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Category Archives: Trading

CDS ABC’s

Over-the-counter, over the top from Marketplace on Vimeo.
Marketplace Senior Editor Paddy Hirsch gives a good introductory explanation of how CDS and exchange and OTC markets work in this video… (running time 6:45)

reflate, reflate, reflate

Steven Major of HSBC talks about index linked securities, says the central banks are trying to reflate, reflate, reflate… cenbanks are undertaking a deflationary strategy …he is concerned about gross government bond issuance… Steven is known for making strong directional calls… I worked with him at ING Barings… (running time ~ 6 min)

Leveraged fixed income arbitrage 1999

~~~~ ” Leveraged fixed-income arbitrage trading strategies have not been a popular topic in the past several months. However, following the dislocations that occurred to world financial markets in the second half of 1998, many good opportunities for fixed-income arbitrage trading continue to exist for those firms that survived the peril of the previous year.
Indeed, [...]

make believe world of interdealer CDS

 ~~~~ ” …What Geithner and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke failed to tell the Congress, President-elect Barack Obama and the American people is that CDS dealers don’t post any effective collateral at all with other dealers. So much for the legal requirements for safety and soundness in 12 CFR. If Barack Obama and the Congress ever [...]

Hormones and money markets

An academic (past trader) suggests how markets got high from elevated levels of testerone generated from succesful trading … as an asset class moves up the traders would collectively feel the rush of risk and return and want more… mania forming… markets full of mania … fueled by monetary excesses…
From the naked scientists  ….  John Coates, [...]

Attack your prime broker

The WSJ.com reports ~~~~ ” Amid the uncertainty that Sept. 16, Millennium Partners LP, a hedge fund with $13.5 billion in assets, asked to pull out $800 million of the more than $1 billion of assets it kept at Morgan Stanley, according to people familiar with the withdrawals. Separately, Millennium had also shorted Morgan Stanley’s [...]

Technical Director

FIX Protocol Ltd. (FPL) is announcing the appointment of Mr. Ryan Pierce as FPL’s Technical Director.  After conducting a public search, the FPL selection committee, comprised of leaders from the Global Steering Committee (GSC) and the Global Technical Committee (GTC), felt that Mr. Pierce not only possessed a high level of competence and experience in financial [...]

Trading every which way…

Bloomberg is reporting today that several institutional investors have accused Goldman Sachs of naked short selling high yield loans… which generally hadn’t happened in that market as loans were trading at par until recently… uh oh… 
In the Bloomberg article there is also the suggestion that GS has been intentionally delaying settlement of trades which [...]

Closed loop system…

I’m reading a whitepaper on OTC markets from the interdealer broker ICAP… lots to comment upon…
ICAP is the world’s largest and most powerful broker’s broker… headquartered in London they deal in FX, fixed income, derivative, commodity, and money markets. Their operations span all currencies and timezones.
ICAP serves as the central hub for massive global flows [...]

Interdealerish

From WSJ.com ~~~ “…. Officials are looking for market players who, during August and September, may have spread false information to manipulate CDS prices, say the people familiar with the investigation. CDS prices have recently had strong influence over stock and bond prices of financial firms such as Morgan Stanley and American International Group Inc. The regulators [...]