BofA money market fund dives 70%
Bank of America shuts new investors out of money fund--recently worth $40B -- citing credit crisis.... http://money.cnn.com/2007/12/10/news/companies/boa_trouble.ap/index.htm?postversion=2007121014
WaMu warns of loss, slashes jobs
Nation's largest thrift also cuts dividend in response to credit and housing market woes. Analyst says CEO is safe.... http://money.cnn.com/2007/12/10/news/companies/wamu/index.htm?postversion=2007121018
Posted On: Monday, December 10, 2007, 8:25:00 PM EST
Derivatives Trades Soar To Record $681 Trillion In Third Quarter
Derivative Trades Soar to Record $681 Trillion in Third Quarter By Hamish Risk in London, Bloomberg Dec. 10, 2007
Dec. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Derivatives traded on exchanges surged 27 percent to a record $681 trillion in the third quarter, the biggest increase in three years, the Bank for International Settlements said.
Interest-rate futures, contracts designed to speculate on or hedge against moves in borrowing rates, led the increase with a 31 percent increase to
$594 trillion during the three months ended Sept. 30, the Basel, Switzerland-based BIS said today in its quarterly review. The amounts are based on the notional amount underlying the contracts.
Trading surged as investors bet on losses linked to record U.S. mortgage foreclosures and policy changes by the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank to offset the credit slump. The Fed cut its benchmark interest rate by half a point to 4.75 percent in September, the central bank's first reduction in four years.
``The turbulence in financial markets led to the busiest trading on record,'' BIS analysts Ryan Stever, Christian Upper and Goetz von Peter wrote in the report.
Trading in stock index futures and options rose 19 percent to a record $81 trillion in the third quarter, as investors speculated on whether the credit-market losses would spread to the equity markets.
The Standard & Poor's 500 index rose 1.74 percent in the three months to Sept. 30. The Dow Jones Stoxx 600 Index in Europe fell 3 percent in the same period.
``Equity investors are using derivatives more aggressively as they have come to understand the more sophisticated instruments over time,'' said Jim Josephson, head of derivatives flow trading at Bear Stearns Cos. in London.
Currency Swings
Swings in currencies increased as the turmoil in the U.S. subprime mortgage market prompted investors to dump high- yielding assets financed through low-interest currencies such as the yen and Swiss franc. Volatility among the seven most-traded currencies surged almost 24 percent in August, the most since December 1996, a JPMorgan Chase & Co. index shows.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=ad71potU0EbM&refer=home
