure or distribution of the material in this e-mail is strictly forbidden. This e-mail may not necessarily reflect the official viewpoint of the company.

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(download)

Click here to download:
Special_Report_TripleC_092509.pdf (1.29 MB)
(download)

[Mnenja] Marc Faber Takes on Krugman, Links Bernanke and Mugabe - Real Time Economics - WSJ

Economic provocateur Marc Faber joined a chorus of commentators picking on Paul Krugman’s recent state-of-economics magazine article. 

Mr. Krugman “thinks it would be very good to have another bubble in the world and deal with it later on,” according to Mr. Faber.  Mr. Krugman, the columnist and Nobel prize winner, has advocated a strong government stimulus and big deficits to jumpstart the economy.  

Mr. Faber, a Hong Kong-based investor and author of the Gloom, Doom & Boom report, suggested Mr. Krugman’s piece, entitled “How Did Economists Get it So Wrong,” missed the mark. There wasn’t “a single word about excessive credit growth” in Mr. Krugman’s article, he said. “He should have written ‘How did I get it so wrong?’” 

Mr. Faber’s view is that the collapse was due to the massive increase in credit stoked by the Federal Reserve. The Fed and academic economists such as Mr. Krugman failed to acknowledge that the borrowing boom would create economic chaos, he said. 

Mr. Faber was speaking at the CLSA Asia Pacific Markets investor conference in Hong Kong. It’s the same event Sarah Palin spoke Wednesday. 

Mr. Faber, is, to put it mildly, a pessimist. “You can’t find anyone more negative about the world than I am,” he said. “But stocks can still go up,” thanks to continued printing of money.  He actually expects stocks overall to rise around 7% a year over the next decade, though in places like the U.S., much of that return will be eroded by inflation, brought on by the increase in the money supply. 

The last few years saw the world economy in a synchronized boom, and then bust, a rare thing in economic history. Going back 200 years, capital flowed to some sectors or geographic areas, stoking bubbles, yet other places saw deflation as capital fled. 

This latest bubble was different. 

“You have to give credit to [Ben] Bernanke and [Alan] Greenspan. They have achieved something no central bankers have achieved in history. They created a bubble in everything…The only asset that went down from 2002 to 2007 was the U.S. dollar.” 

There was one place he said that didn’t grow in the final years of the latest bubble. That was Zimbabwe, which suffered hyperinflation and economic collapse at the hands of dictator Robert Mugabe. The African country was “run by a money printer, Mr. Mugabe, a mentor of Mr. Bernanke,” Mr. Faber said.

The crowd chuckled. 

Mr. Faber told the audience to put money in Asian equities and commodities. He said gold is important, but buy real gold, not derivatives, and keep the gold outside the U.S. The U.S. confiscated gold during the Great Depression, he noted. 

He, like Warren Buffett, Nouriel Roubini and others, thinks the dollar is destined to erode, though Mr. Faber said it could rebound over the next few months as signs of deflation stick around. “The dollar in the long run is a doomed currency,” he said. “This is the short of the century…The government’s policy is to make it worthless.”

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2009/09/25/marc-faber-takes-on-krugman-links-bernanke-and-mugabe/


Pomislim, preden natisnem. Vem, zakaj!

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To elektronsko sporocilo in vse morebitne priloge so poslovna skrivnost in namenjene izkljucno naslovniku. Ce ste sporocilo prejeli pomotoma, Vas prosimo, da obvestite posiljatelja, sporocilo pa takoj unicite. Kakrsnokoli razkritje, distribucija ali kopiranje vsebine sporocila je izrecno prepovedano. Ni nujno, da to sporocilo odraza uradno stalisce druzbe.

Elektronsko sporocilo je pregledano z antivirusnim programom.

 

This e-mail and any attachments may contain confidential and/or privileged information and is intended solely for the addressee. If you are not the intended recipient (or have received this e-mail in error) please notify the sender immediately and destroy this e-mail. Any unauthorized copying, disclosure or distribution of the material in this e-mail is strictly forbidden. This e-mail may not necessarily reflect the official viewpoint of the company.

