News and Views from the heart of Hedge Fund land.
Black armband day.
So Goldman, JPM et al who were saved from bankruptcy have lobbied Obama to avoid comp caps and instead thrown BoA, ML and AIG into a cesspit where country club membership will be banned and a few top earners will not get paid. Savings? I reckon less than 100m. Pathetic.
I am therefore on ...
Begging bowl.
So the UK's debt is a few billion off the budgeted forecast. Like the USA, the UK has its largest ever debt since the Second World War when there was a good reason for a large amount of debt - War. This time around, the reason for the debt is ...Investment Banking. So we defeated Hitler and a pot ...
Pop.
Funny how the people I talk to are waiting for the big pop. And yet they are piling into the markets because they believe it has some way to go before the big bang 2.0.
Many commentators have gotten bored about debt, protectionism, Bernanke china bashing, export crazy Asians and living off bread and w ...
Marriage.
Trading is like being married. It is a contract between an ego and a lifestyle that starts out on the right tracks but can often lead to a hatred of that Bloomberg or Reuters screen and turns into a nasty love hate scenario what-if denial depression. My divorce started at the beginning of this month ...
Back to ordering the last wine on the list.
Why the media is so surprised at the latest stellar profits from the Investment Banks is rather bizarre. Any company that can offload its bad debts and get a decent fair value as well as pushing its hard to price illiquid assets into off balance hedge funds (I mean G ...
Disenchanted.
Spending all day and night grinding my teeth to the sound of the opening and closing bells takes its toll. I have been so selfish and focused on nothing but performance for the past few years. Performance on the race track, performance of my funds, performance of my cars, performance in nocturnal ...
Erratic.
Like my predictions of late, the next few newsletters will be erratic in delivery. During boom times, managers love to tell you how good they are; come the slump and the excuses run out and those newsletters run dry. My excuse is travelling. For the next 3 weeks I shall be continuing my horrendous sch ...
Economy.
I tried but I couldn't cope, so bought an upgrade to First Class. This game of down sizing is not as easy as I thought. Like going cold turkey, one needs to be locked away for a few weeks or you take the easier path and wean yourself off luxury which is what I am doing. My excuse for upgrading was the ...
Expenses.
So I took a lot of money out my business and bought a few depreciating assets like USD, Spanish real estate and a Latvian night club. Having to manage my own money as well as others was easy but managing my own isn't in a low interest environment. Thankfully the yields on T-Bills are fine and dandy b ...
Hello.
FunTimes Capital? FugTin Asset Management? Figtan Advisors? FatTom Fund Capital? NagNag Capital? FitNag Fund Management? GitNaf? GaffIt? How can thinking up a name be so difficult? My compliance officer has set up a couple of companies and I have the Change of Name resolutions ready for signing. Startin ...
Partners Meeting.
Today I chaired my first meeting as a non founder. Weird. It didn't have much to do except review the workings of other committees that do the real work. I have set the next meeting to just after Christmas so I can do some worthwhile work like giving homeless bankers some soup, clearing up di ...
1 in 10.
Funding the long term unemployed is expensive. Now I am technically one of those who is without work, (being a chairman consultant is not really work) with plenty of leisure time, I shall be consuming without contributing for the next few months. In my case boredom will force me back into building a n ...
Recruitment.
Many of my friends are headhunters but it is time to out them as devils in skirts. Many commentators have picked up my rantings over the years about who and what caused the crash, you know the usual suspects: CRA, Private Equity, short term bankers, Excel etc but a group I have never talked about ...
Making Love.
We all love making the stuff but the second best activity is eating a good biscuit. When I visit an investor, bank or whoever wants to listen to me prattling on about whatever is on my mind, a corporation's true self is exposed. The quality of the reception, the type of security card and how easy ...
Television.
So on-line advertising is beating TV adverts for the first time. I rarely watch TV although yesterday I was glued to a socialist ranting on about how he was going to spend even more of my money and a comedy-tragedy drama about the lost Lehman weekend. The casting was strange and Dick Fuld was quite ...
Investment Bankers.
What a strange place it must be. You are smarter than the average, work longer hours, burn out younger. You like to shout a lot, wave your arms around and wear loud clothes. Your pay packet is huge compared to your true abilities and responsibilities and your job is about finding loopholes, ...
Efficient frontiers.
Following a Guinness day hangover on Thursday, and some decent fasting over the weekend, I am back to working, if that is what you call hassling headhunters.
My quants have let me down and the 21st September has come and gone and the top of the elusive W has caused embarrassment. There ...
