All posts by HeG

Citi’s European spot forex head trader Ramchandani out amid probe

Citigroup’s head of European spot foreign exchange trading, Rohan Ramchandani, has left the global bank, a spokesperson told Reuters on Friday.

“He is no longer with Citi,” bank spokeswoman Danielle Romero-Apsilos told Reuters.

Asked if Ramchandani, who has been based in London, had been fired amid a global investigation into possible manipulation of currency markets, Romero-Apsilos declined further comment.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/10/us-forex-citi-probe-idUSBREA0916I20140110

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    Deutsche Bank has fired a currency trader in Argentina amid investigations by global regulators into alleged manipulation of the foreign exchange market, according to a source familiar with the matter, bringing to four the number of traders the bank has dismissed. Ezequiel Starobinsky, a vice president, at Deutsche office in…
    Tags: bank, trader, longer, amid, global, currency, fired, probe, exchange, manipulation
  • 10000
    Benjamin Lawsky, New York's financial services superintendent, has opened an investigation into manipulation of the currency markets by large banks and is requesting documents from more than a dozen institutions, according to a source familiar with the matter. The source said Lawsky has asked for documents from Barclays BARCR.UL, Credit…
    Tags: currency, bank, reuters, trading, probe, investigation, manipulation, asked, markets
  • 77
    Russia invades Ukraine: beware of a risk off weekly opening
    Tags: trading, currency
  • 76
    Deutsche Bank has fired three currency traders in New York as regulators worldwide ramp up their investigations into potential manipulation of the $5-trillion-a-day foreign exchange market, according to a person briefed on the matter. The three employees include the head of Deutsche Bank’s emerging markets foreign exchange trading desk in…
    Tags: bank, exchange, foreign, currency, markets, trading, head, manipulation, fired
  • 73
    Currency traders are having their worst start to a year since 2010 as a dearth of trends in major foreign-exchange markets crushes their investment strategies. Deutsche Bank AG’s Currency Returns Index has dropped 0.3 percent since Dec. 31, dragged down by momentum trading, where investors looks for consistent moves in…
    Tags: currency, trading, based, markets, bank

Mobius Says Emerging Selloff to Deepen

“The negative sentiment is pretty much in place so you can expect a lot more selling,” Mobius, 77, who oversees more than $50 billion in developing nations as an executive chairman at Templeton, said in an interview from Rio de Janeiro today. “We are looking but actually not buying at this stage. Prices can come down or take time to stabilize.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-07/templeton-s-mark-mobius-says-emerging-markets-selloff-to-deepen.htmlMobius

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  • 10000
    The plunge in emerging markets is taking a bite out of the performance of funds managed by some of the biggest names on Wall Street, including BlackRock, Brevan Howard and T. Rowe Price. Some mutual funds are already down 10 percent so far this year, thanks to declining stocks and…
    Tags: emerging, selling, $, billion, selloff
  • 10000
    Emerging-market equities and exchange rates are again under severe downward pressure, but are the underlying economies really as fragile as global traders seem to fear? The short answer, for a few, is probably “yes,” but for most, “not just yet.” Read more at http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/kenneth-rogoff-looks-beneath-the-turmoil-roiling-emerging-economies--equity-and-currency-markets
    Tags: emerging
  • 35
    China’s benchmark money-market rate is set for the biggest weekly drop since December as demand for cash eased after banks met quarter-end capital requirements. The seven-day repurchase rate, a gauge of funding availability in the banking system, tumbled 124 basis points, or 1.24 percentage points, to 2.98 percent as of…
    Tags: today, emerging
  • 35
    One MINT country show us we need to follow them.   Nigeria has "rebased" its gross domestic product (GDP) data, which has pushed it above South Africa as the continent's biggest economy. Nigerian GDP now includes previously uncounted industries like telecoms, information technology, music, online sales, airlines, and film production.…
    Tags: $, emerging

Inside the Iron Closet: What It’s Like to Be Gay in Putin’s Russia #Longread

What the two men in this photograph are doing is now illegal in Russia. Amidst an alarming—and frequently violent— government crackdown, being out, or simply supporting gays and lesbians, can now get you thrown in jail, beaten up, or worse. On the eve of the Sochi Olympics, Jeff Sharlet embeds with the new enemies of the state and reports on life in the Russian underground