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[Mnenja] Money figures show there's trouble ahead

Tim Congdon from International Monetary Research says that US bank loans have been falling at an annual pace of almost 14pc since early Summer: "There has been nothing like this in the USA since the 1930s."

M3 money has been falling at a 5pc rate; M2 fell by 12pc in August; the Commercial Paper market has shrunk from $1.6 trillion to $1.2 trillion since late May; the Monetary Multiplier at the St Louis Fed is below zero (0.925). In Europe, M3 money has been contracting at a 1pc rate since April.

Private loans have fallen by €111bn since January. Whether you see a credit crunch in Euroland depends where you sit. It is already garrotting Spain. Germany's Mittelstand says it is "a reality", even if not for big companies that issue bonds. The Economy Ministry is drawing up plans for €250bn in state credit, knowing firms will be unable to roll over debts.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/6234939/Money-figures-show-theres-trouble-ahead.html

 

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To elektronsko sporocilo in vse morebitne priloge so poslovna skrivnost in namenjene izkljucno naslovniku. Ce ste sporocilo prejeli pomotoma, Vas prosimo, da obvestite posiljatelja, sporocilo pa takoj unicite. Kakrsnokoli razkritje, distribucija ali kopiranje vsebine sporocila je izrecno prepovedano. Ni nujno, da to sporocilo odraza uradno stalisce druzbe.

Elektronsko sporocilo je pregledano z antivirusnim programom.

 

This e-mail and any attachments may contain confidential and/or privileged information and is intended solely for the addressee. If you are not the intended recipient (or have received this e-mail in error) please notify the sender immediately and destroy this e-mail. Any unauthorized copying, disclosure or distribution of the material in this e-mail is strictly forbidden. This e-mail may not necessarily reflect the official viewpoint of the company.

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[Zanimivost] Read it here 1st: Truest Picture of Excess Labor Supply


 
 

Sent to you by dare via Google Reader:

via The Big Picture by Barry Ritholtz on 9/27/09

Back in July, we discussed the “truest picture of excess labor supply” — the number of Unemployed per Job Openings. During the 2001 recession, the ratio of jobless people to openings was little more than double; in early 2009, job seekers outnumbered jobs four-to-one.

According to a front page Sunday NYT has article, that ratio has now hit an all time record:

“Job seekers now outnumber openings six to one, the worst ratio since the government began tracking open positions in 2000. According to the Labor Department’s latest numbers, from July, only 2.4 million full-time permanent jobs were open, with 14.5 million people officially unemployed.

And even though the pace of layoffs is slowing, many companies remain anxious about growth prospects in the months ahead, making them reluctant to add to their payrolls.

The dearth of jobs reflects the caution of many American businesses when no one knows what will emerge to propel the economy. With unemployment at 9.7 percent nationwide, the shortage of paychecks is both a cause and an effect of weak hiring.”

Nothing like having a 4 month jump on the big boys . . .

>

Outlook

courtesy of NYT

>

Previously:
The Truest Picture of Excess Labor Supply (July 1st, 2009)
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/07/the-truest-picture-of-excess-labor-supply/

Wage Deflation in Our Midst (July 1st, 2009)
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/07/wage-deflation-in-our-midst/

Source:
U.S. Job Seekers Exceed Openings by Record Ratio
PETER S. GOODMAN
NYT, September 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/27/business/economy/27jobs.html