Dear Investor
Apologies for the delay in producing this newsletter, but I fell asleep in my deck chair over looking the beautiful blue sea of the Mediterranean.
Last year we returned for you over 18% which was an exceptional achievement given the equity markets were tanking like a smack addict snorting talc ...
Dear Investor.
I am updating you on some recent developments in your investment in the Fintag Illiquid Distressed Crap Fund. As I said in my last communique, the fund acquired a huge tranche of Lehman assets. Given this is now worthless, the partners have agreed to file for a USD45billion claim against Lehman ...
Dear Investor,
Since last quarter, the Fintag Latino Enhanced Bond Biased Fund has made 95.6% and YTD is up 226.7%. Our models have factored in the volatility expectations of the Equity markets in Brazil, Peru and Columbia and coupled with a low interest environment has produced above average and above top qua ...
Top of the pops.
My models say sell but the markets say hang on a minute there is more juice left in this suckers rally. The prediction is we have reached the top. Junk is now mainstream and the Bond market is betting one way on inflation. Once the G20 start to unwind their stimulus packages, then deflation co ...
Sensible.
Today we reach the top of the equity markets, the top of the so called W and slowly but surely the overvalued fake market will crumble. In the meantime we look at some sensible news reporting from newspapers than may soon be non-profit organisations [Editor: They already are ...].
Conferences.
My intern let me down so I went along myself. I got to the Barbican about 8 30 and had tea with an old guy hovering around the milk. We chatted about Blackberries and uncomfortable chairs.
When I sat down with the 400 or so compliance lawyers, it was quite a surprise to see the same man leading ...
AIFMD.
I know most of you want to read about the fake markets and what the trends are but my mind is elsewhere, most notably that EU Directive.
The FSA are running a seminar today and I shall be sending an intern to twitter on my behalf. The lectures will be about how the FSA is lobbying hard and throwing t ...
Hot off the press.
This is a picture of Stationers' Hall in London. Some Goldman Sachs employees see this every day, staring out the window or picking up their cars from the nearby underground car park. I am sure they haven't a clue what it is but it stands near their Warwick Court building and is indirectly r ...
Radical ideas.
I am fed up. The only ideas Obama and the EU have to stop crash 2.0 is to regulate a bit harder, stop tax havens from taking business away from them (remember tax was only ever used to fund wars) and to cap bankers' bonuses (although what's in a name for incentive payments are the new non bonus ...
Opinions.
Trading the markets involves no emotion. It requires looking at all risks and finding ways to hedge them or more importantly making money from them. Having political views is fine but these must not cloud one's judgement so when we see Obama trying to fix something that is so fundamentally broken, li ...
9/11.
As anniversaries go, this one isn't much fun. Having lived and played (Windows on the World, a place I once dressed up as a pineapple but that is for another day) by the towers for a while as well as being on a conference call to Morgan Stanley from London on that fatal day, it is a day of reflection. Ti ...
Woof woof.
So according to the latest propaganda, the world is a safer place and all yesterday's problems are forgotten. Take a look at this FTSE 100 Price Earnings ratio chart. I know PEs are old fashioned but sometimes the oldies are the best. Doesn't it look like the dotcom bubble? Well it does to me but th ...
The Fall.
No I am not talking about the alternative title to a french novelist's book or the band fronted by Mark E Smith but that time of year when the Autumn arrives and the markets crash.
Sept 19th is what my models say, the VIX looks like November and October is traditionally a time to panic.
Today i ...
Time for prayer.
Lehman is in our thoughts and the actions of Hank Paulson are pulled apart by post Labor day journalists. The UK's Darling Chancellor was reported to have told Hank to keep his US cancer and Paulson then promptly got LBIE to put all its cash back to its only bnkaers, Lehman, and then promptly ...
19th September.
A bit like predicting the second coming or the end of the world, if I get the date of the crash wrong there is no need to worry. There will be another time when you will listen to my words because I have got it right in the past. But it will happen.
Of course like Peter and the Wolf, if I cr ...
Where next?
Moneyweek magazine has a profile on the top 3 tax havens for retirement. Following the news Cayman has run out of money and is seeking a bail out from the UK government, it didn't feature. And nor did Iceland or Latvia. Or Delaware.
In order of island fun, they were Panama, Malaysia and Cyprus. ...
Oil.
Yesterday I tipped BP as a long term buy. I can assure you that I had no idea they were just about to announce a huge 3bn barrel oil find near Houston. Sometimes I guess lucky so please don't shop me for inside information because it was a wild guess and no it wasn't financial advice either. I was talking ...
