Posts Tagged ‘Catalonia’

Notes From Underground: Trading Strategies For An Automated World

October 10, 2017

Yesterday, I sat down with the group TOPSTEP TRADER to discuss ways I prepare to trade. Topstep is a private group that educates/prepares potential traders for a profitable existence. As the fourth quarter has begun, I thought this video would be beneficial as a review for my readers. Reviewing rules and concepts are important, especially as I BELIEVE WE ARE HEADING INTO A PERIOD OF INCREASED VOLATILITY. A rise in market volatility can be a time of great profit but it comes with a major increase in risk. The complacency of the market because of the central banks continued intervention coupled with the risk selling of the risk-parity crowd. I say crowd because it is not just AQR and Bridgewater involved in risk parity but there are many volatility sellers piggy backing on the power of the largest market players. Remember, when George Soros/Druckenmiller broke the Bank of England in September 1992, it wasn’t just Soros but many of the banks servicing Soros were tailcoating the Quantum Fund. But when the elephants leave the drinking hole many denizens of the jungle get crushed (Niederhoffer).

(more…)

Notes From Underground: A Quick Look at Spain’s Catalonia Elections

November 25, 2012

The Greek debt issue will be resolved for the moment–as we have maintained for months. What is 31 BILLION EUROS among friends? Now that the Catalan independence parties have won a resounding victory in the Spanish region of Catalonia, the political waters of Europe have become murkier. It will be doubtful that Catalonia will actually secede from the Spanish polity but the mere threat will mean that Brussels will have to become more involved in pushing billions of more euros into the Spanish coffers. The Catalans are angry because they send far more euros to Madrid than they receive back in Barcelona. According to the most recent data from 2009, Catalonia had sent 16.4 billion euros more to the Spanish Treasury than flowed back to the region.

(more…)

Notes From Underground: Devil With The Blue Suit On

September 24, 2012

In his regular Monday Financial Times column, Wolfgang Munchau takes full aim at Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann for trying to make ECB President Draghi the devil incarnate. Because Weidmann invoked the Faustian character, Mephistopheles, from German hero Goethe’s play Dr. Faustus, Munchau accuses the Bundesbank President of undermining the policies of the ECB. Weidmann is going directly to the German public to plead his case that the ECB is taking the EU down the road of inflationary hell and monetary debasement. Munchau takes up the Draghi/Bernanke/Woodford argument that “the debate about nominal income targeting, where a central bank no longer stabilizes the inflation rate directly but focuses instead on stabilizing NOMINAL GDP (emphasis mine).” Munchau assumes that the central banks would be vigilante in controlling inflation but offers no view about what happens if NGDP rises with a significant rise in inflation but unemployment has not met the desired target.

(more…)