TABLE OF CONTENTS
July 2007
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TUESDAY JULY 31
Armed And Dangerous
Each spring, the world's top timepieces unite in Switzerland to do battle at Baselworld, the planet's most prestigious watch show. In honor of this year's unveiling, we offer our collection of the past year's hottest watches, each a work of artisanal genius worthy of being strapped to your wrist.
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TUESDAY JULY 31
India's Anti-Inflation Play
The U.S. isn't the only one taking great pains to keep inflation contained: India just unexpectedly raised banks' reserve limits to curb the influx of money clotting its system.
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TUESDAY JULY 31
The Full Nelson
Billionaire investor Nelson Peltz (of watching-women-play-nude-tennis-on-his-private-court fame) is willing to ante up the dough for Wendy's, but less keen on the company's demand that he sign a confidentiality agreement. Could he be fixing to launch a hostile bid?
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TUESDAY JULY 31
'Wall Of Worry' Reprise
On Wall Street, Bear Stearns, Lehman, Merrill Lynch and, yes, even the venerable Goldman Sachs are as good as junk. Their bonds are, anyway.
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TUESDAY JULY 31
Sowood: So What?
Hedge fund Sowood Capital Management admits to losses of more than 50% this month, scoring a partial-bailout of its grossly cheapened bonds with Citadel. But we reckon this is still just the tip of the iceberg. What we aren't hearing about the bond rout could fill Shea stadium.
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TUESDAY JULY 31
Yuan No Yawn
In fact, if traders' bets are any measure, U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson may finally succeed in getting China to let the yuan appreciate – though likely not more than 5 percent.
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TUESDAY JULY 31
The Hunt Is ON
And the balls of steel award goes to… drum roll please…wow, what a surprise, it's Brian Hunter, again. Of the defunct but ever-defiant Amaranth. It seems that while being interviewed by Washington regulators earlier this year, Mr. H decided to take off for lunch and, uh, never came back. Just hoofed it on out the door and out of DC. Brian, Brian, Brian. When you're rotting in jail, who will be our next great White Hunter?
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MONDAY JULY 30
The Great Beach Crusade
Whether you trade there or play there, TraderDaily.com wants to see footage of your favorite idyllic hot spots.
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MONDAY JULY 30
If Work Is Your Dysfunction…
…And we know it is, try boring your next date with "The Street," the musical. Billed as a tale "about broads on Wall Street," the singing-and-dancing comedy boasts "stock shorts, long odds, undercover moles and a misanthropic metrosexual." Sounds good to us.
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MONDAY JULY 30
Mackey's Comeuppance
We said it once, and we'll say it again: If you're a CEO, don't trash-talk the company you're looking to buy on Yahoo message boards – unless you're looking to get grilled by the SEC. And while you're at it, don't make statements that will otherwise put a wrench in the works of your own company's (Whole Foods) deal to buy a competitor (Wild Oats). Just in case you're reading, John Mackey.
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MONDAY JULY 30
Sowood's SOS
Where there's smoke there's fire – or fire sales, in the case of $3 billion hedge fund Sowood Capital, which was spied late last week desperately bailing out of positions at rock-bottom prices.
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MONDAY JULY 30
ABN: The Light Dawns
ABN traders – what little there are of you left – your bank has finally woken up and smelled the moneybags, deciding that it shouldn't back a massively leveraged bid from Barclays at a time when debt markets are foundering. Instead it's no longer resisting a competing RBS-led consortium's bid and its gobs of cash. There may be hope yet.
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MONDAY JULY 30
Devaney, Yacht To Tenderly Part Ways
The seas have turned choppy this summer for United Capital CEO John Devaney and his trusty schooner.
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MONDAY JULY 30
Mad Dance Of Amaranth
A federal filing indicates Quinn Gillespie (a lobbying firm whose co-founders have famously had the ears of at least two presidents, including the current one) has been hired by Amaranth to bust some kneecaps in response to Congressional and regulatory inquiries into its, er, pre-implosion activities.
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MONDAY JULY 30
Deutsche's Subprime Coup
Recognizing what others didn't about the looming subprime disaster, DB is now poised to rake in a cool $270 to $540 million in its fiscal second quarter, posting a 19% boost in earnings on its mortgage bets. Not bad, except that they're bragging about it.
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MONDAY JULY 30
End Of The Bull?
Analysts are fiercely debating whether the churning stock market – which, in many ways, is now mimicking past moves seen just prior to the peaks of 1987 and 2000 – is throwing off signals of a blip or a catastrophe.
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FRIDAY JULY 27
Friday Levity: Handling Your Boss, That Drunk
How to tackle the boss who swills so excessively that by the end of the night (or day) he (or she) is meaner than an alley cat. Or a drunk alley cat, even.