Wobbles.
The VIX is my guide to the future and rough seas are ahead. Which is good as being pushed along by a strong wind on calm seas is a tad boring. It is obvious this bull market, driven by government subsidies has gone a bit too far but as usual no one is calling the shots.
My poll on whether we are in ...
&sid
Don Draper.
Today we encounter a trip down history lane. Names of old pop up and good old bearish tones are the order of the day. My concern at the moment is establishing what wrist watch Don Draper was wearing in season 1 of Mad Men? I want one badly. It's an Omega something but alas the internet is not g ...
Conferences.
This time 2 years ago, the conference sector was booming. The likes of Marcus Evans and Terrapin enjoyed the fruits of over charging the "people who like people" to visit out of town hotels with stained carpets and vile tasting mints listening to supposed experts talking about important matters of ...
Socially useless.
We like our regulators to be benign. We like them to interpret the laws of the land and help us run businesses according to best practice. What we don't want them to do is call us socially useless and bad for the environment.
The FSA has decided to call us names. This is most silly because ...
On the road to nowhere.
US Confidence is up, house prices on the rise, Obama smiles as Bernanke is given a second chance, the Vineyard souvenir shops are booming, equities are up, oil is down and life feels really good. So what about the 10% unemployment, the USD1.4 Trillion budget deficit or the Fed's balance ...
Plastic Ono Bank.
Bank of America is having trouble packaging up its credit card receivables and flogging them on. You see, to get a decent FICO score you need debts that are likely to be paid back but BoA seems unable to throw any into the mix. I made the error yesterday of stating Mastercard and Visa were in ...
Peace and Love.
Following the UK's rather strange behavior in releasing a Libyan terrorist from prison, the US is threatening a full trade war. Of course this spat relates to the millions owed to Boris Johnson by the US embassy in unpaid congestion charge fines but the real concern for us humble Brits who had ...
Raking up the past.
Today we look at old events. The BBC is producing a made for TV movie about Lehman where the main character thinks he is Don Draper but is infact Dick the Reaper. We also find hacks reanalysing Bear Stearns and screaming out why nobody spotted this as a sign from God.
For news that is r ...
Patriot Act.
I need to learn to keep my mouth shut. Yesterday I spent a few hours with some large people in uniform from Queens. Alas it wasn't in a nightclub for gentleman, but with cardboard cut out gum chewing NYPD officers who were giving me the once over for abusive comments.
As a non US citizen, I hav ...
44.
The number 4, 44 or any combination of 4 is unlucky in parts of Asia. The number 8 is seemed to be lucky and banks like Nomura like to have 888 in their telephone numbers which rarely have a 4 in. Such superstition may seem antiquated but all the traders I know have rituals and lucky charms. We are not nor ...
Sorry about the delay but stuck in airport. I have no idea where I am flying too, why I am going there and who I am. But not to worry for I will just follow the rest of the customers and clamber on board and go with the flow. I have been told every 5 minutes not to smoke, to carry photo id at all times and to rep ...
Fat Girl Scrub.
Sorry, I have no idea how to link a cosmetic obesity cream to today's finance stories. I was thinking about Obama and his love for that old 20th century state cure all the National Health Service or maybe a way to get rid of scrubbers but alas I cannot.
Today I am in a hotel in Los Angeles o ...
Lunch.
After yesterday's oof news, the current crop of press release driven media content is enough to send me back to the Cipriani for a second lunch. Or is that breakfast? Is it the Jet lag or am I losing the plot and should just throw in the towel and go fishing?
There was fun though. Yesterday. For thos ...
Oof.
We have a lot of oof news today. News that makes you sit up and go oof. My current location is an airport that I cannot remember and in my pocket is a boarding pass to somewhere I cannot remember. The lounge is unknown and I have almost forgotten where I am. And then I look into my pocket and pull out my ...
Sept 20, 1920.
Most of you will have no idea why this is one of the most important dates in US history. In New York, 100 pounds of dynamite and assorted metal objects were driven into a business district and caused serious damage to the buildings as well as killing 36 people and injuring 400. Worst of all, the ...
Hold my hand.
Today I steer you through the extraordinary turn of events that is making the last 2 years a bad dream. We have disgraced Fred Goodwin back, Madoff out of prison, credit funds in vogue and the ratings agencies are back in favor. Not only that but AIG is back in the black and hedge funds are not t ...
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