Another Slow Day
Posting :
Larry Levin
:
05/14/2008
Although there was a little action at the open today, the majority of the day was a real snoozer. The June S&P barely had an 11-point range; and the vast majority of today's action traded within a 4.50-point range.
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Liquid Assets
Article :
May 2008
When weathering today’s financial storms, it pays to cover your positions. But there’s a sizable difference between merely staying dry and braving the elements in sartorial splendor. These raincoats are guaranteed to turn heads . . . even when those around you are losing theirs...
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And Now, A Word From The Back Office...
Article :
May 2008
Signaling the rash of job cuts stalking the financial community is beginning to singe even the most devout workers – you know, the ones who got up early, kept their heads down, never fussed, put their backs uncomplainingly to the grind (not to mention refraining from brown-nosing, water-cooler gossip and all office-politicking, and are beginning now to think the better of it) – this open letter from one fallen Bartleby stands as an ominous warning of what happens to those who come to Wall Street with stars in their eyes.
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The Trade: Dead Man’s Curve
Article :
April 2008
Be it steep or inverted, traders enjoy a good yield-curve bet. But with the long bond taking on a life of its own and credit markets gone haywire, playing rate spreads can be one dangerous game. A few pointers.
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Et Tu, Myron?
Article :
April 2008
After Meriwether, it seems former LTCMers can’t catch a break. How Platinum Grove Asset Management, the $5.8 billion hedge fund group commandeered by our idol, Myron Scholes – options-pricing king, heat-diffusion physics theorist (both things not entirely unrelated) Nobel Laureate and all-around good guy – fell on hard times with the latest heave of the fixed-income market.
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Hot News, Gossip and Industry Dish
Article :
April/May 2008
The Peloton Brief
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Ask The Dream Doctor
Article :
April/May 2008
One forgetful quant neglects his dogs— AND discovers that his biological clock might be ticking.
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Liquid Assets
Article :
April/May 2008
With their high-tech fibers and high-fashion cuts, these raincoats block out the worst of the downpour - even when your financial sky is falling.
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Rare Weekend 4.3.08: Your Weekend Starts Now
Posting :
Raredaily.com Rare Weekend
:
04/03/2008
The newest and hottest in fine dining, nightlife, travel and men's style, from New York City to Los Angeles.
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Help Save The World: (Part 2)
Posting :
Mark Whistler
:
04/01/2008
Please read on for Part II of this special article on how you can help save the world.
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The Larry Levin File: A Shot Across the Bow
Posting :
Larry Levin
:
03/31/2008
Last week a news flash came and went - practically unnoticed. The world's
fifth-largest pension fund will no longer buy US Treasuries because yields
are too low. The move signals what could be a big shift by financial
institutions away from US government debt into higher-yielding assets.
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The Trade
Article :
April/May 2008
Be it steep or inverted, traders enjoy a good yield-curve bet. But with the long bond taking on a life of its own and credit markets gone haywire, playing rate spreads can be one dangerous game.
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Rare Weekend 3.27.08: Your Weekend Starts Now
Posting :
Raredaily.com Rare Weekend
:
03/27/2008
The newest and hottest in fine dining, nightlife, travel and men's style, from New York City to Los Angeles.
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(Good) Friday Levity: Hit The Clown
Article :
March 2008
With all the head-scratching these days over just how the subprime meltdown managed to move from Wall Street to Main Street, we’ve noticed the timely resurrection of this – the deposition of mortgage company CEO Aron Wider, whose dropping of the F-bomb during his grilling rivaled that of the script of Goodfellas (and, incidentally, showed just how awesome the people are running the mortgage market). Here, some of the more widely published highlights of his exceedingly blue transcript.
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Liquidity Alert: What Gives, Bear Stearns?
Article :
March 2008
We would be lying if we claimed Wall Street was having a great day even before the Spitzer kibitzer. Rumors were already flying that potential liquidity bottlenecks could now be plaguing Bear Stearns. While the bank denies there’s any problem, it seems that credit indices are widening sharply as the cost of protecting bank bonds against default reach record levels. Time to prepare for more shock waves?
