The Blame Game Claims More Victims
Posted by John Forman in Market Commentary, tags: BATS, cup-and-handle, Facebook, FB, GBP/USD, greece, Jaimie Dimon, JPM, losses, NASDAQ, QE, trading
I bet right about now Jamie Dimon at JP Morgan is quite pleased to have the Facebook fiasco all over the news to take some of the spotlight off his little derivatives problem. As I write this (Tuesday morning), JPM is up 5% and FB is down nearly the same amount on the day. Personally, I think there’s way too much being made of the whole Facebook IPO story – though I do think the NASDAQ system problems is an interesting story, especially after the BATS failed IPO a little while back – but admittedly the rest of the news has gotten rather stagnant. I actually begged CNBC via Twitter on Friday to talk about something, anything, but Facebook, but struggled to come up with a good alternate subject.
Naturally, there’s a blame game going on as to whose fault it is the stock has taken a dive. We can never really know how things would have turned out if the NASDAQ system had functioned properly, but that won’t prevent folks from trying to do so. Finding someone to blame, of course, is a favorite pastime these days. Traders certainly do it when they take losses. After all, it can’t be my fault I lost money on my position. It must be those evil banks, unethical brokers, or speculators gone wild (unless, of course, they are moving prices the direction I want). Yes, I am a speculator. Obviously, I’m talking about the other speculators, though – especially the ones with computers faster than mine. Yeah, the high frequency guys. It’s all their fault! They’re preventing me from moving out of the 99% and in to the 1%. Something really needs to be done about them.
Thankfully, today we’ve returned to the on-going back and forth between European central bankers and political leaders over what to do about the mess. It’s kind of refreshing after the all-Facebook-all-the-time chatter. Everybody seems to want Greece to stay in the euro, but it looks like we won’t find out until the middle of June as to whether the Greek people share that view. You’ll notice the German rhetoric on the subject of austerity and whatnot has cooled considerably. Could that be because suddenly they aren’t doing all that great either and the weak euro that’s coming out of all this actually tends to help Germany more than most on the export side of things?
Then there’s the on-going question of whether the US can remain out of the fray and avoid too much in the way of economic damage from all the European issues. I’m moving to England in the fall to start work on a PhD, so you know I’m looking for the dollar to go on a fantastic run higher to make my greenbacks go farther. Unfortunately, the UK retained the pound rather than join the euro. The photo going around of David Cameron with arms raised celebrating Chelsea’s performance against Bayern Munich in the Champions League final on Saturday (at last an English team beat a German one in penalties!) alongside a much less enthused Angela Merkel could just as easily represent the British feeling about having their own currency through all the mess. I’m hoping the Bank of England decides to do more QE. That ought to sink the pound.
In the meantime, back to my charts.
Oh look! There’s a cup-and-handle setting up on the weekly USD Index chart. Maybe the markets will help me get cheaper pounds without the QE.
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