Investor polarisation increases as the demonstrators move in 16 May 2012. FRANKFURT (Börse Frankfurt). Today marks the start of a four-day long anti-capitalist demonstration in Frankfurt. Dubbed ‘Blockupy’, the protest aims to literally close down Germany’s financial capital with Occupy support drafted in from across Europe. The city’s bankers have already decided it would beContinue Reading

In a column in the FT recently[1] Martin Taylor, the former Barclays CEO, expressed great surprise that shareholders had not revolted against excessive banker pay much sooner. Of course, the shareholder discontent is a product of the Zeitgeist

...the rise of the anti-austerity movement at the ballot box seems to have its limits. Stock investors seem to be tolerant of anti-austerity (in the sense of slightly less fiscal rigour in order to reduce the headwinds for growth) when it is done US-style, British-style or even French-style, but they do not cheer it whenContinue Reading

In a country that prides itself on its green initiatives, it sounds almost odd that German personal tax law allows deductions for the costs associated with driving to work. This means the greater the distance between home and the workplace, i.e., the more a motorist chokes the roads and the air, the more he canContinue Reading

Does the copyright protection of ideas have to mean that freedoms are sacrificed in the internet? This is the rather disturbing thought I was left with recently after reading a newspaper editorial that discussed a proposal Germany’s increasingly notorious Pirate (political) Party to scrap intellectual property rights.

For someone pounding relentlessly on a sports studio cross-trainer early on Sunday morning, a TV report on ‘diet madness’ ought to have been rather reassuring. It seems that regardless of whether it is a called a cabbage-soup diet, Atkins, Weightwatchers, or metabolic-balance

I can easily understand why someone would buy a lottery ticket in the slim hope of getting rich in a single coup. Even though the expected return from this investment is negative, so no economically- rational person should do it, millions of people take the plunge every week. The reason is because the very lowContinue Reading

Sceptical DAX investors end the quarter as they began it. 28 March 2012. FRANKFURT (Börse Frankfurt). This was, for once, a week where there was no genuinely menacing news out of Germany or the eurozone. True: some peripheral bond spreads have tended to widen and there have been some gloomy commentary published about the SpanishContinue Reading

Yesterday I recounted the sorry tale of Hazel Loveday, the bus driver who quit a lottery syndicate six months before twelve of her fellow drivers cracked a £38 million jackpot. The story apparently intrigued me as much as it did a sample of Daily Mail Online readers. In a survey, the newspaper posed the beggingContinue Reading

A few days ago twelve bus drivers from the English county of Northamptonshire had a very good reason to celebrate, having won the multi-country lottery "Euro Millions" and claiming more than £38 million (€45 million). The story was all the more newsworthy because it turned out that a fellow driver in the syndicate had droppedContinue Reading

About two weeks ago, an article in the Wall Street Journal aroused market interest by suggesting a new variant of quantitative easing – a sterilised QE3, if you will. Yesterday we learned of the error in that thinking, at least according to renowned interest rate hawk and president of the Dallas Fed, Richard Fisher. AlthoughContinue Reading

When I first joined a fidelity program with a credit card company some years ago, I vaguely remember a round-the-world airline ticket on offer for the handsome ‘price’ of one million bonus points. So I began collecting points like crazy. I channelled all of my spending through this sole credit card in order to setContinue Reading

Things are starting to look very comfortable in the financial markets once again. In the US, the data has been encouraging and the equity markets have now climbed back to pre-crisis levels. In the eurozone, at least the German DAX index has clambered back to 7,200 and the often-feared slump in growth has apparently keptContinue Reading

In the animal world, the status of each member of a group is easy to determine. The stag in the forest with the biggest antlers has the best chances with the lady-deer and has privileged access to the group’s resources. Even without a fight, the fearsomeness of the antlers alone is sufficient to identify theContinue Reading

I am often asked whether it is better to show off material wealth, insofar as one has any, or to hide it. I favour the latter, to be honest. I am of the opinion that one should exercise discretion with the display of status symbols, or so-called positional goods. I say this not to spareContinue Reading

Recent market setback is a belated vindication of long-held scepticism “The biggest DAX correction since 2011” was the deadline that graced one German newspaper article this morning. As 2012 is just in its third month, the accolade was easily earned, but for many domestic institutional investors it made welcome reading nonetheless. It sounds counter-intuitive thatContinue Reading

