Cardiff writes mostly about US macroeconomic issues, with daily excursions into other topics about which he claim no expertise. Before Alphaville, Cardiff spent a little more than two years as a reporter at Dow Jones Financial News covering investment banking, asset management, and private equity. Along the way he has written freelance pieces on a variety of other topics from behavioural psychology to Muay Thai, the latter also being a personal interest that involves frequently getting kicked in the shins (and torso, and head).
Tuesday’s markets round-up from the FT: “Stocks rose and the euro rebounded against the dollar as optimism brewed that the eurozone’s war chest will be deployed to help troubled members address sharply elevated bond yields. Traders liked the idea that Germany may allow the European Financial Stability Facility to lend directly to troubled eurozone countries. This is seen helping lower bond yields, which have moved sharply higher recently for troubled borrowers such as Spain.” On the other hand, Spanish 12-month paper auctioned off at an expensive 5.07 per cent. (Financial Times) Read more
Cardiff writes mostly about US macroeconomic issues, with daily excursions into other topics about which he claim no expertise. Before Alphaville, Cardiff spent a little more than two years as a reporter at Dow Jones Financial News covering investment banking, asset management, and private equity. Along the way he has written freelance pieces on a variety of other topics from behavioural psychology to Muay Thai, the latter also being a personal interest that involves frequently getting kicked in the shins (and torso, and head).
Joseph joined FT Alphaville way back in March 2010. He likes all the politically and legally fiddly bits of finance. He also likes credit, rates, global macro, tail risk, and all that stuff. (You should email him story ideas. He’ll take anything.)
OK. Before reading on… a reminder of how the sausage gets made in EU legislation. Something voted on by Members of European Parliament, or MEPs, still must go to the Council for approval and, quite often, amendment.
With that caveat, some sausage on sovereign credit rating regulation: Read more
Joseph joined FT Alphaville way back in March 2010. He likes all the politically and legally fiddly bits of finance. He also likes credit, rates, global macro, tail risk, and all that stuff. (You should email him story ideas. He’ll take anything.)
Lisa joined FT Alphaville in September 2011 after a tour of duty through the guts of the financial industry, having worked as an analyst at a bank and for a financial data company.
Isn’t it a problem if bank regulators depend, seemingly exclusively, on the banks themselves for information? Weren’t trade information warehouses, such as DTCC’s for credit derivatives, built in part to give regulators a bird’s eye view of markets? If so, why the hell does it sound like they aren’t being used?
JPMorgan management have put their hands up since the announcement of $2bn of losses, effectively saying, ‘yeah, whoops, we totally messed that one up. Buck stops here. We’re looking into preventing that from ever happening again. We’ve learned that no matter how good a division’s past performance, one simply cannot ever be complacent.’ They are taking their (very, very sizable) share of the blame. Read more
David joined the FT in 2011 as a Marjorie Deane fellow. He covered emerging markets, equities and currencies before making the jump over to FT Alphaville in May 2012.
Russia is setting aside up to $40bn for this year and next to shore up the economy in case the crisis in the eurozone escalates and spreads, and is dusting off a plan that would allow the government to recapitalise the country’s banking system.Read more
Izabella Kaminska joined FT Alphaville in October 2008. Before that she worked as a producer at CNBC, a natural gas reporter at Platts and an associate editor of BP's internal magazine.
A warning to Great Britain from UK-based investment fund Hinde Capital (a hedge fund that specializes in precious metals):
We wish to outline the gravity of the situation in which the UK finds itself, and by assessing how we got here we can begin to offer our solutions both for monetary and political reforms. Unfortunately we are deeply concerned that far from being cynics or purveyors of doom, the very harsh reality is that the UK is caught in an intractable spiral of negative outcomes.Read more
Joseph joined FT Alphaville way back in March 2010. He likes all the politically and legally fiddly bits of finance. He also likes credit, rates, global macro, tail risk, and all that stuff. (You should email him story ideas. He’ll take anything.)
Why is CreditSights highlighting JPMorgan’s late-2008 shift from a 99 per cent to 95 per cent confidence interval* in its Value-at-Risk measurement, here?
