It is with sadness I read that one more J.P. Morgan banker died.
One thing is that Ryan was the head at the program trading desk. Meaning he over saw all of the trades and was familiar with all of the software (trade platforms) that these trades were done in. This job works closely with guess what? That’s right the London desk and who died last week in London? The one who jumped off the 33rd floor. What was his post? Head of IT and trade platforms meaning he had access to info that Ryan would have.
They knew each other and uncovered something they were about the same age and these hits happen when two big announcements by JPM. One they are out of commodities and two the wholesale selling of their HQ downtown.
Europe’s largest banks are finally putting hundreds of billions of dollars of unwanted assets up for sale amid mounting competition among buyers and regulatory pressure. A wave of deals could be a boon to the region’s economy if the banks free up capital to increase lending. Banks led by London-based Barclays…
George Soros is 84 today. His career is remarkable both for its longevity and its returns – his Quantum fund has generated $39.6 billion in profits over the last four decades, making Soros the most successful hedge fund manager in history. How has Soros managed to stay at the top for so long?…
Imagine Fed Governor Rip van Winkle started his nap at the beginning of 2007 and just woke up to find that inflation is close to the Fed’s objective and the unemployment rate is at its 30-year average. You could forgive him for expecting the federal funds rate to be close…
The dollar is stronger today following the slightly hawkish stance of the FOMC Minutes, which hinted at the potential for an earlier-than-expected hike in interest rates. Nothing is likely to happen any time soon though, and equities liked that idea in continuing their positive trend, with the S+P regaining its…
Janet Yellen made her first public comments as Federal Reserve Chair in a grueling, nearly day-long, testimony to the House Financial Services Committee. Her testimony made clear that we should expect a high degree of policy continuity. Indeed, she said so explicitly. The taper is still on, but so too is the expectation of near-zero interest rates into 2015. Data will need to get a lot more interesting in one direction or the other for the Fed to alter from its current path.
Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen on Wednesday said interest-rate increases could begin in the first half of 2015, around six months after it winds down its bond-buying program. The Fed, in its policy statement, said the benchmark federal-funds rate will remain near zero for a "considerable time" after its signature…
Janet Yellen led her first monetary policy meeting as chair last week. But with Yellen’s emphasis so far on consensus and continuity, the key news from the Fed last week wasn’t anything Janet Yellen said, but what Federal Reserve Board Governor Jeremy Stein said at the International Research Forum on…
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…
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, chair, financial, yellen, reserve, federal
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: policy, fed, interest, rates, federal, reserve, will
The singling out of three debt types most at risk by the People’s Bank of China has prompted Nomura Holdings Inc. to warn that rising borrowing costs will make it even harder to avoid a default by these issuers.
The PBOC will enhance monitoring of local government financing vehicles, industries with overcapacity and property developers to prevent default risks from spreading, according to its fourth-quarter policy report issued on Feb. 8. Jinzhou Economic Technology Zone Development Group Co., an LGFV in Liaoning province, sold new seven-year bonds at 9.1 percent in January, while Guangxi Nonferrous Metal Group Co. issued nine-month bills at 8.5 percent. That’s almost twice as high as the yield on 2021 government debt.
China's banks disbursed the most loans in any month in four years in January, a surge that suggests the world's second-biggest economy may not be cooling as much as some fear. Chinese banks lent 1.32 trillion yuan ($217.6 billion) worth of new yuan loans in January, beating a 1.1 trillion…
The People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) economy has shown signs of overheating despite a sharp slowdown in economic growth, suggesting that, constrained by the supply of labor, its potential growth rate might have fallen significantly from its past level. With the priorities of the PRC’s authorities shifting from raising economic growth…
The yuan has recently been something of a safe haven among emerging-market currencies, yet market participants have learned from a bloody lesson over the past week that it is no longer an easy, one-way bet. A sharp fall of both the onshore and offshore yuan against the greenback made the…
Shanghai's over-the-counter equity market was almost deserted on a weekday morning last week. Two cleaning ladies swept the floor of a trading hall devoid of brokers or computers, while a woman at an information desk ate breakfast and talked on her mobile phone. During four visits this year to the…
The global financial crisis did not start in 2008 but in 2007 when BNP Paribas and UBS AG suspended withdrawals from some of their funds. If the world is once again buffeted by a similar crisis thanks to the enormous splurge in Chinese lending and fears about the quality of…
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on Wednesday it was up to the central bank to decide on specific monetary policy means to ensure its 2 percent inflation target will be achieved.
