In the modern era strong equity market performance in January is not, as used to be believed in days gone by, a reliable forerunner of
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Hounding of Intrade a Cause for Regret
Market watchers have reason to be disappointed by last week’s news that Intrade, a popular online betting exchange, is to close the accounts of all its US-based customers. The announcement follows a decision by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to file a complaint against the company which runs the site, alleging that it has illegally been operating an unregulated options market. Non-US citizens can however continue to use the site, which offers punters the chance to place bets on a variety of political and economic outcomes.
Moral Issues We Cannot Afford To Ignore
For a few months twenty five years ago I had the opportunity to work alongside the newly chosen Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, in his days as the corporate treasurer of Enterprise Oil. Like everyone else who worked with him at the time, I retain a vivid memory of a smart, humorous and clued up individual who, while blinking owlishly behind his spectacles, never appeared phased by any question thrown at him. I certainly do not recognise his own self-deprecatory description that he is a bit “thick”.
The Brashness and Bravado in Big Deals
In 2006, BAE Systems, formerly and better known as British Aerospace, sold its stake in Airbus for a disappointing price. Airbus, a civil aviation consortium established by several European governments, is now Boeing’s only competitor in the market for large commercial jets. BAE told the world it had decided to leave this market, with a view to focusing on its core defence business.
Profit Amidst The Ruins
The place to look for investment bargains, said the fund manager Sir John Templeton, is not where the news is good, but where it is really bad. Today that means looking for advantage amid the volatility and extreme valuations which the crisis in the embattled eurozone has brought in its wake. The strikes and riots that are spreading across southern Europe are exactly the kind of scary scenario in which investors with ice-cold blood in their veins, as one admirer once described Templeton, have historically been able to profit.
Sorting Fact From Fiction On Bank’s QE
Like John Ralfe, the pensions consultant well known to these pages, I was sufficiently struck by the Bank of England’s claims about the impact of quantitative easing to take a deeper look at their calculations, and in particular at their estimates of how the first two rounds of QE have affected the performance of the stock market. Given the attention that is currently been given to the next moves by the Federal Reserve and the issue of whether the European Central Bank is going to join in the QE business more wholeheartedly than it has done in the past, the subject could hardly be more topical.
Jonathan Davis 