What make Kapitall unique is that it is a very visual way of getting financial information and organizing data. If the X-Box had a stock program, it would look like Kapitall. We await the day when we can make actual investments through Kapitall.
And what’s to blame for all this united cross-asset momentum? Jakob hints it might be down to the world’s newest financial scape goat: high frequency trading.
It is true, after all, that thanks to specialist firms like Madison Tyler and others, HFT is no longer just found in the realm of the equity markets. Indeed, it’s firms like these that might very well be contributing to oil price inflation against the fundamental odds. The sort of inflation that the likes of Opec have long been keen to blame on speculators.
Which is why it’s interesting that Jakob should conclude that Saudi Arabia, which recently decided to protect itself from WTI anomalies by not pricing oil off the WTI Platts benchmark, would better have been served by a campaign to see the Nymex return to open outcry (non-electronic) trading:
Saudi Arabia will start in January to price its OSP for US destination on the Argus sour Gulf quote and the CME was quick to react by announcing that it would launch a Futures contract on the same Argus quote. That move from the CME might kill the benefit for the Saudis of changing the reference quote as automatic electronic arbitrage will likely spill the disconnect of WTI into the gulf quote. In our opinion, the only alternative for a crude oil future to regain some diversification benefit would be to return to full open outcry.
Mr. D’Souza has hired 70 bankers, sales representatives and traders to create a securities firm as Citadel aims to fill a void left by last year’s collapse of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, Bloomberg reports. Citadel is the first hedge fund company to expand into advisory and brokerage services to institutional investors, vying to take market share from such firms as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.
via Citadel’s Brokerage Head Is Leaving – DealBook Blog – NYTimes.com.
Deutsche Bank’s results stack up pretty well — against itself, Breakingviews.com says. Its investment bank on Thursday reported its best third quarter ever for sales and trading revenue, at 3.1 billion euros ($4.6 billion). But Deutsche is having more success outperforming its own past results than its current rivals.
via Deutsche Tops Itself, but What About Its Rivals? – DealBook Blog – NYTimes.com.
When she was about 35, Ms. Khan obtained a master’s degree in business administration from the University of California, Berkeley. According to friends, acquaintances and family, Ms. Khan’s true passion lay with following the financial markets and trading stocks. When she left Galleon, Ms. Khan set up her own stock trading operation inside the family’s home in Atherton, one of the most exclusive Silicon Valley neighborhoods.
via Hints of Missed Chance to Pursue Galleon Case – NYTimes.com.
“Managed futures actually have higher fees than many hedge funds,” said Pennapa Tantiyakul, a hedge fund research analyst at Lipper. “But the good thing is that they have more liquidity, and last year everybody wanted liquidity.”
via Exotic Bets to Hedge a Portfolio – DealBook Blog – NYTimes.com.
Like most alternative investments, managed futures funds have historically performed very differently from stocks, bonds and real estate. “Managed futures tend to do well during periods of great market volatility,” said David M. Darst, chief investment strategist of Morgan Stanley Smith Barney. “I call them financial Tylenol.”
via Exotic Bets to Hedge a Portfolio – DealBook Blog – NYTimes.com.
A survey of endowment investing in the private equity industry, conducted by Preqin, an alternative asset data provider, shows that 57 percent of the respondents altered their private equity strategy as a result of the financial crisis, with a large number slashing the amount of money they allocate to that asset class.
via Study: Endowments Cutting Back on Private Equity – DealBook Blog – NYTimes.com.
Goldman Sachs does not know all. The bank’s economists had been on eerie run of sending out prescient alerts the day before major data releases—mainly the monthly employment numbers—that described in detail how the consensus was going to be wrong and what the report was really going to say. Well, last night I got the e-mail from the nation’s “Most Accurate Economist,” Goldman’s Jan Hatzius, predicting that GDP growth would be a below-consensus 2.7%. Oh well.
via GDP grows 3.5%. Does that mean the Great Recession is over? – The Curious Capitalist – TIME.com.
The point of this move is not to undermine the dollar but to get away from the WTI contract where prices have been artificially inflated due to storage shortages at Cushing.
A friend familiar with this market also indicated that big bank punters active in this market will like this move as well as it helps them evade the position limits and regulation of the CFTC. He says, “In fact, the lack of transparency and regulation on the Dubai Merc was one of the reasons why you had such successful speculation in the oil market during the spring of 2008.”
I see a spike in oil prices as a risk to any sustained recovery. Anyone with more insight into why the Saudis made this move, do comment.