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FRIDAY JULY 27
The Great Beach Crusade
Whether you trade there or play there, TraderDaily.com wants to see footage of your favorite idyllic hot spots.
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FRIDAY JULY 27
Hedgies: Wild At Art?
The list of art fiends masquerading by day as hedge fund managers, private-equity gods and buyout kings is long and illustrious: Henry R. Kravis, Stevie Cohen, Leon Black, Leslie Wexner, Steve Wynn (a.k.a. Picasso-fister) and now Kenneth C. Griffin of Citadel. Read on for how to imitate the best.
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FRIDAY JULY 27
Girding For GDP
Predictions ahead of a Commerce report due out this morning augur the economy has grown by its briskest pace in more than a year amid a boost in exports – helped by a weakened dollar – and a pickup in manufacturing.
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FRIDAY JULY 27
TH Lee Gets Medieval
Slamming Mayer, Brown, Rowe with a lawsuit, Tommy Lee is alleging the law firm assisted brokerage firm Refco in a fraud cover-up. Out for blood, the buyout firm (which owned a stake in Refco before it imploded) wants $245 million for its troubles.
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FRIDAY JULY 27
Wall Street’s Rock, Hard Place
It’s everybody’s lesson No. 1: Never bet on a losing horse. But what if the only winning horses are Democrats – and they all want to tax the living daylights out of you? What do you do then?
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FRIDAY JULY 27
Debt Markets’ D-Day
Debt markets have officially met their perfect storm: Chrysler and Alliance Boots failed to find buyers this week for $20 billion of loans – a clear death knell for other deals in the global pipeline – while Blackstone’s shares have fallen 17% below their IPO price. On cue, corporate bond risk has soared to a new record high. Is this the nail in the coffin?
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FRIDAY JULY 27
Amaranth Saga: Another Shoe Drops
Just how many shoes will drop before this is all over is now looking like the stuff of pure metaphysical inquiry – but we’ll take a gander that it could rival the contents of Imelda Marcos’s closet.
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WEDNESDAY JULY 25
A First For Maserati
For the first time since 1990, when Fiat bought it, Maserati managed to post a profit! AutoWeek wrote that Maserati reported a "1-million euro trading profit, up from 7-million euro loss during the same period last year." But even more important than that is the picture than accompanies the article. Who cares about their profits. Look at those curves!
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WEDNESDAY JULY 25
Siemens Is Making Deals
Just yesterday, Siemens managed to execute 18 billion euros worth of deals - some on the buy side, some on the sell side. Respectively, Siemens bought Dade Behring, a US medical equipment supplier. They also sold VDO, it's division which makes car parts. VDO was sold to the German company, Continental. Peter Löscher, CEO of Siemens' engineering group, said "Siemens needs to get faster, less complex and more focused." 18 billion euros worth of deals in one day? Yeah, that's pretty fast.
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WEDNESDAY JULY 25
The Big Buyback
If you've been reading the news, you're probably thinking this buyback boom is pretty big. Well, if you think that, you're wrong: it's even bigger. Or, at least that's what TickerSense's research has shown - and they've even got a chart to prove it. But, seriously, they've done their own research about how much money has been spent on stock buybacks, and they've found that that what the media has reported is actually less than how much of a boom this really is. Though the Wall Street Journal ran a story reporting $157.4 billion worth of buyback plans for the second quarter, TickerSense says, "Our data show 414 announcements totaling $228.9b for the second quarter."
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WEDNESDAY JULY 25
An Indecent Proposal
The SEC is trying to determine what to do with a proposal that could potentially silence some shareholders. The proposal outlines a plan that would require shareholders to meet a minimum level, 5%, of ownership before they could gain access to company's ballots. Not surprisingly, activist shareholder groups are not pleased. Three organizations who fight for shareholder rights are coming out in strong resistance to the proposals and are hoping the SEC hears their pleas that setting a minimum - let alone one that is that high - would be a major blow to the basic rights of shareholders.
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WEDNESDAY JULY 25
No Sale?
The hedge fund giant KKR is rumored to have hit quite the wall in its quest to buy Alliance Boots Plc. KKR's banks, led by Deutsche Bank, were attempting to sell $10 billion in senior loans so it could afford the acquisition. However, Bloomberg is now reporting that there are rumors that KKR failed to make the sale. An industry expert commented, "This is a high watermark -- it's the first time a FTSE 100 company has been taken the private and they can't seem to sell the debt." Between this and Chrysler, it's shaping up to be a potentially tumultuous year for KKR.
