peterbirks (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
peterbirks) wrote2012-01-08 03:11 pm
peterbirks) wrote2012-01-08 03:11 pm
Sunday
I keep forgetting how deliciously volatile currency trading can be once you move up into the "three figures a cent" arena. My timing on the US/Aussie dollar looked like it could not have been more wrong, and I strolled to a £240 deficit fairly quickly. The US/Loonie trade didn't do quite as badly, going down £130, and even my new $/Euro position went wrong to the tune of £70 at one point. Grimmish stuff.
To recap, my long US$/AUD and $/CAD positions were based on my feeling that the good times for commodity currencies was over. That might be the case, but I hadn't realized that the AUD might benefit from "safe haven-itis". Luckily my position doesn't expire until March and, as we know, "safe havens" (when the aren't the Swiss Franc) are very much a matter of emotion -- and emotion can turn.
The euro position also came good at the end of the week. All of that brought the net negative to £100 -- basically flat on the week. I won't be doubling down on the commodity bet. It's no use expecting the world to come round to your way of thought overnight. I'll just run with what I've got for a year.
On the euro my target price has shifted from $1.25 (a target which many thought laughable when I posited it a good few months ago) to the even more radical $1.07. Although that would be entering the arena of when the dollar sank to $2.05+ against the pound. I'm not sure that I'd have the courage to short the euro at $1.13. But I'd be willing to let what I had, ride.
++++++
The first week of January is always a good time to book holiday flights, and San Francisco (March) and Nice (May) are duly booked, both at reasonable prices with BA (£398 to SF and back, £103 to Nice and back). The apartment in Nice is also booked, a two-bedroom place that I will be sharing with the inestimable Mr Nye. Perhaps we could call it Eurocon 2012 -- ok, the attendance might be a bit down on the last one, but, hey, 30 years on, what do you expect?
I will enjoy showing Craig around the place, and the one "must see" on his diary is Monaco. I've cunningly timed the stay to coincide with just before the Grand Prix, which means that much of the infrastructure will be in place for his long-dreamt-of "walk round the track".
++++++
I also checked on the prices for flights to Bermuda for June. If one can find a cheaper flight later in the week, it's possible to persuade my bosses to let one stay an extra night or two, provided the net cost is less than if one flew back at peak time.
The London-Bermuda pricing is possibly the most insane in the universe. To go there costs a fairly uniform £270. To fly back costs, wait for it, £1,368. Unless you fly on a Sunday night, in which case it costs £270.
Needless to say, flying back on Sunday night is probably a no-no (that's why it's so cheap) because I need to be in the office Monday morning.
It would actually be cheaper (in terms of flight cost) to fly London-Bermuda, Bermuda-New York, New York-London.
++++++++++++
The office still remains a profoundly depressing place. I don't know what it is about my new offices -- perhaps it's the Feng Shui –- but I don't think that I have ever worked in an office that is so dispiriting in its heart and soul. There's virtually nothing that I can put my finger on, but my heart sinks the second I walk through those sliding doors. The old office in the city was a joy by comparison.
It's nothing to do with the people -- although I know fewer people on this floor than I did previously. Perhaps my seat is a bit isolated, which gives me fewer people to talk to. And perhaps people have become less talkative, although I can't say that I have noticed this consciously. The bank just down from us is now IT people rather than other journalists or marketing. And, nice though IT people are, they aren't exactly the social chatty types, except perhaps to other IT people. These guys are mainly something to do with the web pages (I think!) and they sit with each other and go out for lunch together.
On the other side there's a group of people who do credit reports on companies. They also keep themselves to themselves, although I guess it's quite likely that both the web lot and the credit report lot think the same about us. And it's true, there's not really much call for "cross-fertilisation". At least with sales and marketing people there's a mutual interest in the product.
++++++++
The £1.4m fine for PwC for its abysmal failure when it came to checking the segregation of JPMorgan accounts is thankfully an example of at least the FSA getting tough on the old auditor's excuse of "but they lied to us!"
Ironically the organization that actually reported the PwC (the AADB, I believe) was upset at the scale of the fine. There are also rumours that PwC was desperate to keep the names of specific partners out of the "crime sheet" (along the lines of "X was fucking useless").
PwC, Ernst & Young, Deloitte's and various other consultancy and auditing firms have really had it too easy for too long when it comes to their own "caveat emptor" exclusions. The standard line from an auditor is "ahh, but you obviously don't understand what the role of an auditor IS". In fact, if you accepted this line of excuse, no signed set of accounts would be worth a toss, because you could write down anything on both sides of the accounts and, so long as the sum of column A matched the sum of column B, then that would be fine.
Auditing work must, therefore, involve something more than just ensuring that the figures supplied add up. There has to be a degree of "but does this MAKE SENSE?" And if, to a person of reasonable intelligence, the numbers do not make sense, then the auditor should dig deeper.
Except, of course, the auditor doesn't dig deeper (remember how all of the Maxwell numbers were signed off every year? -- another piece of auditing failure that resulted in a seven-figure fine) because it's the company that is paying the fees.
_________________
To recap, my long US$/AUD and $/CAD positions were based on my feeling that the good times for commodity currencies was over. That might be the case, but I hadn't realized that the AUD might benefit from "safe haven-itis". Luckily my position doesn't expire until March and, as we know, "safe havens" (when the aren't the Swiss Franc) are very much a matter of emotion -- and emotion can turn.
