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Doth protest too much
Apr. 2nd, 2009 07:20 amNick P's comment yesterday that, early in the morning, the only sign of trouble at the BoE was a bloke carrying a placard saying "Everything's OK" set me in mind of two things. One was the Craggy Island Father Ted episode where they protested against the showing of a movie with the line "Less of this kind of thing", and the other was that, although it might have been Alistair Darling carrying the placard yesterday morning, it almost certainly wasn't Mervyn King.
I bypassed the trouble through the genius expedient of catching the underground. I thus missed the marvellous sight of environmentalists trampling the first daffodils of spring. Apparently the protesters were outnumbered more than three-to-one by journalists and day-trippers looking for a good photo. I think this is unsurprising. It was such a lovely day yesterday that I am sure a protest organized in St James's Park or in Hyde Park by the Serpentine would have been better attended. "Ransack café, 4pm, after tea."
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I went short on Barclays shares yesterday with IG. However, being unaware of what the "measuring stick" was, (1p? 0.1p? .01p?) I took out the minimum position. To my surprise, it turned out to be just 10p per penny. After half an hour I was down a grand total of 8p. Since I thought that the minimum bet on cable was £100 a cent, this struck me as a strange disconnect. Then I checked. D'oh. The minimum stake on IG for cable now appears to be a tenner a cent.
I went short on Barclays because the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) recommended that AIG not be allocated $30bn in funds unless it renegotiated executive bonuses (headline, not important) and its CDS agreements with banking counterparties (complex, not a headline, very important). Since one of these CDS counterparties was Barclays, which benefited with a "get out of jail free" card to the tune of $8.5bn (mark-to-market value of money owed, $5bn tops) and since, as far as I was aware, Barclays was still counting this as a "receivable" (money owed) rather than as money in the bank, this struck me as slightly dodgy for Barclays. The recent stress-testing that boosted the Barclays price and led it to turn down the UK govt insurance must have been predicated at least in part on this $8.5bn being handed over in full.
Anyhoo, the market seemed to take no notice. Perhaps they will do so eventually. But I have to lump on so much to make the volatility comparable to my long-sterling position, it remains just a side-diversion.
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I bypassed the trouble through the genius expedient of catching the underground. I thus missed the marvellous sight of environmentalists trampling the first daffodils of spring. Apparently the protesters were outnumbered more than three-to-one by journalists and day-trippers looking for a good photo. I think this is unsurprising. It was such a lovely day yesterday that I am sure a protest organized in St James's Park or in Hyde Park by the Serpentine would have been better attended. "Ransack café, 4pm, after tea."
+++++++
I went short on Barclays shares yesterday with IG. However, being unaware of what the "measuring stick" was, (1p? 0.1p? .01p?) I took out the minimum position. To my surprise, it turned out to be just 10p per penny. After half an hour I was down a grand total of 8p. Since I thought that the minimum bet on cable was £100 a cent, this struck me as a strange disconnect. Then I checked. D'oh. The minimum stake on IG for cable now appears to be a tenner a cent.
I went short on Barclays because the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) recommended that AIG not be allocated $30bn in funds unless it renegotiated executive bonuses (headline, not important) and its CDS agreements with banking counterparties (complex, not a headline, very important). Since one of these CDS counterparties was Barclays, which benefited with a "get out of jail free" card to the tune of $8.5bn (mark-to-market value of money owed, $5bn tops) and since, as far as I was aware, Barclays was still counting this as a "receivable" (money owed) rather than as money in the bank, this struck me as slightly dodgy for Barclays. The recent stress-testing that boosted the Barclays price and led it to turn down the UK govt insurance must have been predicated at least in part on this $8.5bn being handed over in full.
Anyhoo, the market seemed to take no notice. Perhaps they will do so eventually. But I have to lump on so much to make the volatility comparable to my long-sterling position, it remains just a side-diversion.
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