Following on from chart last night – Which showed a nice little gap up, this is how the market finished up. You can see the open at 1336, with a high of 1336.50 and then the drop away. A nasty little day for those looking for anything positive.

The main Spanish index the IBEX had rallied last week and in the early morning session looked at if that rally would continue with the market nudging 7000. However, this rally soon collapsed as shown below. The market quickly went from a euphoric opening gain to close down 35. This seems to sum up the…

Source – Wall Street Journal

A little piece that looks at the impact of HFT . It doesn’t add anything new other than offering a more personal narrative. Although the book by the author Scott Patterson might be interesting to drop onto the tablet. As a counterpoint this article places the blame for the Facebook debacle squarely on the shoulders…

This is an intra day chart of the electronic session  S&P500. The true market is not open yet but this is indicative of how the market might open. It is interesting to see a gap.  

Apparently, Euro 2012 is this year. You know that sport where massively over paid prima donnas go down at the slightest touch only to make a Lazurus like recovery. As opposed to athletes who are paid less but seem to be more resilient. In an attempt to avoid a drop in stock market trading volume…

I have just finished reading about Michael Geismer in Hedge Fund Wizards (I’m still not overly enamoured with the book) and nothing in it so far has convinced me that hedge funds are not run for their managers. Take Geismers fund – it apparently returns 12% on average of which he trousers 30%. Consider this…

Whilst doing some reading this morning I had the misfortune of coming across this. I love a good prediction – wonder whether he has any money on it?

When fighters go to ground some MMA matches can be as exciting as watching two sloths go the grope in the back of a Morris Elite. This however, is not one of those.

Despite the euphoria of those who are proclaiming the worst is over on the back of a single positive day – this chart is enlightening. Sometimes it is worthwhile removing as much noise from the chart as possible., Until we break this range one way or another I am not convinced about anything……

Fahrenheit 451 remains my favourite view of a dystopian future. This is Bradbury’s last column.

Neat graphic from Bloomberg on the relative value that CEO’s bring to financial organisations. It pretty much tracks a study I read in the 1980’s which stated quite bluntly that the worst performing companies have the highest paid executives.