Posts by "qiman"

An excellent CHF article for traders:

A question looms for Philipp Hildebrand, the chairman of the Swiss National Bank: Was it worth it?

The SNB is expected next month to report a paper loss of as much as 10 billion Swiss francs ($9.5 billion) as a result of the massive intervention efforts that started in March 2009 in an effort to slow the rise of the Swiss franc against the euro, the Financial Times has reported.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/swiss-strength-underlines-intervention-futility-2010-07-16

With all of the spam lately clogging up this excellent professional site, and often posted in categories which are completely unrelated, I am wondering if a filter can be set up which automatically blocks posts about robots? I know there can be some legitimate posts about such things, as with catnip, but they are very rare!

"An upcoming change to Japan's margin trading regulations will likely support the yen in the coming weeks. Some analysts estimate margin trading comprises as much as 20% to 30% of yen trading liquidity here on any given day.

Last year, the Financial Services Agency announced it would set limits on how much foreign-exchange investors can buy on margin, in order to protect "Mrs. Watanabe" - no relation to the Your Party leader. The common surname has become the collective moniker for Japan's retail investors, in a country where housewives are often in charge of family budget and investment decisions.

The plan calls for the leverage cap to be set at 50 times the amount of principle cash committed starting in August, and then further cut to 25 times next year.

The rule change came after a spate of local media reports about some of these housewives losing huge sums, trading on margin hundreds of times the minimum amount they were required to invest up front to open their accounts.

Tohru Sasaki, chief foreign-exchange strategist for Japan at J.P. Morgan Securities in Tokyo, estimated in a report this week that "Mr. and Mrs.Watanabe" hold about 6 trillion yen ($67 billion) of short-yen positions, which he said is "almost the same level as the peak in 2007."

While Sasaki doesn't expect a flood of unwinding, he does expect some yen-buying stemming from the new regulations, as the Watanabes unwind their positions to comply with the new rules."
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/short-term-yen-support-is-real-2010-07-14?link=kiosk

This article is loaded with documentation, some will find it quite interesting:

Scientific Proof That High Frequency Trading Induces Adverse Changes In Market Microstructure And Dynamics, And Puts Market Fairness Under Question

In a research paper by Reginald Smith of the Bouchet Franklin Institute in Rochester titled "Is high-frequency trading inducing changes in market microstructure and dynamics?" the author finds that he "can clearly demonstrate that HFT is having an increasingly large impact on the microstructure of equity trading dynamics. Traded value, and by extension trading volume, fluctuations are starting to show self-similarity at increasingly shorter timescales.
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/scientific-proof-high-frequency-trading-induces-adverse-changes-market-microstructure-and-dy

This is a VERY important article regarding Germany's ideas for Europe:

Fearing a lasting burden on taxpayers, the German government is preparing a set of insolvency rules for countries in the euro zone. It would require private investors to bear some of the financial burden and force the affected countries to give up some sovereignty. The plan is guaranteed to meet with resistance.

To avert future problems, the Germans have asked their experts to assemble a package of reforms that could stabilize the construct of the European Monetary Union in important ways -- if, that is, the partner countries play along. And even then, it cannot be ruled out that some countries could go bankrupt in the future.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,705959,00.html