Gold jumped some $30 on the back of fear. If the U.S. government is going to bail out the banks people realised it was time to bail out of U.S. dollars, bonds and stocks. Guido took profit on the spike, probably far too soon. You don’t go broke taking profits too soon though. Gold carried on through $900 without Guido for the ride.
The euro jumped nearly 2.5% or some 300 pips, biggest move ever. Took profit on that and switched to shorting the dollar against sterling on the possibly irrational idea that other speculators will start to eye a $2 pound and the move against the dollar was not as violent as it was vis-a-vis the euro. The position is a little underwater.
Just to prove what an evil speculator Guido is he shorted the FTSE hard. Am still running the short and marked to market am up some 21.5% overall on the day. A profit or loss of that magnitude in a day signals too much leverage in too volatile a market. Strangely traders never mind violent P&L swings when they are to the plus side. Friday’s broad stock market gains evaporated, oil hit $125 a barrel. Tomorrow can’t be this volatile, can it?
The FT’s Alphaville blog (“The Site That Supports our Shorts”) highlights a Downing Street petition to criminalise consenting behaviour between capitalists. They want to criminalise short selling. Some trade union boss told the Labour Party conference he wants to tax us into extinction. Tax us to the Bahamas more likely.
Sheila Murphy, Regional Director for the Labour Party’s Northern region has announced she is quitting. Sheila was closely linked to Peter Hain’s ill fated campaign team. She is known to be close to David Evans, the ex-Deputy General Secretary, who is busy working with the rebel MPs to get Brown out.
Will the last Labour Party apparatchik switch off the light?
Vaz spotted Gordon outside the Midland Hotel Saturday night. He strolled over smiling and said to Brown “Hello Gordon, how are you?” Gordon switched off his smile and walked off without saying word.
This is the man who saved Gordon’s bacon over detention without charge. How rude and ungrateful. Vaz is after all such a paragon of integrity that he has asked the sleaze watchdog to investigate himself.
Via: Boulton & Co.
The BBC’s business editor Robert Peston, currently the object of the frustrations of a substantial number of City fund managers who think he should be done for creating a false market in HBOS, has fisked yesterday’s Marr interview with Gordon.- Gordon said it is the right time for the government to borrow – as if he had a choice – the PSBR could reach £100 billion. Double the budget estimate.
- Gordon took the credit for the FSA’s banning of short selling. Does he take the credit for the FSA’s failure to monitor Northern Rock’s liquidity problems as well?
- Brown blamed global problems and everyone else, as if he was blameless.
- He misrepresented the real reason for Bank of England’s flood of liquidity.
