L: 49% S:0% G: 49% N: 49% ~ $D 40% $G 100% $V 0% $P 2%
There was a very interesting point made by Macroman who’s excellent blog is read on a daily basis, essentially to paraphrase poorly it might make sense for China to weaken the RMB versus the EUR rather than the dollar. This would help their deflation fighting measures, perhaps explaining some of the EUR/USD move that we have been seeing.
The Raven has been lucky this morning picking up some BARC and flipping it. He also bought some upside calls, which he’s happy to hang on to.
Another piece of interesting chatter over the last couple of weeks has been the conspicuous lack of praise from Obama for Bernanke and this has led to speculation that he would be replaced, crazy talk if you ask the Raven!?
Indeed there has been a lot of speculation over the last couple of weeks, another interesting tid-bit that this is insurance driven flow and a large worry about their solvency. This doesn’t square with the volumes that the Raven has been seeing in the market.
The gold/oil spread has been moving in the ‘right’ direction again, ie reduction in risk premium in gold going down and oil rising hinting at rising economic demand.
The Raven is going to do some work on the tech space ex-IBM, which has been a retail darling of late (after the Raven sold it unfortunately).