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WEDNESDAY JULY 25
Guilty
Mark Lenowitz, a hedge fund manager who worked for Chelsey Capital and Q Capital Investment Partners, has been convicted of insider trading. He is guilty of trading on tips about UBS AG ratings. As a result of the information, he is said to have made $357,000. Now, he faces up to 25 years in prison. Lenowitz is one among 13 alleged insider traders who were scooped up in a massive crackdown that occurred in March.
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WEDNESDAY JULY 25
Sale Rumored To Be In Works
Private investors hungry for a piece of that sweet SAC action, get ready. The hedge fund run by Steve Cohen that manages around $12 billion is considering selling a 20% stake. Lehman Brothers is reportedly helping with the sale. Among rumored potential buyers: the Temasek fund, which is run by Singapore.
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WEDNESDAY JULY 25
The Great Beach Crusade
Whether you trade there or play there, TraderDaily.com wants to see footage of your favorite idyllic hot spots.
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WEDNESDAY JULY 25
Gadgets: Big Swinging Sticks
Want to assume an extremely long position off the tee? These new geometric drivers deliver all the leverage you’ll ever need.
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WEDNESDAY JULY 25
Stevie Cohen To Sell?
Hedge fund SAC Capital Advisors LLC may liquidate a minority stake to a group of investors, following the footsteps of other capital-chasing hedgies involved in similar transactions or IPOs.
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WEDNESDAY JULY 25
Greenwich: It’s A WASP Thing
This town’s penchant for attracting cash-laden hedgies seems to be fueling a separate but equal boom in high-end retail (maybe powered by hedgies’ wives?) yielding many a moronic utterance from retail stiffs like this one: "People who travel to Europe, whose kids travel to Europe, live in Greenwich… Greenwich was much WASP-ier before." Yeah, because it’s really not all that WASP-y now.
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WEDNESDAY JULY 25
Nomura: Trading A Boon In Fiscal 1Q
Nomura Holdings Inc., Japan's largest securities firm, said first-quarter profit almost quadrupled as assets under management climbed to a record and it made more money trading stocks and bonds.
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WEDNESDAY JULY 25
Hedge Funds Pull Better-Than-Usual 1H
That said, average returns net of fees of 7.7% isn’t exactly bowling us over…
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WEDNESDAY JULY 25
Hunter Becomes The Hunted
Brian Hunter, whose stalking of multibillion-dollar bets in the natural gas market led to the implosion last year of hedge fund Amaranth, is now trying to fight off civil charges brought by regulator FERC. Still, even if the biggest loss-maker in the history of trading prevails, his case against FERC legitimizes the ability of another futures regulator – the CFTC – to take him to task. Doesn’t seem to be the best play, Bri.
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TUESDAY JULY 24
World Series of Poker Wrap-Up: Jerry Yang Takes It All
Through sixteen hours of poker, the tenacious Yang goes from short stack to ultimate champion.
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TUESDAY JULY 24
Wheels: 1,001-Horse Stampede
Would the Bugatti Veyron 16.4 — the world’s most insane exercise in automotive overkill — prove too hot for even a Wall Street equities trader to handle? Nah. Well, maybe just a little around the edges.
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TUESDAY JULY 24
The Great Beach Crusade
Whether you trade there or play there, TraderDaily.com wants to see footage of your favorite idyllic hot spots.
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TUESDAY JULY 24
Glossary For A Weirder Wall Street
Read on for the best-of-breed vocab terms that clog your e-mails daily and pollute your every conversation at the water-cooler– including, of course, the term "best of breed."
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TUESDAY JULY 24
London Calling: An Explainer
Why London thinks it’s taking the stuffing out of its longtime New York rival as the North Star of the financial world. Even though it is totally delusional.
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TUESDAY JULY 24
On Looking – And Smelling – The Part
It's a toss-up: Has bad breath or bad style killed more careers?
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TUESDAY JULY 24
Foreign Buyers Devour Equities
Treasurys just don’t hold that hair-raising kind of excitement anymore for the overseas crowd.
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TUESDAY JULY 24
Dollar At 2-Month Low Vs Yen
The dollar is tanking again. Why? Three guesses, piker, and the first two don’t count.
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TUESDAY JULY 24
The Hedge Edge
Future residents of the Cottage Gate development in Middletown, N.J., may be surprised to learn that their granite countertops and two-car garages were paid for by a hedge fund.
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TUESDAY JULY 24
Blackstone, Bailer-Outer Of Choice?
Joining Bear Stearns, Basis Capital Fund Management – the Aussie fund similarly plagued by subprime woes – has hired B’stone to give it some much-needed advice (read: kick in its boneheaded arse) on how to extract itself from an untenable situation.