“The Bank of Japan has said it will take necessary adjustments taking into account upside and downside risks to the economy and prices. I expect the central bank to take appropriate action,” Abe told parliament.
So, the governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, is filling his fountain pen, and looking for a stamp. Now that inflation has fallen to 0.5% on the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) measure, he's got to write a letter to the chancellor, explaining why inflation has missed the Bank's…
(Source http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/comment/david-blanchflower/david-blanchflower-we-should-fear-deflation--not-welcome-it-9986726.html ) The UK isn’t in deflation yet. While central bankers know what to do about stopping inflation, they don’t know what to do about halting deflation. The Swiss National Bank last week abandoned its attempt to defend a currency floor, which caused a sharp appreciation in its currency, which…
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…
The Swiss National Bank's foreign exchange reserves inched higher in August, data showed on Friday. The SNB held 453.799 billion Swiss francs in foreign currency at the end of August, compared with 453.353 in July, revised from an originally reported 453.391 billion, preliminary data calculated according to the standards of…
George Soros’ Quantum Endowment fund has been named the world’s most successful hedge fund, after it gained $5.5 billion in 2013, bringing the total gains since inception to $39.6 billion.
Quantum overtook Ray Dalio of Bridgewater Pure Alpha in a study by LCH Investments which ranked the top 20 hedge fund managers by net gains in 2013.
Last week, Forbes released its annual score card of top-earning hedge fund managers. The usual gang was there: Soros, Tepper, Cohen, Paulson, Icahn, Simons, Dalio, Griffin, et. al. That clickbait scorecard -- it worked on me -- and led to a strident column from Gawker, bizarrely titled "Fund Managers Are…
Tags: managers, fund, soros, top, billion, $, hedge, dalio, george
I try to learn from the best. Ray Dalio is one of them. He founded Bridgewater Associates, one of the biggest hedge funds in the world. Many retail investors have not heard of him, probably because his funds are open only to big institutions. It's a terrible mistake to limit…
Take a look at "How The Economic Machine Works," an introduction to the economic system by Ray Dalio, founder of the world's largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates. In the video, the Bridgewater Associates founder stresses three rules of thumb he'd like you to remember: 1) Don't have debt rise faster…
In 1992, George Soros brought the Bank of England to its knees. In the process, he pocketed over a billion dollars. Making a billion dollars is by all accounts pretty cool. But demolishing the monetary system of Great Britain in a single day with an elegantly constructed bet against its currency?…
This morning, the Wall Street Journal reported on funds that choose to tie their fates to the performance of companies led by women. Barclays’ Women in Leadership Total Return Index, which consists of American companies with a female CEO or whose proportion of female board members is at least 25 percent, is one…
Paul Oyer, an economist at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, is the author of “Everything I Ever Needed to Know About Economics I Learned From Online Dating,” published last month by Harvard Business Review Press. Through his own experience, Mr. Oyer became intrigued by the economics at work in the online dating marketplace. His book explores how knowledge of economic concepts can help narrow Cupid’s aim. Mr. Oyer’s personal strategy turned out to be a winning one: he met his current partner online.
Greek debt tracker As the government in Athens haggles with its lenders over economic reforms,Greece is running out of money. Here is what it owes in the upcoming months. http://www.ft.com/ig/sites/2015/greek-debt-monitor/
Commerce knits the modern world together in a way that nothing else quite does. Almost anything you own these days is the result of a complicated web of global interactions. And there's no better way to depict those interactions and the social and political circumstances that give rise to them…
Group of 20 finance ministers need to find ways to boost productivity growth or risk seeing the world economy to slip into an extended period of low growth, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said. The widespread drop in productivity may “presage the beginning of a new low-growth era,”…
Chinese economic growth slowed to the lowest level since 1999 last year, expanding 7.7%. Policymakers have recognized the need to rebalance economic growth and are now slowly transitioning away from a credit and export driven economy to one driven by consumer growth. Some argue that the recent crackdown on shadow banking and the money market rate spikes are…
THE founders of the internet were academics who took users’ identities on trust. When only research co-operation was at stake, this was reasonable. But the lack of secure identification is now hampering the development of e-commerce and the provision of public services online. In day-to-day life, from banking to dating,…
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 to the Senate Banking Committee on Feb. 13 in a second day of semi-annual testimony.
Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen on Wednesday said interest-rate increases could begin in the first half of 2015, around six months after it winds down its bond-buying program. The Fed, in its policy statement, said the benchmark federal-funds rate will remain near zero for a "considerable time" after its signature…
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.
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…
Janet Yellen led her first monetary policy meeting as chair last week. But with Yellen’s emphasis so far on consensus and continuity, the key news from the Fed last week wasn’t anything Janet Yellen said, but what Federal Reserve Board Governor Jeremy Stein said at the International Research Forum on…
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…
In the era of the Kindle, a book costs the same price as a sandwich. Dennis Johnson, an independent publisher, says that “Amazon has successfully fostered the idea that a book is a thing of minimal value—it’s a widget.” Construction by Ian Wright.
In Mike McQueary, some see a hero who brought down a monster. Others see a liar who railroaded a legend. At the upcoming trial that will close the book on the Jerry Sandusky scandal, Joe Paterno's former protégé will have the final word. http://espn.go.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/10542793/the-whistleblower-last-stand
Hayes has devoted the past fifteen years to studying atrazine, a widely used herbicide made by Syngenta. The company’s notes reveal that it struggled to make sense of him, and plotted ways to discredit him. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/02/10/140210fa_fact_aviv
A few weeks ago David Carr profiled Kevin Kelly on page 1 of the New York Times Business section. He wrote that Kelly's pronouncements were "often both grandiose and correct." That’s a pretty good summary of Kevin Kelly's style and his prescience. http://www.edge.org/conversation/the-technium
Nate Weiner is neither a journalist nor a publisher. He’s a developer bent on changing publishing, and he’s built the platform to do it. With 10 million users, Pocket is the largest save-for-later service on the market. But more than market share, what sets Pocket apart is its ability to…
Meetings are such a fixture in our work lives that we constantly hear the same advice: have an agenda, keep it short, don’t invite too many people. However, despite the commonality of this well-meaning advice, research from Harvard suggests that half of all meetings are unproductive. http://99u.com/
The House could vote as early as Wednesday on legislation to raise the country’s borrowing limit, after Republicans met on Monday night in their latest effort to find elusive consensus on one of the final must-pass objectives before Washington goes into election mode.
Picking the best debt-ceiling explainer is a very subjective task. Do you like charts? Then you'll probably like to have the debt ceiling explained in one chart. Do you like movies? This one will explain the debt ceiling in 90 seconds. Do you like cheese from Denmark? Then you will probably like…
U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew urged Congress Friday to increase the debt ceiling, saying he is not confident extraordinary measures will last beyond Feb. 27. In a letter addressed to House Speaker John Boehner, Lew highlighted that the Treasury must start implementing "extraordinary measures" to continue to pay the nation's…
Tags: congress, limit, borrowing, debt, ceiling, house
Not long after Alan Greenspan stepped down as Federal Reserve chairman in 2006, global financial markets began to unravel. The collapse of a few financial institutions, the near-collapse of many others, a massive bailout by multiple governments, and the worst economic downturn in three-quarters of a century ensued. Lots of…
October 22, 2014 Santiago, Chile The US government’s debt is getting close to reaching another round number—$18 trillion. It currently stands at more than $17.9 trillion. But what does that really mean? It’s such an abstract number that it’s hard to imagine it. Can you genuinely understand it beyond just…
There is no reason to further extend a European Union deadline for France to cut its budget deficit, the EU's top economic official said on Saturday, adding policy-makers should have learnt the lessons of the debt crisis and stuck to agreed rules. In June last year Paris got two more…
Some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley have been buzzing on Twitter over the last 24 hours about reinventing retail banking with better software.
“I am dying to fund a disruptive bank,” venture capitalist Marc Andreessen tweeted yesterday. Other Valley heavyweights chimed in, including Chris Dixon (a colleague at Andreessen Horowitz), Keith Rabois (Khosla Ventures), and Mo Kofyman (Spark Capital).
Greek debt tracker As the government in Athens haggles with its lenders over economic reforms,Greece is running out of money. Here is what it owes in the upcoming months. http://www.ft.com/ig/sites/2015/greek-debt-monitor/
This is a story about ARM Holdings (ARMH), the mobile technology company. But before it gets going, here are a few things you need to know: 1. ARM is a company made up mostly of chip engineers. They design parts of chips—such as graphics and communication bits—and they design entire…
Publicis CEO Maurice Levy's last-ditch offer to let Omnicom chief John Wren be CEO couldn't save the $35 billion deal to create the world's largest advertising company. http://postcards.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/