FT Alphaville

This is a speech Ed Miliband made on “stewardship” banking last year… at the Co-op. This is a speech by George Osborne hailing 2013 as the year we changed British banks, including the planned sale of Lloyds branches to… the Co-op. Which deal then collapsed.Continue reading: A Co-op mess...

Elsewhere on Friday, - “…old hedge fund guys tend to be goldbugs and hyperinflation hypochondriacs” - HFT goes microwave. - A tale of two oil states. - A history of negative rates in repo. Continue reading: Further reading...

Japanese stocks soar || Yen weakens further beyond 100 || Vietnam cuts interest rates || Report criticises ENRC Congo deals || Hester determined to lead RBS sell-off || Schauble warns of monetary easing risks || Japan CA surplus highest for a year || Europe households' debt burden exceeds US Continue...

ROUND-UP Equities pause as focus shifts to FX: “Wall Street’s run of record highs finally came to an end as the focus shifted to the currency markets following the dollar’s first break above the Y100 level for four years. The dollar’s move came against a backdrop of increasing policy accomodation...

There was big news early Thursday morning when Fannie Mae announced that it will be paying the Treasury a whopping $59.4bn dividend, just a day after Freddie Mac announced a more modest but still welcome $7bn payment. The big payout is mainly a result of Fannie’s recognition that it will...

Continue reading: USDJPY 100, eh?...

Nanex, the market analysts who like to create visual representations of the markets, have animated half a second of trading activity in Johnson & Johnson stock. The results are quite intoxicating to watch: Continue reading: It’s not finance, it’s Cy-fi...

WTI crude prices are on the rise, but only at the expense of Brent’s premium. The spread between the two crude grades shrank below $8 this week, its lowest since January 2011. But what’s really striking is the rise in US crude output, which has risen 57,000 barrels a day to...

Some light securitisation reading on Thursday; actually, more like some general ‘how much of western capitalism might be insolvent, anyway?’ reading. It’s the UK Supreme Court’s judgment in the the Eurosail case. Continue reading: (Possibly) balance-sheet insolvent issuers, rejoice...

Behold — an illustrative chart from Morgan Stanley’s global economics team (click to enlarge): Continue reading: The Great Squiggle of central banking...

This has been the breakout performance of electric car maker Tesla in the last month or so: Continue reading: Tesla’s rise and the credit connection...

Something that missed our radar back in March was the Federal Reserve’s proposal to allow systemically important FMUs (financial market utilities) to establish accounts with the central bank and thereby get paid interest on their reserves, much like the primary dealers. This sounds unsexy as it is, but the quick...

Asian stocks outside Japan climbed as the Bank of Korea cut interest rates and News Corp’s earnings beat estimates. Japanese stocks were slightly lower as the yen strengthened. (Bloomberg) Today: The BoE’s MPC meets and is expected to maintain its target for asset purchases. Jobless-claims data will be released in...

ROUND-UP FT markets round-up: “Encouraging macro data releases from China and Germany offered further support to equity bulls as global stock indices climbed to fresh cyclical highs. Chinese export growth picked up to 14.7 per cent in the year to April from 10 per cent in the previous month, while...

For the commute home, - A call to end the Troika in European crises.Continue reading: Further further reading...

… doesn’t exist, but it would have underperformed the past year: A Financial Times analysis of last year’s tips shows decidedly mixed results. An investor who followed every top idea from the 12 speakers last year would have made 19 per cent, less than the 22 per cent gain available...

(Charts via Capital Economics.) The trend is consistent with what appears to be a spring slowdown in global growth. It’s probably worth noting that the wild fluctuations in the headline rate have had only a muted impact on core inflation in the past decade. Just something to keep in mind when...

We’re going to need a new name for junk bonds. They’re yielding less than 5 per cent for the first time ever (h/t to our own Tracy Alloway): The 5% yield barrier has proved no match for this Federal Reserve-fueled junk-bond market, which last night reached yet another all-time record-low average...

(That 1989 pic via the Daily Mail’s Matt Fortune) Twenty-three years, the Glazers, a JOBS Act-assisted listing in New York — and $3bn of market capitalisation later…Continue reading: Going ex-Sir Alex...

With less than a month to go, several of this blogger’s mental faculties seem to have gone offline. In the space that previously housed “fear of public failure,” new tenants have arrived in the form of after-tax return equations, biases that impact investment decisions, and a multitude of currency hedging...