http://www.gq.com/news-politics/big-issues/201402/being-gay-in-russia

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  • 72
    Despite all the criticism, the games in Sochi will take place, and they will most likely be deemed a triumph, a validation of Putin’s leadership, unless of course disaster strikes in the form of terrorism or some other tragedy. http://www.nytimes.com
    Tags: gard, sochi, #longread
  • 54
    Ukraine's economy is in urgent need of assistance will Russia with Putin as leader help them out ? Vladimir Putin holds brief talks with Viktor Yanukovich at Sochi Games as Ukraine awaits Russian bailout amid uprising. Viktor Yanukovich, who has been battling anti-government protesters since he rejected a trade deal…
    Tags: russia, sochi, russian
  • 53
    Amid continued debate over whether or not Sochi is prepared to host the 2014 Olympics (here are 15 alarming signs that Russia might not be ready) reporters from around the world are starting to check into local hotels — to their apparent grief. Some journalists arriving in Sochi are describing appalling…
    Tags: sochi, olympics, russia
  • 50
    The history of statehood on the territory of Ukraine begins with two archetypically European encounters. Medieval statehood on the territory of today's Ukraine, like that of France and England, includes an encounter with Vikings. The men from the north sought to establish a trade route between the Baltic and Black…
    Tags: state, men, #longread, russia
  • 45
    It’s never a good day when almost 10% of the value of the world’s largest country - Russia - is wiped out. Do you remember UK in 1997 ?
    Tags: russia

Apple Repurchases $14 Billion of Own Shares in Two Weeks

Mr. Cook said Apple was “surprised” by the 8% decline in its shares on Jan. 28, the day after it reported lower iPhone sales than projected and warned that revenue in the current quarter might decline from the same period a year ago. Mr. Cook said he wanted to be “aggressive” and “opportunistic.”

With the latest purchases, Mr. Cook said Apple had bought back more than $40 billion of its shares over the past 12 months, which Mr. Cook said was a record for any company over a similar span.

Related Posts

  • 41
    Apple has removed the world’s most popular bitcoin wallet from its App Store. Late Wednesday, the tech giant yanked the Blockchain app from the popular mobile app marketplace and did not provide a specific reason, says Nicolas Cary, the CEO of Blockchain. The app is currently used by about 120,000…
    Tags: apple
  • 41
    Why is America’s largest cable TV company buying its biggest rival for $44 billion? Well, not to oversimplify things, but that’s easy to explain: http://qz.com/176837/one-sentence-and-six-charts-explain-why-comcast-is-buying-time-warner-cable/
    Tags: billion, $, company
  • 30
    This week, despite being shortened by the observance of Presidents Day with markets closed on Monday, promises a packed schedule of key events that could significantly impact financial markets: 1. Presidents Day, Markets Closed - Monday The week kicks off with a quiet start as U.S. financial markets take a…
    Tags: day, sales

A Bitcoin Mining Center for Sweden

While Sweden’s large mining-equipment companies are suffering from low demand, another type of mining there has struck gold.

Sweden’s KnC Miner—a company that makes powerful computers solely built to create bitcoins—Thursday said it is establishing a huge data center in Boden in the northernmost part of the Scandinavian nation to offer spare bitcoin-mining capacity.

WSJ.com

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  • 58
    Bitcoin prices are all out of whack. Mtgox cratering. pic.twitter.com/exe8Bwl6cG
    Tags: bitcoin
  • 57
    With the price of bitcoin seemingly on the up and up, there’s no shortage of conversation on the topic of where the price goes from here. There’s seemingly no shortage of optimism, either, with the value of bitcoin up a whopping 18 percent in the past week. Hedge fund Laureate BVI is…
    Tags: bitcoin
  • 57
    One of the basic ideas behind Bitcoin is that it exists outside the control of any centralized power. That no longer seems necessarily true. GHash.IO, a particularly powerful organization of Bitcoin miners, turns out to have at times controlled more than half of all Bitcoin mining activity—a development that some think poses…
    Tags: bitcoin, mining
  • 57
    Government regulators around the world have spent the last year scrambling to prevent bitcoin from becoming the currency of choice for money launderers and black marketeers. Now their worst fears may be about to materialize in a single piece of software. On Thursday, a collective of politically radical coders that…
    Tags: bitcoin
  • 56
    Who cares about Satoshi Nakamoto? Someone else has made Bitcoin what it is and has the most power over its destiny. In March, a bewildered retired man faced journalists yelling questions about virtual currency outside his suburban home in Temple City, California. Dorian Nakamoto, 64, had been identified by Newsweek as the…
    Tags: bitcoin

Fed’s monetary stimulus turned to high ?

Prior to the Fed’s monetary stimulus at the start of financial crisis in 2008, the Fed held around $900 billion assets. Today the Fed’s assets are $4.1 trillion and rising, but at a tapering pace.