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TUESDAY JULY 24
Vive La Private Placement
How one crafty hedge fund manager has found a way to offload some of his pesky subprime bets.
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TUESDAY JULY 24
Bear, Bear, Bear…
Do you really think you can just skulk away without answering any of the tough questions?
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MONDAY JULY 23
Watch List: Wrist Reward
If you’re going to engage in some highly volatile pursuits, take one of these virtually indestructible timepieces with you.
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MONDAY JULY 23
The Great Beach Crusade
Whether you trade there or play there, TraderDaily.com wants to see footage of your favorite idyllic hot spots.
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MONDAY JULY 23
Dollar’s Plunge: The Silver Lining
The greenback’s down more than 13.2% since January? No matter. By making U.S. goods cheaper overseas, the economy’s getting the boost it needs to offset the worst housing slump in 16 years. And bringing a lot of ailing enterprises back to life.
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MONDAY JULY 23
The Cojones Of A Bear
You’ve gotta’ give them credit for chutzpah. Even as it continues to reel from its post-subprime-meltdown meltdown, Bear Stearns Structured Equity Products – yeah, we said structured – had it in them to launch a batch of exchange-traded notes.
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MONDAY JULY 23
$100 Oil Finally Nigh
That’s the latest verdict of market participants buying scads of options allowing them to purchase crude oil at $100. Trading volumes of the contracts, covering 50 million barrels, have now hit a record high.
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MONDAY JULY 23
To Ogle Or Not To Ogle
…That is the question. Wall Street and bikinis: It’s a combination as old as time. But after years of sex-discrimination lawsuits making the rounds, Morgan Stanley, Lehman and Smith Barney aren’t taking any chances. Employees can not, we repeat, can not, take their clients to Hawaiian Tropic Zone, where bathing beauties have been known to prance. Still, we submit some staffers will have to go – if for no other reason than to make sure their fellow brethren are keeping the rule, right?
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MONDAY JULY 23
Cayne’s Good Game?
When Bear Stearns Cos. Chief Executive James E. ``Jimmy'' Cayne let it slip to the New York Times that the failure of his firm's hedge funds was a ``body blow of massive proportion,'' he may have been using a tactic honed by three decades of championship bridge. Yeah. Really.
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FRIDAY JULY 20
Best Hotel Penthouses
We want to know which hotel penthouse you consider to be the best.
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FRIDAY JULY 20
Friday Levity: The Downside To Homemade Brothels
While many would posit there is no downside, Broadcom’s co-founder Henry T. Nicholas III might say differently. Lesson learned: When building an elaborate house of ill repute under your golf course (unbeknownst to your wife and your squeaky-clean community) don’t stick the contractors with the tab.
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FRIDAY JULY 20
Liquidity: Smoke Bombs
Open the windows and stay low to the ground when pouring this inferno of smoky scotches.
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FRIDAY JULY 20
Rolls’ Phantom: It’s Money, Baby
Behold, a machine so magnificent, it moves the grown man to emit involuntary cries of “Superfly!” and “YO, that’s dope!”
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FRIDAY JULY 20
A Windy City Plaint
In a departure from the complementary relationship often enjoyed by hedge funds and private-equity firms, Citadel has dashed off a letter to the strategic-options-mulling Gemstar urging it not to sell to a “financial investor” – even before any deal reaches the table.
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FRIDAY JULY 20
Blackstone Stock Tanks
Legions of green-gilled Schwarzman haters are silently, simperingly rejoicing today, after Blackstone’s stock dropped to its lowest point since the private-equity firm went public in June. With related IPO pricings getting haircuts of late, could B’stone be suffering some blowback?
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FRIDAY JULY 20
GlobeOp, Archeus Bury The Hatchet
Which is too bad, as the undisclosed terms of this settlement frustrate our attempts here at Trader Daily to dutifully air hedgie cat fights in particular and dirty laundry in general.
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FRIDAY JULY 20
Margin Call = Death Knell?
Could be, in the case of billion-dollar Aussie hedge fund Basis Capital, now embroiled in talks with creditors after failing to meet margin earlier this week. Coincidence – or yet another victim of the subprime debacle?
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FRIDAY JULY 20
Killing Off Greenspan
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s unabashed embrace of consumer protections and ready disclosure of Fed forecasts lays bare the marked differences between him and his celebrated predecessor.
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THURSDAY JULY 19
California Dreamin’
Whether you prefer to peer at the markets through the smog of Los Angeles or the fog of San Francisco, have we got the California condos for you.
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THURSDAY JULY 19
Another Record For China
It’s appalling that this country still has records left to break. The latest: In the second quarter, China’s economy expanded at its most blistering rate in 12 years. Stay tuned for the next Chinese record in oh, a day or so.
