Jul 1, 2010

Back in the seventies, a German bank named Herstatt Bank earned an ignominious place in history. It opened for business one sunny summer’s day, and halfway through the day, it settled some of its outstanding FX transactions by taking in a whole bunch of Deutschmarks - the idea being that later in the day, when its US clearing bank opened for business, it would pay out the US dollars that were on the opposite side of those dollar-mark trades.

May 2, 2010

On March 2nd, 2000 - less than a week before the Nasdaq Composite index hit its all-time peak - network equipment maker 3Com spun off its Palm mobile-devices division in a blaze of tech-bubble-fuelled glory. The IPO was originally priced at $14-16 per share, then revised sharply higher to $32-36, then finally priced at $38 - and when it hit the boards, the tech stock frenzy kicked in. Palm stock began its first day of trading at $145.

Dec 3, 2009

With less than a month left in this decade (have we even decided what to call it yet? Is it officially the Noughties?), it’s time to look back, reflect, and make fun of all the stupid investment calls that people made back in 2000. And here’s a doozy: Fortune magazine’s “10 Stocks To Last The Decade”. (Hat tip to Seeking Alpha for the link and the inspiration.) Quoth: […]if you’re a long-term investor, these ten should put your retirement account in good stead and protect you from those recurring nightmares about the stocks that got away.

Sep 29, 2009

This article was buried in the Arts section of Saturday’s NYT - and unjustly so, because the writer has stumbled on yet another bubble being pumped up by Chinese money. Last year it was stocks. The year before that it was 100-year-old fermented tea leaves. This year it’s Chinese antiquities of dubious provenance (emphasis added): If you wonder how good the mood really is in China, forget the annual growth rate, the Shanghai Stock Exchange and the rest.

Jan 13, 2009

The BBC website has just posted a rather good glossary of terms that’ve cropped up a lot in coverage of the Continuing Financial Crisis From Hell. It’s missing a certain something, though. Here, then, is JRE’s Alternate Finance Crisis Glossary. AAA-rating 1) A guarantee of financial soundness, that the AAA-rated product will almost never fail. See also: New Orleans levees. 2) A BBB-rating after it’s been leveraged up fifteen times.