Archive for February, 2009
Friday, February 27th, 2009
We recently received a letter from a reader challenging something we had written regarding the performance of managed futures in 2008. The reader cited a study highlighted in a popular business magazine entitled, “Fooling Some of the People All of the Time: The inefficient Performance and Persistence of Commodity Trading Advisors.”
The timing seemed odd as the study, which was put out by the Yale International Center for Finance, came out in October in the midst of one of the best years for CTA performance in the last two decades.
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Wednesday, February 25th, 2009
An often repeated saying is that the definition of insanity is to continue to do the same things and to expect different results. I know we have made this point several times here, but it is worth pointing out until it sinks in everywhere: We have a problem caused by easy credit and the solution our leaders have offered is more easy credit; we have a problem of “too large to fail” institutions and our leaders have encouraged even greater consolidation as a solution.
Now the debate is over nationalization of banks. Paul Krugman put it well in a recent column when he compared the government making a decision to nationalize underperforming banks to the Claude Rains line in Casablanca, “I am shocked shocked at the miserable state of their balance sheets.”
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Tags: Fed, Friedman, Soft nationalization, TARP, Treasury
Posted in Regulatory/actions | No Comments »
Friday, February 20th, 2009
It’s interesting, and by that I mean terrifying, that gold would break the $1,000 per ounce barrier on the same day that there has been plain talk about nationalizing our banks.
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Thursday, February 19th, 2009
The Dow Jones Industrial Average suffered through another tough day on Thursday settling at 7,465.95, its lowest close since Oct. 9, 2002. That month the Dow made its low for the three-year bear market that began in 2000 and has now nearly retraced the entire upward move from Oct. 2002.
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Tags: 1974 low, Dow
Posted in Markets | No Comments »
Thursday, February 19th, 2009
The latest victims in the fraud world? Deaf people and professional golfers. This week, some interesting details about new fraud allegations surfaced. CNBC reported that the SEC stopped an alleged Ponzi scheme by Billions Coupons, a firm in Hawaii that raised more than $4.4 million from deaf investors. Billions Coupons reportedly raised the cash by holding investment seminars for investors who were deaf, and then the firm’s CEO pocketed the profits.
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Tags: CNBC, greed, Madoff, SEC
Posted in General | 1 Comment »
Thursday, February 19th, 2009
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, the following pictures forwarded to us by a friend (source unknown) are worth $700 billion and probably does a better job describing the recent bailout than we could with a thousand words.
Tags: TARP
Posted in General | No Comments »
Monday, February 16th, 2009
The Managed Funds Association (MFA) conference in Key Biscayne Fl. (held Feb. 8-10) was a tale of two asset classes. Much of the discussion surrounded the financial crisis, poor performance and expected additional regulation.
But the strategy/asset class best represented at the conference in terms of actual managers in attendance was managed futures, and commodity trading advisors (CTAs) had a great year in 2008. There was some confusion when a sponsor from a CTA introducing a panel, talked about how outstanding a year it was for the industry. There were some quizzical looks around the room from those who worked at or serviced the larger universe of equity based hedge funds. See it wasn’t so good of a year for them.
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Tags: CTAs, Managed Futures, MFA, regulation
Posted in Regulatory/actions, Trader/Managed Funds | No Comments »
Thursday, February 12th, 2009
Guess which country comes out of the financial crisis looking like the smartest place on earth? It’s Canada, eh! Newsweek‘s Fareed Zakaria wrote this insightful column on Canada’s savvy financial regulation vs. the not-so-savvy (to put it mildly) regulation coming out of the United States and Britain.
Zakaria points out that Canada is the only industrialized nation to not face a single bank failure, not to mention government intervention and bailouts, in the financial or mortgage sectors. Also, he mentions that the World Economic Forum ranked Canada’s banking system the healthiest in the world, miles ahead of the U.S. (40th) and Britain (44th). Canada’s common-sense approach to regulation has helped its banks grow instead of flounder in the midst of the financial crisis. (more…)
Tags: bailout, Canada, economy, regulation
Posted in Regulatory/actions, economy | No Comments »
Wednesday, February 11th, 2009
Apparently the House and Senate have come to an agreement on the stimulus package. I just received this alert but can’t get over seeing $789 billion and the words “scaled back” in the same sentence. While accurate it is still hard to fathom.
Richard Hoey, chief economist for the Bank of New York Mellon Corporation, speaking at the Managed Funds Association Network conference in Key Biscayne, Fl. earlier this week, gave his take on the current economic crisis and the stimulus package.
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Tags: Managed Funds Association, Stimulus package
Posted in economy | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, February 11th, 2009
The overall message from the Managed Funds Association (MFA) to its members at its recent Network 2009 Conference in Key Biscayne, Fl. was “Get over it, it’s coming.”
The “it” is regulation and MFA is positioning itself to have a seat at the table or at least have its voice heard when new regulations come.
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Tags: Managed Funds Association, regulation, SEC
Posted in Regulatory/actions, Trader/Managed Funds | No Comments »
