Credit Storm in Europe
by ilene - May 29th, 2010 1:20 pm
Credit Storm in Europe
By MIKE WHITNEY writing at CounterPunch
Credit market turmoil in the Eurozone has ignited frenzied trading on global markets. On Tuesday, shares tumbled nearly 300 points on the Dow Jones before launching an unconvincing 257-point late-day comeback. Wednesday the mayhem continued; all the major indexes seesawed wildly as positive news on durable goods was nixed by reports on wobbly EU banks. Erratic selling pushed the S&P down to 1,067 while the Dow slipped below 10,000 for the first time since February 7. The rise in Libor (the London Interbank Offered Rate) is increasing volatility, a red flag indicating trouble in interbank lending. Banks are wary of each other’s collateral as Greece and other underwater Club Med members appear to be headed for debt-restructuring. Libor is not yet at pre-Lehman levels, but the rate that banks charge each other for short-term loans has rocketed to a 10-month high. Improving economic data have not eased fears of another meltdown or removed the rot at the heart of the system. The banks are still loaded with loans and assets that are losing value. The credit system is breaking down.
When banks post collateral overnight for short-term loans, the collateral is effectively downgraded, limiting the banks’ access to capital. This is what triggered the financial crisis two years ago, a run on repo. Regulated "depository" institutions now rely on a funding system that operates beyond government oversight, a shadow banking system. The banks exchange collateral, in the form of bundled securities and bonds with institutional investors (aka—"shadow banks"; investment banks, hedge funds, insurers) via repurchase agreements (repo) for short-term loans. The repo market now rivals the traditional banking system in terms of size but lacks the guard rails and stop signs that make the regulated system safe. The system is inherently unstable and crisis-prone as a recently released paper by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY) admits. Moody’s rating agency summarized the paper’s findings like this: the tri-party repo market “will remain a major source of systemic risk, especially given the current market volatility and the fact that the Federal Reserve’s primary dealer emergency lending facilities are no longer in place…… the market remains structurally vulnerable to a repo run…… If cash investors pulled away in a stressed environment, the clearing banks would be faced with a choice (as they were several times in 2008)…
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How to Avoid Risk of Ruin in Trading
by ilene - January 17th, 2010 7:06 am
Here’s a few excerpts from an eye-opening article on the risk of ruin by Brett Steenbarger:
How to Avoid Risk of Ruin in Trading.
Here’s a nice calculator of risk of ruin for poker players that easily adapts to trading. Risk of ruin represents the odds of losing all of your gambling (or trading) stake…
To adapt the calculator for our needs, instead of estimating win rate and and standard deviation per hour, we will make those daily estimates. So the win rate would represent average profit per day, and the standard deviation would represent a measure of the variability of daily returns.
Let’s say that your account total (bankroll) is $100,000. You are willing to risk 2% of your money in a single day, and 2/3 of your days will fall between losing and making 1% on your capital. You have a modest positive edge that will earn you 10% on your money in a year, which would be $40 per day on average ($40 x 250 trading days = $10,000).
Your risk of ruin in that situation--the risk of losing all your capital--is only .03%….
The lesson to be learned is that risk of ruin jumps astronomically when one’s edge is eroded and when one’s variability of returns expand. This is why it’s imperative for serious traders to cut their risk (reduce the variability of returns) when they sense that they’ve lost their feel for markets. It’s also why it’s imperative for serious traders to risk manage their day to day trading, so that they cap their daily P/L swings relative to the edge they possess.
And the frustrated trader who overtrades when he loses his edge? Risk of ruin, the calculator tells us, jumps to 100%.
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the Favorites backup site
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