Jittery markets

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Jittery markets

What do they do, then?

[ursus arctos]

Jittery markets

Run companies with thousands of employees, for one.

They don't run their own books.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Jittery markets

Lots of people run companies with thousands of employees. Not all of them pay themselves millions upon millions of pounds in order to do so (especially in industries where you have to actually make a profit, not simply cream it from customers with no real service provided, like the investment industry). I reiterate, what do they actually do?

[ursus arctos]

Jittery markets

I'm fascinated by the idea that the CEO's of brokerage firms "pay themselves millions upon millions of pounds".

How do they manage to do that without the shareholders cottoning on?

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Jittery markets

Because the major shareholders are similarly sat on their yachts sipping cocktails, and couldn't really give a shit?

[WOM]

Jittery markets

I'm fascinated by the CEOs of huge companies that don't earn millions of pounds. And the investment industry that doesn't provide a real service. The fuck?

[WOM]

Jittery markets

Rogin the Armchair Fan wrote: Because the major shareholders are similarly sat on their yachts sipping cocktails, and couldn't really give a shit?

Who do you imagine the shareholders of large companies to be? Like....seriously....you're picturing cigar-chomping billionaires on yachts?

[EIM]

Jittery markets

Cocktails on yachts would be daft an all.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

Jittery markets

Boozing on yachts. That topic always gives me a flashback to when I was a kid of 7 or 8, seeing advertising hoardings which promoted Lamb's Navy Rum with a picture of some golf club type bloke in marine leisurewear drinking rum on a yacht with a couple of bikini-clad lovelies, over the slogan "Join the Lamb's Navy". That raised so many puzzling questions in my young mind: what was this "Lamb's Navy" organisation, and how did it relate to the usual British Navy? Why did the people in the picture look so unready for any kind of naval conflict? And why did its female sailors have such a skimpy uniform?

[E10 Rifle]

Jittery markets

I think this sums everything up quite succinctly, on an intellectual and emotional level.

[ursus arctos]

Jittery markets

Perhaps I'm way off base here, but is that supposed to evoke Pidgin?

[E10 Rifle]

Jittery markets

Nah, I read it as kind of simplified toddler language

[ursus arctos]

Jittery markets

That's a relief

Everything is going gangbusters outside of the PRC right now, given the Chinese cut in interest rates.

New York is going to open way up.

[SouthdownRebel]

Jittery markets

I must admit I read it as an attempt at someone Chinese trying to "speeky speeky Engrish" and somewhere on the spectrum between "not very funny" and "possibly rather offensive" but I'd happily stand corrected.

Meanwhile, the scene - a Gala Bingo hall in Beijing

[WOM]

Jittery markets

Yeah, it hit me as Engrish, too.

[ursus arctos]

Jittery markets

The deepest secret of the markets revealed

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Jittery markets

Without much real panic or reportage in mainstream media, the FTSE index has dropped like a stone in February so far, from around 6100 to around 5600. Is something brewing behind the scenes that we don't know about, to make people suddenly want to be selling their stocks in such a frenzy? It can't just be about Storm Imogen.

[ursus arctos]

Jittery markets

Erm, the Guardian has been running a live blog all week.

[WOM]

Jittery markets

a) The price of oil is on a steady decline
b) Economic growth seems to be slowing or stagnant

Neither of these contributes to a rising stock market. It's nothing to panic about.

You know how stock charts go up and down and up and down, but historically trend upward over time. This is one of those 'down' bits.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Jittery markets

That's pretty much what our financial dude says. It's bad, but not scary bad like 2008.

[Nocturnal Submission]

Jittery markets

Rogin the Armchair Fan wrote: Without much real panic or reportage in mainstream media, the FTSE index has dropped like a stone in February so far, from around 6100 to around 5600. Is something brewing behind the scenes that we don't know about, to make people suddenly want to be selling their stocks in such a frenzy? It can't just be about Storm Imogen.

As has been said, the price of oil, a slowing Chinese economy and various geopolitical developments are behind the fall. And don't forget, most companies in the FTSE100 are British companies operating in international markets. The market rises or falls in accordance with international economic sentiment rather than in Britain alone.

[San Bernardhinault]

Jittery markets

Isn't the mess that Deutsche Bank is in adding to the particular nervousness this week?

[slackster]

Jittery markets

I switched out of equities completely in December and am feeling a bit smug about it. But then I've called the last few bear markets correctly...although I've had about 17 "Panic NOW!" moments in all over that period, so I'm still in Chimp Aiming At A Dartboard territory.

Some of the problem this time is the lack of tools in the armoury for macro-intervention. There's virtually no interest-rate wriggle-room and QE/Debt is already sky-high, for instance, plus the globalised nature of capital these days has become so disconnected from nation state-level democratic will it's hard for Governments to step in effectively.

I wouldn't go full-on Wolfgang Streeck about it (well worth a read on this topic & esp. The EU) and call the end of days, as capitalism has an uncanny habit of mutating rather than expiring, but I fear some Interesting Times ahead the next few years.

[ursus arctos]

Jittery markets

Isn't the mess that Deutsche Bank is in adding to the particular nervousness this week?

Deutsche in particular and European banks in general, yes.

Though everything was up significantly this morning after Schauble said that he wasn't worried about DB. Deutsche itself was up more than 10% on the day before falling back a bit.

[E10 Rifle]

Jittery markets

Talk of Deutsche Bank piques my interest a bit more these days, since their losing a court case against my football club's owner (about which they disclose no details) seems to be the main cause of his wealth.

Which Slackster will be aware of, of course.