Fed monetary stimulus

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  • 77
    This past week marked the annual gathering of bankers, financial officials, and other economic experts hosted by the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. On Friday, Fed Chair Janet Yellen and European Central Bank head Mario Draghi both spoke; in a slow week for the markets, these…
    Tags: fed, financial
  • 76
    Here’s what to look for when Janet Yellen testifies before the House Financial Services Committee today in her first public remarks since becoming Federal Reserve chairman on Feb. 3. Yellen’s prepared remarks will be released at 8:30 a.m., and the hearing will begin at 10 a.m. Yellen plans to speak…
    Tags: today, financial, fed
  • 75
    U.S. Treasury yields and other interest rates increased in the months leading up to the Federal Reserve’s December 2013 decision to cut back its large-scale bond purchases. This increase in rates probably at least partly reflected changes in what bond investors expected regarding future monetary policy. Recent research on this…
    Tags: fed, monetary
  • 65
    Fed Chair Janet Yellen's first testimony before Congress is the big event for markets in the week ahead, as traders sift through economic data to see if the softness that showed up in January's jobs is more about bad weather, or something more worrisome. Yellen, who took the helm at…
    Tags: fed, tapering, fed's, $, billion
  • 56
    The Feds revised their interest rate forecasts late last month hoping to normalize them faster than many market watchers would have anticipated. The new forecasts are higher, the projections having being raised for 2015-2016. This is a good move for extremely low rates can negatively affect the job hunt and…
    Tags: today, monetary, fed

January 2014 employment report alias NFP

Tomorrow brings the January 2014 employment report – NFP – .  The usual caveats apply:

  • The monthly change in payrolls is a net number and represents only a fraction of the churn in the labor market.
  • The employment data is heavily revised.  The preliminary number can greatly understate or overstate actual labor market behavior.
  • Nasty weather might also have impacted the numbers.  Robin Harding at the Financial Times identifies other factors – expiration of unemployment benefits and annual revisions – that can also scramble the final numbers in the report.
  • Forecasting the change in payrolls is thus something of a fool’s game.  A game we all play nonetheless.

US NFP Employment measures is the change in number of employed people during the previous month, excluding the farming industry.

A rising trend has a positive effect on the nation´s currency.

Job creation is an important indicator of economic health because consumer spending, which is highly correlated with labor conditions, makes up a large portion of GDP. This report is the first of the month that relates to labor conditions, making it susceptible to big surprises.

Related Posts

  • 64
    Payrolls in the U.S. rose less than projected in January as retailers cut back after the holidays and government hiring fell. The unemployment rate unexpectedly declined to 6.6 percent. The 113,000 gain in employment,  NFP followed a 75,000 increase the prior month, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. The…
    Tags: unemployment, labor, nfp, payrolls, january, employment, month
  • 56
      The following are the expectations for today's US December jobs reports as provided by the economists at 15 major banks. Goldman: Change in Nonfarm Payrolls (Dec): 230k Unemployment Rate (Dec): 5.7%. Deutsche: Change in Nonfarm Payrolls (Dec): 200k Unemployment Rate (Dec): 5.7%. Morgan Stanley: Change in Nonfarm Payrolls (Dec): 240k Unemployment…
    Tags: unemployment, payrolls, employment, nfp, data, change, market
  • 50
    Perhaps the most notable development in the run-up to Friday's jobs report is just how low the bar has been set. The fact that the survey period over which the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics collected data for the report (the week that included the 12th of February) coincided with…
    Tags: report, data, economic, month, market, payrolls, employment, monthly, labor, nasty
  • 49
    Employers in the U.S. boosted payrolls and the unemployment rate held at 6.7 percent even as more Americans entered the labor force, showing steady progress that will prompt Federal Reserve policy makers to continue reducing stimulus while keeping interest rates low. Payrolls rose 192,000 last month after a 197,000 gain…
    Tags: payrolls, labor, employment, unemployment, january, revised, market, weather, month, nfp
  • 40
    Australia’s unemployment rate climbed to the highest level in more than 10 years in January, spurring traders to pare bets on an interest-rate increase and sending the Aussie to its biggest drop in almost three weeks. The jobless rate rose to 6 percent from 5.8 percent, the statistics bureau said…
    Tags: unemployment, employed, people, number, january, employment

How Fragile are Emerging Markets?

Emerging-market equities and exchange rates are again under severe downward pressure, but are the underlying economies really as fragile as global traders seem to fear? The short answer, for a few, is probably “yes,” but for most, “not just yet.”

Read more at http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/kenneth-rogoff-looks-beneath-the-turmoil-roiling-emerging-economies–equity-and-currency-markets