Masa joined the FT in 2009 and has worked on a number of desks across the paper, including Companies, Markets and Comment. She spent much of 2010 in New York covering the US equity markets. But earlier this year she finally saw the light and moved to Alphaville.
She started her career in the investment banking division at Lehman Brothers in the summer of 2007, timing it perfectly with the beginning of the credit crunch.
She studied philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford University.
In my remarks today, I would like to share with you some concerns about the present state of the euro area money markets, which are characterised by segmentation between cash-rich and cash-poor banks and a fragmentation along national lines. I would also like to offer some thoughts on how proper money market functioning can be restored.
So starts a recent speech by Benoît Cœuré, member of the Executive Board of the ECB, which should be required reading for everyone interested in the fragmentation of the European money markets. Read more
Lisa joined FT Alphaville in September 2011 after a tour of duty through the guts of the financial industry, having worked as an analyst at a bank and for a financial data company.
Truly talented investors do not whinge during a ‘risk off’ environment like now. Instead, they find a place where the risk vs. reward pay-off is slanted in their favour. Read more
David joined the FT in 2011 as a Marjorie Deane fellow. He covered emerging markets, equities and currencies before making the jump over to FT Alphaville in May 2012.
Germany’s Zew index has suffered its worst decline in 13 years and while it has never been a perfect indicator this level of decline doesn’t bode well for Germany’s future prospects. This is from the Zew Center for Economic Research (with our emphasis):
The ZEW Indicator of Economic Sentiment for Germany has decreased by 27.7 points to a level of minus 16.9 points in June 2012. This is the indicator’s strongest decline since October 1998. The worsening of the situation in the Spanish banking sector and the insecurity about the outcome of the Greek general election, which had been lasting for most of the survey period, are likely to have contributed to the sharp decline of the indicator. Read more
Izabella Kaminska joined FT Alphaville in October 2008. Before that she worked as a producer at CNBC, a natural gas reporter at Platts and an associate editor of BP's internal magazine.
The market continues to chew over last week’s surprise announcement by the Bank of England and the Treasury about a collaborative funding initiative for UK banks under their joint auspices.
Under the initiative the Treasury will back a “funding for lending” programme, which is intended to reduce borrowing costs to those banks that engage in lending, while the Bank of England breathes life into a previously announced Extended Collateral Term Repo (ECTR), a cross between a UK LTRO equivalent and a credit easing programme. Read more
Lisa joined FT Alphaville in September 2011 after a tour of duty through the guts of the financial industry, having worked as an analyst at a bank and for a financial data company.
David joined the FT in 2011 as a Marjorie Deane fellow. He covered emerging markets, equities and currencies before making the jump over to FT Alphaville in May 2012.
Cardiff writes mostly about US macroeconomic issues, with daily excursions into other topics about which he claim no expertise. Before Alphaville, Cardiff spent a little more than two years as a reporter at Dow Jones Financial News covering investment banking, asset management, and private equity. Along the way he has written freelance pieces on a variety of other topics from behavioural psychology to Muay Thai, the latter also being a personal interest that involves frequently getting kicked in the shins (and torso, and head).
Asian shares were headed lower on Tuesday, reports Reuters. This follows a weak trading session for equities in Europe on Monday, when yields on Spanish and Italian debt also climbed. Earlier Monday, data from the Bank of Spain revealed that the non-performing loan ratio of Spanish banks had reached its highest point in nearly two decades, according to the FT.
Greece’s New Democracy party leader Antonis Samaras is trying to get a coalition agreement in principal by Tuesday with the PanHellenic Socialist Movement (Pasok) party and the moderate Democratic Left. The FT cited a conservative advisor saying that Pasok leader Evangelos Venizelos had backed Samaras for prime minister. Read more
1Man walks into a gold bar. Au!
2The end of QE?
3The persistent supply-side constraints in US housing
4Bird, plane, Abe
5Bove vs Bloomberg, redux
Show more6A glorious episode in the history of the Revenue
7Stress you next year
8An unusual bear market
9The short arm of the SEC
10Breaking up is hard to do - Rio Tinto edition
Show fewer