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THURSDAY JULY 19
Wagering On Harry Potter
We’re not even kidding. Apparently, William Hill Plc, a London-based bookmaker, closed bets on the fictional character sacrificing himself at 2/5 odds on July 17, cut from an original quote of 33/1 in early July. It took about $100,000 in wagers on the final Harry Potter tome (due out this Saturday) marking the first time the company’s ever handled bets on a book.
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THURSDAY JULY 19
Bear-Trap Avoidance: Lessons Learned
Despite announcing the near-annihilation of two hedge funds, Bear Stearns’s stock seems to have taken it on the chin. Maybe that’s because monster banks have a way of sticking it to their investors when the going gets tough.
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THURSDAY JULY 19
ICE Mystery Rival Revealed?
Nymex may be the as-yet-unnamed third-party bidder for the wee Winnipeg Commodity Exchange, according to Bloomberg – but we’re also hearing scuttlebutt that other suitors may be involved. Why all the furor over a tiny canola market? This happens to be the cheapest exchange in North America (and the only one in Canada) authorized to trade both futures AND stocks. You heard it here first.
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THURSDAY JULY 19
Here Comes The (Tax) Man
And if you’re Lehman or Citigroup, he will not be meeting you with a smile. At issue is whether derivatives trades conducted by these banks were for a) economic purposes only or b) to avoid taxes. (We would argue that if there ever was a sound economic purpose, avoiding taxes would be it, but alas and alack, the IRS begs to differ.)
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THURSDAY JULY 19
Small Fund Makes Good
Lime Capital may be a small-fry fund, but it’s carved out of wood when it hits the open seas, handily besting SAC Capital, Caxton Associates, J.P. Morgan, Fortress Investments and Plainfield Asset Management in New York’s latest hedgie regatta.
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THURSDAY JULY 19
Bernanke’s Big Chill?
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke may be laying the groundwork for the longest deep freeze in interest rates in two decades.
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WEDNESDAY JULY 18
Trader Lit Hits Too Close to Home?
Did Doug Stumpf model his rogue trader character after real-life Wall Street bad boy Jeffrey Epstein?
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WEDNESDAY JULY 18
High-Flyer: Mini-Gulf
The new midsize Gulfstream G150 proves that (on exceedingly rare occasions) bigger isn’t always better.
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WEDNESDAY JULY 18
When A Good Fund Goes Bad
Here’s your survival guide to weathering a classic, Amaranth-style implosion. And it’s not even a gag.
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WEDNESDAY JULY 18
Coup Du Jour: One For Loeb
The scrappy and unreservedly scathing Third Point hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb gets two mentions from Trader Daily in as many days. This time, he’s bullied himself up an oil deal.
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WEDNESDAY JULY 18
Lending Party Ending
The more risk-averse banks on Wall Street (eat your hearts out, Merrill, Lehman and Bear) have begun what will likely turn into a wave of belt-tightening on lending to traders accustomed to borrowing as much as 15 times their capital base.
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WEDNESDAY JULY 18
The Adventures Of Tacky Mackey
The sheer delight and third-party embarrassment we have felt in our readings of the tripped-out postings of Whole Foods CEO Rahodeb – er, we mean John Mackey – have brought us tears of ennui-quashing joy. Read on for some of our favorite stock and buyout tips from the man who, among other things, calls himself George W. Bush.
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WEDNESDAY JULY 18
ICE Battles Mystery Rival
From duking it out with the CME, the world’s largest futures market, to shadow-boxing an unknown bidder in its dogged pursuit of the Winnipeg Commodity Exchange, ICE has seen it all: Except for who it’s up against now.
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WEDNESDAY JULY 18
A Very Special Fire Sale
It’s official: Bear Stearns’s two troubled hedge funds are now virtually worthless – and, as a bonus, a popular index tracking subprime loans has picked this moment to tank just as the bank attempts to sell for a song the shaky bonds it once coveted.
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TUESDAY JULY 17
Ben Stein: Being Rich Isn’t Always The S@#%
What with all those investment portfolios, extra vacation homes and the wife constantly nagging you for another Bentley, rolling in the bucks is a lot of hard work. But consider the alternative.
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TUESDAY JULY 17
Options Check
Bets in the options market are pointing to a 10% drop on the make in the U.S. stock market. Forewarned is forearmed and all that.
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TUESDAY JULY 17
Loeb: Lobber Of Barbs To Become Lobbee?
The flight-of-foot but not-so-honey-tongued activist hedgie Daniel Loeb has certainly shown that he can dish it – but as he prepares for the London IPO of his fund, Third Point, can he take it too?