I read yesterday a financial market commentary suggesting that Japanese exporters, faced with a sharply rising US-dollar versus the yen over the last month, could have tried to unwind their currency hedges. This would mean rebuying the dollars they had already sold in anticipation of overseas sales. In all likelihood, this would also mean aContinue Reading

We have long since had our suspicions about how the malaise of the US middle-class came about. It was nonetheless a very sobering experience to be confronted with the naked numbers in a commendable new book that documents the nation’s widening social disparities[1]. The authors chart the startling development of median family pre-tax incomes inContinue Reading

The International Monetary Fund established last Thursday that it is impossible to significantly reduce the Greek debt without the support of the ECB, whose president remained adamantly against it at the press conference following last week’s Governing Council meeting. Mario Draghi said the ECB cannot accept losses on their Greek holdings, rightly describing this typeContinue Reading

A few days ago I read a story in the New York Times about how an entire village cleaned up at Spain's big national Christmas lottery. Sodeto, located about three hours' drive north-west of Barcelona, distributed more than €100 million to its 250 inhabitants, most of them farmers

Institutional investors refuse to buck the trend any longer, apparently convinced in their optimism by new Fed testimony The medium-term investors polled every week by Börse Frankfurt have apparently rethought their strategies. Perhaps it was the fact that the DAX rose by another 3.5 percent last week, for a total gain of 12 percent sinceContinue Reading

Investors’ predictions were all confirmed, except one 1 February. FRANKFURT (Börse Frankfurt). Bearishness among the institutional investors is swiftly becoming a regular fixture on Boerse Frankfurt’s weekly survey panel. Following the first full trading week of 2012, sentiment turned negative and has stayed there ever since. In today’s poll, it stands at a nine-month low,Continue Reading

I have a particular weakness for oriental perfumes, especially the handmade varieties, even though they can be somewhat pricey. So when I stumbled across a Google ad by easyCOSMETIC offering the objects of my desire at an 18 percent discount to regular store prices, I was naturally drawn to it. In reality, there was probablyContinue Reading

At a church in Frankfurt I recently had the opportunity to listen to a debate between Professor Paul Kirchhof, a former Federal Constitutional Court judge, and the former chairman of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), Professor Wolfgang Huber. The topic was the gradual destruction of church and state and the eventual end of institutions.Continue Reading

I was at the Frankfurt Opera with my wife on Saturday where Mozart's Don Giovanni was playing for the final time this season. We enjoyed the opera, but I saw Don Giovanni with completely different eyes than the last time I saw it about 30 years ago – back then I had not yet fullyContinue Reading

I had to read in yesterday’s Guardian newspaper that my beloved gym, Fitness First, is in financial difficulty. The sports studio chain, the world’s largest, is in negotiations with its creditor banks to secure a reduction in the interest it pays on loans of over £600 million. Apparently, it is already struggling to meet theContinue Reading

“Whatever next?” I thought to myself when the New York Times reported that powerful hedge funds were planning to bring a case to the European Court of Human Rights if Greece changed the law to force private bondholders to take losses. Such a step, claim the funds’ lawyers would amount to an infringement of propertyContinue Reading

I hadn’t planned on climbing back onto my timing-of-rating-agency-downgrade hobby-horse so soon. Sovereign ratings have been crashing and burning at the hands of S&P, Moody’s and Fitch for so long now that that the timing factor was destined for irrelevance. Indeed, in the case of the coveted French triple-A, S&P ‘erroneously’ issued a downgrade noticeContinue Reading

New Year rally may have brought more confidence than profits 11 January 2012. FRANKFURT (Börse Frankfurt). To be able to look back on five trading sessions where bad economic news was largely absent has been a rare treat for the institutional investors on Börse Frankfurt’s weekly sentiment panel. Last week’s US jobs numbers – heraldedContinue Reading

I am not sure whether there are more of them these days or whether I just notice them more, but I have the impression that retail loyalty schemes are mushrooming. Whether at the department store, in the supermarket, or at the fuel station, retailers everywhere seem to be offering cards, vouchers and stamps. No doubt,Continue Reading