The Oil Trader

LTRO day ,finally after a couple of months of speculation on the amounts that banks would take in the 2nd round of quantitative easing by the back door from the ECB, we finally know the exact amount...€530B which was better then some extreme estimation's that were predicting that banks would take close to a €1Trillion! There are two points here which are important to take out from this latest take from the banks, firstly is the fact that the first feared stigma related to the banks taking money from this tenders and that would be a sign of weakness, is completely out of the window, actually it seem that the opposite is true, secondly the fact that banks encounter themselves in a bit of a paradox in terms of the amount they should bid for, this because too little would signal a lost opportunity in enhanced earnings,even if small, through the use of the funds in possible carry trades and of course the refinancing needs at a very cheap rate, but on the other hand, if they take to

I am writing and the Us markets yet to close are in a complete meltdown, this time not because of their own banks but because of the mess in Europe sovereign debt and the poor financial positions Europeans banks are in, due to the exposure on the debt they have to countries as the likes of the PIIGS countries! Also not helping is the lack of coordinated actions by the major central banks around the world, which finally last week made a coordinated intervention because of the long due shortness of US $ and the lack of access from some Europeans banks had to fund their US $ needs, so they announced a new start of swap line between the major CB and the FED. Yesterday also the FED spooked the markets, with their lacklustre operation "twist" , which in the end is just a maturity transformation exercise and didn't announced any mew stimulus measures, which the market, ahead of it self had priced in, so once it was confirmed nothing more new was coming from the FED, the o

Are we in a recession already? According to the latest data it seems or we are already or very close, at least in the US, and if the US economy is in recession and still being the biggest in terms of nominal $ in the world, probably the world economy will follow suit, even as the EM economies are forecast to keep growing at healthy levels, but not enough to off set the weak US and European economic present state. Let's look at this great chart (courtesy of John Mauldin and street talk advisor's): As we can see in this chart the US economy is already or very close to recession, and even this being a new formed index, not just the creator have a great street credentials but also the components they used are leading indicators and highly correlated to predicting correctly recessions/growth! At the same time we have the serious problems in Europe, where not just governments are cutting spending, to balance their overstretched finances plus the banking system there is insolv

Welcome to one of my blogs, where not just you will be able to see any live trades I execute(also through the Twitter feed on the left side) but where I put across my points of view about present economic issues but also any relevant issues and opinions I feel that maybe of some interest to our common goals, to accumulate wealth through speculation and proper and sound investments. I will for now be short and will come back, still this weekend, where I will start to open discussions on the "almost" flash crash of last week, on the new downgrade from S&P credit rating agency to the US, from AAA to AA+ and also on the mountain of worries that Europe have to climb this week to calm and anchor the markets from possible meltdown! This is where we stand for the week in the S&P 500 :  So, see you soon!!