The euro position also came good at the end of the week. All of that brought the net negative to £100 -- basically flat on the week. I won't be doubling down on the commodity bet. It's no use expecting the world to come round to your way of thought overnight. I'll just run with what I've got for a year.
On the euro my target price has shifted from $1.25 (a target which many thought laughable when I posited it a good few months ago) to the even more radical $1.07. Although that would be entering the arena of when the dollar sank to $2.05+ against the pound. I'm not sure that I'd have the courage to short the euro at $1.13. But I'd be willing to let what I had, ride.
++++++
The first week of January is always a good time to book holiday flights, and San Francisco (March) and Nice (May) are duly booked, both at reasonable prices with BA (£398 to SF and back, £103 to Nice and back). The apartment in Nice is also booked, a two-bedroom place that I will be sharing with the inestimable Mr Nye. Perhaps we could call it Eurocon 2012 -- ok, the attendance might be a bit down on the last one, but, hey, 30 years on, what do you expect?
I will enjoy showing Craig around the place, and the one "must see" on his diary is Monaco. I've cunningly timed the stay to coincide with just before the Grand Prix, which means that much of the infrastructure will be in place for his long-dreamt-of "walk round the track".
++++++
I also checked on the prices for flights to Bermuda for June. If one can find a cheaper flight later in the week, it's possible to persuade my bosses to let one stay an extra night or two, provided the net cost is less than if one flew back at peak time.
The London-Bermuda pricing is possibly the most insane in the universe. To go there costs a fairly uniform £270. To fly back costs, wait for it, £1,368. Unless you fly on a Sunday night, in which case it costs £270.
Needless to say, flying back on Sunday night is probably a no-no (that's why it's so cheap) because I need to be in the office Monday morning.
It would actually be cheaper (in terms of flight cost) to fly London-Bermuda, Bermuda-New York, New York-London.
++++++++++++
The office still remains a profoundly depressing place. I don't know what it is about my new offices -- perhaps it's the Feng Shui –- but I don't think that I have ever worked in an office that is so dispiriting in its heart and soul. There's virtually nothing that I can put my finger on, but my heart sinks the second I walk through those sliding doors. The old office in the city was a joy by comparison.
It's nothing to do with the people -- although I know fewer people on this floor than I did previously. Perhaps my seat is a bit isolated, which gives me fewer people to talk to. And perhaps people have become less talkative, although I can't say that I have noticed this consciously. The bank just down from us is now IT people rather than other journalists or marketing. And, nice though IT people are, they aren't exactly the social chatty types, except perhaps to other IT people. These guys are mainly something to do with the web pages (I think!) and they sit with each other and go out for lunch together.
On the other side there's a group of people who do credit reports on companies. They also keep themselves to themselves, although I guess it's quite likely that both the web lot and the credit report lot think the same about us. And it's true, there's not really much call for "cross-fertilisation". At least with sales and marketing people there's a mutual interest in the product.
++++++++
The £1.4m fine for PwC for its abysmal failure when it came to checking the segregation of JPMorgan accounts is thankfully an example of at least the FSA getting tough on the old auditor's excuse of "but they lied to us!"
Ironically the organization that actually reported the PwC (the AADB, I believe) was upset at the scale of the fine. There are also rumours that PwC was desperate to keep the names of specific partners out of the "crime sheet" (along the lines of "X was fucking useless").
PwC, Ernst & Young, Deloitte's and various other consultancy and auditing firms have really had it too easy for too long when it comes to their own "caveat emptor" exclusions. The standard line from an auditor is "ahh, but you obviously don't understand what the role of an auditor IS". In fact, if you accepted this line of excuse, no signed set of accounts would be worth a toss, because you could write down anything on both sides of the accounts and, so long as the sum of column A matched the sum of column B, then that would be fine.
Auditing work must, therefore, involve something more than just ensuring that the figures supplied add up. There has to be a degree of "but does this MAKE SENSE?" And if, to a person of reasonable intelligence, the numbers do not make sense, then the auditor should dig deeper.
Except, of course, the auditor doesn't dig deeper (remember how all of the Maxwell numbers were signed off every year? -- another piece of auditing failure that resulted in a seven-figure fine) because it's the company that is paying the fees.
_________________
no subject
no subject
If you measure accountants by the amount they can charge themselves out at (which sounds reasonable, until you hit the brick wall of 21-year-old trainees, which is prevalent across all Russell Group/Ivy League "careers"), then obviously you are paying by results.
But which results? And whose results?
I think Birks is correct here (well, I usually give him the benefit of the doubt). Consider the bill from PwC or ChallingerWipeYourArseSir or whoever: ideally, that should be a sunk cost. Possibly, it should even be the equivalent of a Tobin Tax.
But without wishing to diminish my appreciation of the dismal, unintellectual, careless, shoddy, pointless middle-class college failures that regrettably share your profession, I would suggest that Peter has a point here:
If it smells like an incontinent pig with worms, then it probably is an incontinent pig with worms.
No harm in missing "biased" words like "incontinent," though.
Just as a matter of interest (and since you're in the business), have you ever seen an auditor report that unequivocably states something like "Not bankrupt yet, but I'd rather bet on Devon Loch, even after the fact?"
no subject
It really is a wonderful book. I am definitely going to buy it once I can scrape the couple of hundred quid together, but in the meantime I will use, as should you, the free online version.
Just browse. It is endlessly fascinating.