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Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy
Posting :
Larry Levin
:
03/10/2008
The market took another one the chin Friday, closing below 11,900, the worst close since Oct. 11th 2006. The bull market clearly suffers from bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) - Mad Cow Disease. And don't get too close or you'll surely catch the human form of BSE, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which "value buyers"
suffer from in spades. The transmissible disease is said to be caused by prions; however, during this mad-cow market, the disease spreads between analysts and investors via "buy & hope" as well as desperation.
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What Would John Galt Do?
Article :
March 2008
Who says we should have laissez-faire capitalism in good times and government-led bailouts in bad ones? Why anarchy – with a hefty dose of personal accountability – could be the answer.
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Something Wicked This Way Comes
Article :
March 2008
Brace yourself for some crazy markets today. Stocks are tanking. Corporate bonds are tanking. The dollar is tanking. Key interest rates will soon be tanking (again). And labor data about to be released is expected to show the jobless rate in the U.S. rising in February to a two-year high while payrolls likely climbed only at a quarter of last year's pace – which, considering last year, isn’t saying much. Want more? We’ll give you more.
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I Need More Cowbell!
Posting :
Larry Levin
:
03/06/2008
For weeks now the market has been on pins and needles, waiting for Ambac to announce a package that will (somehow) keep it’s AAA-rating. When rumors (of nothing new) went through Wall Street, it created violent reversals higher.
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‘Irrational Pessimism’?
Article :
March 2008
Is the bond market now so lowly rated as to be underrated? Just ask Jim Reid and his crack team at Deutsche Bank, which every year makes a habit of publishing this influential analysis of credit markets that puts current yields and fundamentals in historical perspective.
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The Trade: Bring The Heat
Article :
February 2008
If the weather outside is frightful, the volatility and trading opportunities in heating oil can be delightful.
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Head Butler - Books - Her Last Death by Susanna Sonnenberg
Posting :
Jesse Kornbluth
:
02/22/2008
What kind of daughter gets the most dreaded of all phone calls --- “Your mother's been in an accident, she's probably going to die” --- and doesn't drop everything to rush to mom's bedside? In this case, a smart one.
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Reads: Bad News Bull
Article :
February 2008
A few trading lessons from the twentieth century’s chaos and warfare. More or less in that order.
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Small Cap
Article :
February/March 2008
Had a nice little Tuesday? Successfully moved a few credit default swaps? Hey, you’ve pocketed enough to buy yourself a jet.
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Bring the Heat
Article :
February/March 2008
If the weather outside is frightful, the volatility and trading
opportunities in heating oil can be delightful.
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Bad News Bull
Article :
February/March 2008
Trading lessons from the twentieth century’s chaos and warfare.
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Davos: Then And Now
Article :
January 2008
Lest you think the global economic belt-tightening extends to annual conferences at Swiss ski resorts, think again. However, the mood this year is decidedly less jubilant than what we saw in 2007. Here, CEOs and investors speak frankly about their greatest fears for 2008.
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Having Your SIVs And Eating It, Too
Article :
January 2008
Literally. Bondholders in structured-investment vehicles, caught in the slamming door of the subprime snafu, have now lost nearly 50% of the value of their assets. Guess how many have already gone out of business and how many still remain on the chopping block? Hint: more than any commercial-paper junkie can bear.
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The Dollar: What Goes Down, Must Come Up?
Article :
January 2008
So, forex has yet to go the distance in discounting weaker economic growth, says the head of currency research at Lehman Brothers in London – but just how far off is it and what does that mean for the long-suffering greenback?
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Head Butler - Books - "Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic" by Tom Holland
Posting :
Jesse Kornbluth
:
01/04/2008
Is America Rome?
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Commodity Heads Just Kept on Walking, Rising… and Rolling
Article :
January 2008
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The Great Refinancing
Article :
December 2007
Wall Street is likely on the cusp of a massive refinancing of corporate bonds – to the tune of $557 billion, according to Bank of America. As one can imagine, that won’t exactly have a nothing effect on the broader debt market.