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TUESDAY JULY 17
Well, Whaddaya Know…
U.S. Democratic presidential hopefuls looking to raise taxes on hedge funds are getting – gasp – fewer campaign donations from their targets than Republicans. But, in a sign of the investing crowd’s continued ignorance of the rules of engagement (read: to avoid the tax dragnet, you’ve gotta’ pay the piper) both parties so far have received less than $300,000 each.
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TUESDAY JULY 17
Icahn: At 71, Still Unstoppable
Unstoppable maybe, but a tad less devastating to those he runs afoul. No matter, billionaire Carl Icahn didn’t get where he is today by being easily dissuaded. Too bad for Kraft and Samsung.
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TUESDAY JULY 17
Black Gold Rush
It will go down in history as one of the all-time great trading paydays. Now, as the dust settles on the NYMEX’s initial public offering, we reveal who won, who lost — and why one of the last great bastions of open-outcry will never be the same.
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TUESDAY JULY 17
Sound The Alarms! Behold The $50 Trillion Beast
The credit derivatives market may be suffering from a slight – or horrific – case of overborrowing, depending how you look at it, according to a Fitch survey of 65 banks, insurers and money managers. And we say: 65 entities in a $50 trillion market is hardly a representative sample, so the naysayers can go blow it out their ears.
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MONDAY JULY 16
World Series of Poker Update: July 16
Day 6 of the 2007 WSOP Main Event played out like High Noon in Hadleyville with 36 poker playing gunslingers shooting down Marshall after Marshall on the way to a final table of nine.
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MONDAY JULY 16
Best Golf Resorts: Links Of Luxury
For a man like you (read: stressed-out, demanding, cash-rich), not just any golf resort will do. You need fairways like carpets, pillows like clouds — and a surfeit of world-class links capable of quenching the most obsessive-compulsive golfing habit. Behold the world’s MOST CLASSIC resorts . . . for traders.
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MONDAY JULY 16
Play Of The Day: Selling Uranium Short
And it looks like this one could last a good deal longer than that even, as demand from utilities for nuclear fuel plunges and supply raises the roof.
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MONDAY JULY 16
Investing With An Aesthetic Bent
London’s bumper crop of wine, art, autograph, rare stamp and other exotic hedge funds has an encore that’s unusual even by its standards: A photography investment fund.
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MONDAY JULY 16
Pounded By The Pound
The days of Soros breaking the bank of England are decidedly over: Traders betting against the pound are getting burned as the sterling shoots into the stratosphere, up 4% so far this year to reach a 26-year high.
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MONDAY JULY 16
Clinton Backs Carried-Interest Tax Hike
Wow, big surprise there. Now that Hillary Clinton has joined the likes of Barack Obama and John Edwards on the higher-tax bandwagon, one thing has become painfully clear: Hedge funds and private-equity firms forgot to share their riches with Washington (always a big no-no). And Washington is not happy about it.
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MONDAY JULY 16
Wall Street – Or "Wall Of Worry"?
The stock market is again living up to one of the oldest sayings of the financial world, "climbing a wall of worry" in reaching record heights, even as the housing slump and high energy prices threaten to send it tumbling down.
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MONDAY JULY 16
Get Ready: Subprime Damage Assessment
Today, credit funds will begin unleashing their NAVs for June – or, more to the point, a load of pablum about what they think they made, what they think they lost and some scripted hooey about how much they think they have left. Informative? No. But should be entertaining as an exercise in creative damage control.
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FRIDAY JULY 13
World Series of Poker Update: July 13
Day 3 of the Main Event began with 797 players, each hoping to cash in on the whopping $8.25 million prize. Yes...that's $8.25 million.
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FRIDAY JULY 13
Friday Levity: The CDO Shuffle
The doddering ratings agencies are talking the downgrade talk, but not walking the downgrade walk. Which means there are CDO portfolio managers aplenty having a gay-all time right about now sipping their pink lemonade in Bermudas and raking in heaping fees they don’t deserve on assets they know are grossly overvalued.
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FRIDAY JULY 13
Risk Reward: Position Police
Monitoring trading risk is a complex, imperfect science that confounds even the best practitioners. Meet two doughty men determined to rule the land of the untamed.
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FRIDAY JULY 13
The Jazzy JSE
Guess where the biggest single stock futures market in the world now is? Hint: It’s not in North America, Europe, India or Asia – but it’s kicking their arses.
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FRIDAY JULY 13
Dividends: Not Your Father’s Asset Class
Traders are increasingly finding new and sophisticated ways to rack up the bucks on bets hinging off these mini, semi-annual paydays.
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FRIDAY JULY 13
NYSE’s Swan Song?
