Late last week S&P downgraded Rolls Royce from investment grade to junk, citing “prolonged weak profitability”. The perceived risk of investing and dealing with the company at the contract level increases greatly on the back of this news. This will affect many funds also, due to requirements surrounding holding investment grade bonds. Prior to this…
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A more off the wall think-piece for your update today as Las Vegas rolls the dice on its reopening on June 4th. Big Business has grown bored of the virus and has decided to double down and spin the wheel on lives once more. Gone now however are the days of the authentic casino experience.…
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Fund liquidity problems witnessed in 2019 with Woodford and H2O Asset Management brought liquidity back into the spotlight. Since then, the focus hasn’t really faded on the issue of liquidity, and if anything, has intensified with the COVID-19 pandemic causing market volatility resulting in several more fund suspensions.
Although 2020 has already seen a number of initiatives intended to address liquidity risk, there are still more to come, with September due to be a particular busy month for risk management professionals.
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It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Twilight Zone. Consider if you will, the year 2020, a pandemic grips the earth,…
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With the recent market volatility caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, regulators across the EU and in some jurisdictions further afield have been banning short selling for varying periods. Although there are many who are sceptical of the benefits of short selling bans, several EU states including France, Italy, Spain and Austria had bans in place since March with Italy’s CONSOB opting for a ban until 18th June. Germany, along with Britain which still operates under EU rules, held back in imposing market wide bans.
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In the wake of Covid-19 many companies are feeling the strain on their operations and the reapers shadow of bankruptcy looms ever closer for some. Airlines, with their paper thin margins, many thought would be the first to go, Thai Airways rumoured about to go into bankruptcy protection (at time of writing) notwithstanding. In the…
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First the facts, unemployment claims in the USA have now just hit 36M total as Covid-19 related lockdowns and restrictions rumble on. This is an increase of 3M on the last week. Peak figures on a weekly basis were around 7M in a single week at the end March. Truly frightening statistics further compounded by…
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It may appear at first glance we are becoming an Elon Musk news page. This however is not born out our interest in him but rather his interest in being in the media spotlight and his seemingly inherent generation of risk therein. Musk made headlines at time of writing for announcing over Twitter that he…
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On Friday past and over the weekend Tesla CEO Elon Musk posted a bizarre series of tweets ranging from at best, quoting lines from the Star Spangled Banner, to at worst declaring that, in his personal opinion, “Tesla stock price is too high imo”. As you can probably imagine the markets did not enjoy…
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There is an old saying that goes when America sneezes the world catches a cold, well when Warren Buffet sneezes, the markets catch a cold. At Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting, Warren Buffet announced that they had sold all of their major US airline holdings. This to many would come as no surprise. With restrictions on…
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