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Performance: Hold It Now
Article :
December 2007
As the NYMEX transitions from open-outcry to the world’s biggest electronic arcade, here’s the whiz-bang gadget locals are increasingly using to execute trades.
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Awesome August: My Best/Worst Trade
Article :
December 2007
The month was four weeks to forget for much of the trading world, but this past August brought sorely missed market volatility — and one equity options trader’s best month of performance ever.
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DealmakerDaily.com: Meet the 2007 Rainmakers
Article :
November 2007
With this year destined to go down as one of the most volatile in recent M&A history, a few select names weathered storms spectacularly well. When a deal needed to get done amid intensified shareholder activism and credit-market calamity, who got the call? We've sorted through hundreds of peer nominations to compile the most prestigious list in investment banking.
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Reads: Look-Alike Option
Article :
November 2007
Ballsy Ivy Leaguers and BSDs are back again in this latest doorstopper from Ben Mezrich.
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It’s The Yen, Stupid
Article :
November 2007
Is it true there’s an unmistakable correlation between the ups and downs in the global stock market and the spreads between the yen and the euro? That is the humble opinion of one outspoken wealth manager in today’s Financial Times. Perhaps today is the perfect day to test his hypothesis: the yen is swooning against 16 of the world’s most actively traded currencies. Read on for the method behind his madness.
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This Week In Wall Street History
Article :
November 2007
Just like the adage says, those who don’t learn from history are destined to repeat it. But you, piker, don’t have time for history books. What you do have time for are very, very quick reads that offer instant enlightenment. And we are all about that with this, our inaugural This Week In Wall Street History column. Give the other smart-alecks at the water cooler a run for their money as you become the office’s new master of minutiae.
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Look-Alike Option
Article :
November 2007
Ballsy Ivy Leaguers are back yet
again in the latest from Ben Mezrich
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Hold It Now
Article :
November 2007
As the NYMEX transitions from
open-outcry to the world’s biggest electronic arcade, locals can either embrace handheld trading —
or head upstairs.
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Awesome August
Article :
November 2007
The month was four weeks to forget for much of the trading world, but this past August brought sorely missed market volatility — and my best month of performance ever.
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Reads: Shelf Lifers
Article :
October 2007
You probably think you’ve read the greatest business books of all time, huh? We suspect you’ve overlooked a gem or two. Here, our definitive list of doorstoppers to end all doorstoppers for the truly erudite trader.
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When Even Hindsight Gets Messy
Article :
September 2007
It's easy to criticize Ben Bernanke from your armchair. But you really don't have a leg to stand on when you can't even give a decent post-mortem of the Fed rate cut without waffling every two seconds about whether it was bad or good. That hasn't stopped two distinct camps from trying, though.
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October: Could It Happen Today?
Article :
October 2007
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Shelf Lifers
Article :
October 2007
Ten terrific tomes every literary-minded trader should own.
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Fashion: Cuffs & Links
Article :
September 2007
With today's sleek cuts and vibrant colors, find out why "golf fashion" is no longer a misnomer.
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Getting Smarter – Or Just Getting Better At Looking Stupid?
Article :
September 2007
Deutsche Bank, UBS and Citigroup told their investors to bet against the British pound before it leapt to a 26-year high in July. Okay, so that wasn't so inspired. But now that the U.S. subprime contagion is spreading like the Bubonic throughout Europe, they just might catch a break.
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Cruel Summer Update
Article :
September 2007
So, how much did August bite for hedge funds? Well, a lot.
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Reads: The Shining
Article :
September 2007
A tale of trading chicanery, filthy lucre and shoe polish.
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Stranger Than Fiction: Tales Of A Hedge Fund Hit Man
Article :
August 2007
What do you get when you mix a cabal of all-star hedge fund managers, a mysterious note mailed to an Anglican church, a "wayward" parishioner and stock play involving a Toronto insurance company? Heck if we know – but, for our money, this story is probably too weird not to be true.
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