OK, so we know that USA Today is waaay late to the party in penning this tear-jerker of a tone poem about the death of a trading floor, but our morbid need to read about the woes of others – combined with our morbid need to read about the woes of others – forces our hand.
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FRIDAY JULY 13
Corporate Loans: Priced To Go
If the credit universe was a supermarket, corporate bonds would be in that malodorous and maligned section marked “clearance meat.”
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FRIDAY JULY 13
From Pork Bellies To Beer Bellies… Again?
The last time the CME switched locations, its former trading floor turned into a gym for the highly paunchified executive set. Now, as it schemes to move to the CBOT’s art-deco headquarters, history may soon repeat itself.
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FRIDAY JULY 13
Dow’s Leap Of Faith
Neither wind (credit snags) nor rain (high energy prices) nor snow (the housing slump) seems to be able to undermine this brawny bull run, as the Dow scores its biggest one-day gain in almost four years.
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THURSDAY JULY 12
World Series of Poker Update: July 12
No limit Hold 'Em main event attracts several celebrities mixed in with the 6,358 players.
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THURSDAY JULY 12
Three Rules: DAX Man
Financial-futures phenom Paul Redmond gets his ticks in big batches by sticking to his trusted game plan.
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THURSDAY JULY 12
Sex Tourism? Sex Tourism!
Apparently, ground zero for this phenom is Riga, the swinging capital of Latvia. And who says? Well…Riga does. Although if you happen to see its posters announcing “sex tourism,” the city will coyly tell you they’re not meant as ads, but as a warning to native women. Whatever you say, Riga, just keep it coming.
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THURSDAY JULY 12
Dollar Drops To Record Low Vs Euro
Subprime mortgage losses are spreading like a bad fungus and there’s not a thing anyone can do about it. You mess with the bull, you get the horns.
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THURSDAY JULY 12
Fighting The Good Fight
Great to see the SEC really chasing down the big, bad fish. Our favorite among its latest victims: Colon End Parenthesis Trust LLC, which sounds to us like it must be one of the bigger fish it’s caught this year. Wowee, that must have been some kind of takedown.
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THURSDAY JULY 12
Brazil’s Fast Cash
The largest portfolio in the world profiting off South America's biggest economy is veering away from its traditional bread-and-butter diet of commodities to interest-rate trades.
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THURSDAY JULY 12
`Margin Debt’ Hits All-Time High
In the orgy of trading that is the New York Stock Exchange, investors are buying record sums – to the tune of $353 billion, to be exact – to finance ever-bulkier bets.
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WEDNESDAY JULY 11
Smashing Pumpkins (Sort Of) Rock Chicago Again
By
Hilary Lewis
The Second City's prodigal band returns with a new album. But much like floor trading at the CBOT, Corgan & Co. aren't what they used to be.
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WEDNESDAY JULY 11
The Trade: Cash Money
Currency futures have emerged as the ultimate trading milieu, offering 24-hour action, an abundance of products and endless strategic triggers. Thank you, volatility.
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WEDNESDAY JULY 11
Get Out Your 10-Foot Pole
And the toxic waste award this morning goes to…European corporate bonds, which are boasting risk levels not seen in at least three years.
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WEDNESDAY JULY 11
Wuffli: Failure Or Fall Guy?
The departure of UBS CEO Peter Wuffli makes a good case for why banks may be too faint-hearted to get mixed up in high-risk investment vehicles like hedge funds. (Even a Swiss bank that, as we recall, had no compunction about getting its feet wet in the Holocaust.)
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WEDNESDAY JULY 11
Government Bonds Skyrocket
A flight to quality by investors after S&P downgraded more than $5 billion in mortgage-backed securities is lifting all boats on a global scale in the government bond market. Could the pendulum finally be swinging the other way?
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WEDNESDAY JULY 11
Hedgies To Blame… Again
Wow, so it must be true: Hedge funds really are responsible for everything bad in this world. Or so the conventional wisdom would have us think. This time, they’re being fingered for inciting “breathtaking” increases in rental fees on prime office space across Manhattan. For shame.
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WEDNESDAY JULY 11
Energy Traders: Brace Yourselves
Looks like U.S. lawmakers are hell-bent on spoiling the party in the off-exchange market. But whether regulators will have the resources, in addition to the authority, to do any effective policing, is enormously unclear.
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WEDNESDAY JULY 11
CME’s Victory May Spark More Mergers
The next main targets: NYMEX (which is ready, willing and able) and the ever-autonomous ICE (which will only go kicking, screaming and gouging its eyes out with paperclips). Let the games begin.
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WEDNESDAY JULY 11
Ground Control To S&P, Moody’s
Newsflash guys, no one – NO ONE – but you thought the subprime debacle was going to end so soon that you wouldn’t have to downgrade hundreds upon hundreds of mortgage-backed securities. Now do exactly as we say: Put down the JD for, like, five seconds, splash some cold water on your faces and get to work, you bums.