[Zanimivost] I/B/E/S

čist mimogrede, jaz sem že večkrat zasledil, pa nisem vedel kaj pomeni
The 'Institutional Brokers' Estimate System' (I/B/E/S) is a service founded by the New York brokerage firm Lynch, Jones & Ryan. I/B/E/S began collecting earnings estimates for U.S. companies around 1976 and used the raw data to calculate statistical time series for each company. The data subsequently was used as the basis for articles in academic finance journals attempting to demonstrate that changes in consensus earnings estimates could identify opportunities to capture excess returns in subsequent periods. After starting with annual earnings estimates and estimates of "Long Term Growth, the database later was expanded to include quarterly earnings estimates. This allowed for the analysis of "Quarterly Earnings Surprises." Other innovations made possible by the I/B/E/S data included estimates for various equity indexes on a "top down" basis (made by strategists and economists) and estimates made on a "bottoms up" basis (by individual analysts) for those same indexes. In the mid 1980's I/B/E/S began to expand its dataset to include companies trading in international markets. I/B/E/S was sold to Citigroup in the late 1980s and eventually came to be owned by Thomson Financial. Currently the database is owned by Thomson Reuters.
odtod top-down napovedi dobičkov...

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To elektronsko sporocilo in vse morebitne priloge so poslovna skrivnost in namenjene izkljucno naslovniku. Ce ste sporocilo prejeli pomotoma, Vas prosimo, da obvestite posiljatelja, sporocilo pa takoj unicite. Kakrsnokoli razkritje, distribucija ali kopiranje vsebine sporocila je izrecno prepovedano. Ni nujno, da to sporocilo odraza uradno stalisce druzbe.

Elektronsko sporocilo je pregledano z antivirusnim programom.

 

This e-mail and any attachments may contain confidential and/or privileged information and is intended solely for the addressee. If you are not the intended recipient (or have received this e-mail in error) please notify the sender immediately and destroy this e-mail. Any unauthorized copying, disclosure or distribution of the material in this e-mail is strictly forbidden. This e-mail may not necessarily reflect the official viewpoint of the company.

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[Mnenja] This bank-engineered equity rally



Natolcevanja... ali banke državni denar mečejo v delnice in si s tem popravljajo bilance?

From: dare [mailto:darko.bodnaruk@gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, September 24, 2009 5:11 PM
To: Bodnaruk Darko
Subject: This bank-engineered equity rally

Sent to you by dare via Google Reader:


The creatively-named Moonraker Fund Management is, we think, one of the first firms to say the below relatively explicitly.

The boutique investment house is “concerned” that banks may have been using their bailout money — and no doubt some of their quantitative easing-gained liquidity — to buy equities, thereby fuelling the summer rally. The danger, they say, is that this is a relatively “thin” rally — and one which is vulnerable if banks suddenly decide to pull out and crystallise their gains.

Here’s the Moonraker press release:
September 24, 2009 - Moonraker Fund Management, the independent investment boutique, is concerned that banks may have been using their bailout money to buy equities, helping to fuel a rally that is vulnerable to a major correction if they consequently sell in thinly traded markets.

Instead of lending to businesses and homebuyers, banks may have been using some of their bailout money to buy stocks from an oversold base in March, Moonraker believes. The British Bankers’ Association’s own figures show that gross mortgage lending by the banks has fallen from a high of £21.5bn in June 2007 to £9.1bn in August 2009, while new term lending to small businesses was £796m in July, compared with around £900m last October.

Jeremy Charlesworth, Chief Investment Officer of Moonraker and manager of the Moonraker Commodities Fund and Global Opportunities Fund, commented: “Little of the bailout money given to banks seems to have been passed on to businesses or consumers. But it must have gone somewhere and it might have gone to the proprietary desks of the banks to punt the markets. Given all the calls for more transparency, it would be good if the banks could clarify this.

“The banks have every right to use the money they borrow in any way they choose. But it would be good to know how much of the bailout money has been used to buy equities. Clearly, someone has been buying, and given that it hasn’t been ordinary investors and the institutions that does just leave the banks.

“The banks’ balance sheets will certainly have benefited from their equity holdings. If they could sell these investments into a rising market then they would be in a better position to repay their debts. But there will be a problem if the public and institutions do not join the rally and the banks have to sell equities into a vacuum.”

As Moonraker notes at the start of the press release, there will also be a problem if small and/or institutional investors join the rally, only to find banks suddenly retreat from the stock market — a possibility which bank-slayer analyst Meredith Whitney warned of earlier this year.