Related Posts

  • 10000
    The plunge in emerging markets is taking a bite out of the performance of funds managed by some of the biggest names on Wall Street, including BlackRock, Brevan Howard and T. Rowe Price. Some mutual funds are already down 10 percent so far this year, thanks to declining stocks and…
    Tags: markets, emerging, pressure
  • 10000
    One reason for global market weakness is investors’ fears that emerging market economies may be heading for a broad crisis, sparked by higher U.S. interest rates and slowing growth in China. Much of the analysis in the last few days has focused on why these nations are less exposed to…
    Tags: emerging, rates, economies, global, markets
  • 67
    “The negative sentiment is pretty much in place so you can expect a lot more selling,” Mobius, 77, who oversees more than $50 billion in developing nations as an executive chairman at Templeton, said in an interview from Rio de Janeiro today. “We are looking but actually not buying at…
    Tags: emerging
  • 53
    China’s benchmark money-market rate is set for the biggest weekly drop since December as demand for cash eased after banks met quarter-end capital requirements. The seven-day repurchase rate, a gauge of funding availability in the banking system, tumbled 124 basis points, or 1.24 percentage points, to 2.98 percent as of…
    Tags: emerging
  • 52
    One MINT country show us we need to follow them.   Nigeria has "rebased" its gross domestic product (GDP) data, which has pushed it above South Africa as the continent's biggest economy. Nigerian GDP now includes previously uncounted industries like telecoms, information technology, music, online sales, airlines, and film production.…
    Tags: emerging

WHO Warns of ‘Tidal Wave’ of Cancer

WHO Warns of ‘Tidal Wave’ of Cancer

The globe is facing a “tidal wave” of cancer, and restrictions on alcohol and sugar need to be considered, say World Health Organization scientists.

It predicts the number of cancer cases will reach 24 million a year by 2035, but half could be prevented.

WSJ.com

David Agus helped Steve Jobs live longer. Now he want to help us all.

End of Illness by David Agus – Book –

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    Mushrooms have been valued for thousands of years for their healing properties. They’re packed with nutrients and many varieties are thought to help macrophages more effectively target bacteria, viruses and cancer cells. Shiitake mushrooms, in particular, have well-documented anti-cancer qualities. In addition to helping the immune system function more effectively,…
    Tags: cancer
  • 77
    Why We're Losing The War On Cancer [And How To Win It] [Avastin, Erbitux, Gleevec ... The new wonder drugs might make you think we're finally beating this dreaded scourge. We're not. Here's how to turn the fight around.] Read this story in CNN/Fortune from 2004
    Tags: cancer
  • 76
    This is simply one of my most favorite cancer fighting super-foods. Turmeric is popular spice that is found in curries, etc. It contains enormous anti-inflammatory properties that can act as a natural 'fire extinguisher' to quench inflammation. Inflammation provides cancer cells an advantage to grow, thus anything we can do…
    Tags: cancer
  • 76
    Oats contain a type of soluble fiber called beta glucan, which has numerous documented health benefits. It helps lower cholesterol levels and improves cardiovascular health. It also has been shown to help the immune system respond to bacterial infections, and may lower the risk of Type 2 diabetes and breast…
    Tags: health, cancer, help
  • 76
    Carrots come in a wide variety of colors in addition to the typical orange, and each type has a different balance of antioxidants. The blend of nutrients in carrots can help improve cardiovascular health, and a limited body of research suggests that, yes, carrots may be good for your ocular…
    Tags: cancer, health, help

ECB Webcast of the press conference 6 February 2014

Press conference following the meeting of the Governing Council of the European Central Bank on 6 February 2014 at its premises in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, starting at 2:30 p.m. CET:

  • Introductory statement by Mario Draghi, President of the ECB.
  • Question and answer session. Registered journalists pose questions to Mario Draghi, President of the ECB, and to Vítor Constâncio, Vice-President of the ECB.

 

Watch it here :: ECB Webcast of the press conference 6 February 2014

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    Mario Draghi’s habit of springing surprises means that few can say what he’ll do when European Central Bank officials decide on monetary policy today. Inflation at a four-year low and volatile market rates speak for further action by the Governing Council, even after it cut official rates to record lows in November.…
    Tags: draghi, bank, central, ecb, president, council, european, mario, governing
  • 10000
    . ECB and BOE interest rates remain on hold. ECB keep at 0.25 % UK keep at 0.5% The press conference  with ECB President - Mario Draghi - and Vice President -Vito Constâncio - will tells us more
    Tags: ecb, president, constâncio, conference, press, mario, draghi
  • 10000
    None of my tickers are showing much action today. Yen crosses are down modestly but nothing compared to the volatility we’ve seen over the past few days. The euro tried the upside a few times today and will close out the day with some small gains but tomorrow the ECB…
    Tags: ecb, main, draghi
  • 99
    Press conference following the meeting of the Governing Council of the European Central Bank on 4 September 2014 at its premises in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, starting at 2:30 p.m. CET: Introductory statement by Mario Draghi, President of the ECB. Question and answer session. Registered journalists pose questions to Mario Draghi, President…
    Tags: ecb, mario, draghi, president, conference, press, session, question, registered, answer
  • 98
    Press conference following the meeting of the Governing Council of the European Central Bank on 6 March 2014 at its premises in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, starting at 2:30 p.m. CET: Introductory statement by Mario Draghi, President of the ECB. Question and answer session. Registered journalists pose questions to Mario…
    Tags: ecb, president, mario, draghi, press, conference, session, registered, answer, question