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TUESDAY JULY 10
The Head Coach: Vengeance Collar
Whether you realize it or not, sometimes trading becomes a revenge ploy. Avoid this trap — because in your zeal to get even, you might end up getting crushed.
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TUESDAY JULY 10
Mo’ Money, Gates-Style
Bill and Melinda Gates show us what you can do when you have more money than God.
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TUESDAY JULY 10
Tiny Fund, Maximum Windfall
ING’s Paul Joseph Garcia may run the biggest equity fund in the Philippines, but in a country trading less than $100 million in stocks a day, reaping gains takes a steady hand.
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TUESDAY JULY 10
China: Surplus Circus
China’s trade surplus catapulted to a record $26.9 billion in June, topping analysts’ expectations by, oh, a few billion. More than half of that came from the U.S., where lawmakers are sure to renew their ineffectual clamoring for changes.
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TUESDAY JULY 10
ABN’s ADRs: The Loaded Question
NYSE Euronext is looking into trades of ABN’s American depositary receipts just ahead of the bank’s acknowledgement in March that it was in "exclusive preliminary discussions" with Barclays about a certain, still-up-in-the-air merger.
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TUESDAY JULY 10
Securities Fraudster Nabbed
After several carefree years of life on the lam, 35-year-old Michael Berger (self-confessed fraudster formerly of Manhattan Investment Fund) was finally arrested in Austria.
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TUESDAY JULY 10
When In Doubt, Hit The Fairways
When the downfall of a couple of your hedge funds is a gimme, best to chuck it all and tee off, nez pas? Bear Stearns chief executive James E. Cayne certainly did. Meanwhile, the exec running those funds was taking in a movie. It’s good to see all those guys over there at Bear keeping their heads cool.
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TUESDAY JULY 10
Subway Eats Fresh Losses
The billionaire co-founder of sandwich chain Subway lost nearly $200 million on aggressive trades in tech and telecom stocks – then futilely tried to pin it all on his UBS broker.
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MONDAY JULY 09
World Series of Poker Update: July 9
International flavor heats up the competition. This year is probably the best international representation of players and media to come to the biggest poker event of the year.
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MONDAY JULY 09
The Card Shark: Value Betting
Any capable trader can profit from a good position. The masters know how to play for maximum extraction.
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MONDAY JULY 09
Subprime Victim #67354
At this rate, hedge fund closures will soon outstrip home foreclosures. The latest fund down: Braddock Financial Corp.’s Galena Street Fund.
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MONDAY JULY 09
Debunking Junk
The June swoon in junk bonds poses a dilemma for many investors: Is it time to move in and buy at lower prices – or should they wait to see how the market scenario unfolds?
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MONDAY JULY 09
Tales Of 2H Growth Greatly Exaggerated?
Could be, as tighter credit likely means a slowdown in consumer spending and fewer business investments.
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MONDAY JULY 09
None Too Sexy: Hedge Fund IPOs
As it turns out, floating your hedge fund is not exactly akin to swinging from the chandeliers George Soros-style while breaking the Bank of England. In fact, not even close.
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MONDAY JULY 09
What’s Hot: Not The US Bond Market
To put it another way, if you hooked the U.S. Treasury market up to an electroencephalograph, you would see it flatlining.
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MONDAY JULY 09
Yes, But What The Heck Is AQUSA?
Villainous and threatening letters sent to Goldman were signed by A.Q.U.S.A., which clearly means...er, no one really knows. But the blogs are having a field day with it, positing everything from the highly militant to the utterly absurd. Suggestions include, but are not limited to: Al-Aqusa Martyrs Brigade (the military arm of Fatah) Americans Quite Upset with Sachs Administrators and, our favorite, Agnostic Quintets of the United States of America.
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MONDAY JULY 09
How (Not To) Game The Market
Pay heed to the cautionary tale of Theodore Roxford (or Edward Pastorini or Theodore Vakil or Lawrence David Niren – depending on which name you believe) sometime con man, bidder of Sony Corp., non-bestselling author – and now prime target of the SEC.
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FRIDAY JULY 06
World Series of Poker Update: July 6
Erik Seidel wins Event 54, and his eighth champion bracelet.
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FRIDAY JULY 06
The Trading Week: July 8-13
In preparation for the new trading week, here is a quick look at the most important economic events that every currency trader should pay attention to.
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FRIDAY JULY 06
Friday Levity: Death Of A Pay Phone
As the heady revelation of Apple’s iPhone catches on like a bad rash, other phones are having a tougher t