We should also note that much of that bailout money has not necessarily been used to buy equities, but to boost banks’ capital — core Tier 1, for instance, is now at a five year high according to Barclays Capital.

Nevertheless, as Moonraker highlight, questions will remain about just who is buying this rally and by how much?

Related links:
Whitney: “I call this the great government momentum trade” - FT Alphaville
The (QE)uropean equity rally and yields - FT Alphaville
Allocating, multiplying QE - FT Alphaville

[Zanimivost] China cools on the commodity front



Kitajska res počasi umirja nakupe surovin...

Sent to you by dare via Google Reader:


You know how China has bolstered hopes for global growth, with its command-stimulus programme sucking in raw materials, supporting commodity prices and generally making the world feel better?

Well, it’s over.

At the very least, China appears to be coming off the boil as central government stockpiling and inventory-rebuilding eases. Consider this extract from a table distributed by Barclays Capital on Tuesday:

15936.jpg
Copper imports have come rattling back from the record levels seen earlier this year.  While these are extreme snapshots from a rather contradictory overall picture, the trend is also apparent in sugar, soybeans, and wheat for some reason:

15956.jpg
The BarCap commodities team, led by Kevin Norrish, are not quite sure what to make of this. Their latest Feeding the Dragon note dispatched to BarCap clients comments:

Trying to disentangle and quantify all of these different drivers of inventory accumulation is a complicated task, and it is difficult to generalize across different commodity sectors. However, what does appear to be the case is that widespread inventory accumulation that boosted domestic stocks of different commodities by varying degrees is now easing and a phase of slower import growth or even outright declines in some markets has commenced.

Of course, over the long haul Chinese imports of many commodities will continue to grow at a cracking pace, thanks to rapid local demand growth and a lack of domestic resources.  Right now though, the assumption that China can lift everyone out of the soup is looking a bit suspect.

Related links:
A bad week for China’s facts and figures - FT Alphaville
China’s growth figures fail to add up - FT

[Zanimivost] Najpomembnejši video za razumevanje financ EVER!

Žal na Youtube-u, tako da bodo uporabniki hendikepiranega NLB IT-ja žal morali pogledati doma...
ok, razumevanje je overstatement... recimo "razumevanje, zakaj ne moremo razumeti"

tri preprosta nihala, povezana med seboj:



lpd

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To elektronsko sporocilo in vse morebitne priloge so poslovna skrivnost in namenjene izkljucno naslovniku. Ce ste sporocilo prejeli pomotoma, Vas prosimo, da obvestite posiljatelja, sporocilo pa takoj unicite. Kakrsnokoli razkritje, distribucija ali kopiranje vsebine sporocila je izrecno prepovedano. Ni nujno, da to sporocilo odraza uradno stalisce druzbe.

Elektronsko sporocilo je pregledano z antivirusnim programom.

 

This e-mail and any attachments may contain confidential and/or privileged information and is intended solely for the addressee. If you are not the intended recipient (or have received this e-mail in error) please notify the sender immediately and destroy this e-mail. Any unauthorized copying, disclosure or distribution of the material in this e-mail is strictly forbidden. This e-mail may not necessarily reflect the official viewpoint of the company.

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[Zanimivost] Polar Opposites: Equities vs US Dollar


dolar je novi carry-trade funding currency

Sent to you by dare via Google Reader:

via Bespoke Inv - whole posts by Paul Hickey on 9/24/09

While the inverse relationship between the dollar and stocks is well documented, the recent intraday movements of the two assets takes it to another level.  The chart below shows the intraday chart of the S&P 500 over the last two days compared to the US Dollar Index on an inverse scale.  In other words, a rising red line indicates dollar weakness while a falling red line indicates dollar strength.  As shown in the chart, since the Fed's rate announcement yesterday, the dollar's strength has been in exact lockstep with the weakness in equities.  Over the last two trading days, the S&P 500's correlation to the US dollar index has been -0.97.  You can't get much more negatively correlated than that!

Dollar vs S&P 500