Sunday, April 21, 2013

UK opposes financial transactions tax


The UK government has launched a legal challenge against plans for a European financial transactions tax (FTT).
The FTT, which aims to raise public funds and discourage speculative trading, will be adopted by 11 EU states - but not by the UK.
Ministers fear it could be imposed on UK firms trading with businesses based in one of those states.

Thursday, April 18, 2013

Swissquote Opens an Office in Malta


The Swiss forex broker and bankSwissquote has just released a report on its Q3 metrics. In line with the overall industry trend, revenues and profit rates are stagnant. Year –on-year, the company’s revenues decreased by 14.9% and net profit – by 30.5%. For 2012, Swissquote expects revenues of about CHF 112 million (appr. $118.5 million) across all its divisions (banking, forex, etc.). 
 
Speaking of forex alone, Swissquotes forex eForex division has registered adecrease of 12.9% in trading results – from CHF 38.4 million to CHF 33.4 million. The eForex trading volumes have decreases by 16.5%, from CHF 313 billion to CHF 261.9 billion. The reason for this is mainly the low volatility of the foreign exchange market and naturally, Swissquote is not the only company affected: other major brokers like Forex.com have also reported decrease in retail trading volumes and revenue. 
 
 Swissquotes results - Q3 2012
 
Despite the results of the first three quarters of the year, and the continuing investor uncertainty, Swissquote is going on with its planned expansion. In October, the brokerset up a new office in Malta. This is Swissquote’s first European office outside its home base – Switzerland, and together with the company’s Dubai office helps the broker establish its positions on the European, Middle-Eastern and Asian markets. 
 
The broker obtained a Category 3 license from the Maltese Financial Services Authority (MFSA). Explained in simple terms, this license allows Swissquote to render forex services to EU member states without any restrictions. 
 
Up until now Malta was a favored spot for online gambling companies but apparently it is opening up to Forex as well. Another major broker operating out of the island is FXDD Europe
 

Swiss DOTS To Open for New Clients and Issuers

Back in May, together with Goldman Sachs and UBS Swissquote launched the Swiss DOTS service (Swiss Derivatives OTC Trading System). The service appears to be gaining popularity and the DOTS trading volumes continues to increase. In October alone it registered 7,600 executed transactions. As the service is already proven to be successful, it will be opened to more clients and issuers and the DOTS offering will no longer be restricted to Swissquote customers only. This is good news for the industry, as DOTS offers a scope of 33,000 leveraged products (for comparison, the Scoach market place only offers 23,000). 
 
Read Swissquote's full Q3 report here.

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Pepperstone highlights broker location, comparison to Cyprus


As the crisis in Cyprus unfolds we are seeing the repeated importance of the safety of funds and how this can potentially impact your trading. Right now, it is critical to have confidence in your current broker.
Pepperstone believes that you should not have to worry about the safety of your money and much of this is about choosing the right broker with whom to trade. If you are trading with another broker, ask yourself if your funds are safe?


Why Trade with Pepperstone?

·            Pepperstone is regulated and licensed by the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC).
·            Client deposits are segregated under Australian Client Money Rules, meaning your funds are kept separately to the firm's money.
·            All Client funds are held in the National Australia Bank (NAB) - Rated AA by Standard & Poor's.
·            Pepperstone is audited by Ernst & Young - One of the world's top Audit Firms.
·            As an Australian company Pepperstone is located in a AAA Credit Rated Economy, one of only 8 countries to hold this gold    plated rating.
·            Pepperstone partners with some of the world's top financial, legal and audit firms, including:




Non-US Citizens have the ability to use non-US brokers. Click here to open a Forex account - Non-US Citizens only.

Gold retailers seeing frenzied demand for physical

We noted here that the plunge in the paper price of gold (and silver) had prompted considerable renewed demand for physical and now it seems the scramble among the "more stable investor base" is increasing. The shake out of ETFs and futures has left the Australian mint short of deliverables and Japanese and Chinese gold retailers seeing a "frenzied" surge in demand. The customers are not just the 'rich' or 'elderly'; in China "they tend to wear water shoes and come directly from the market...;" in Australia, "the volume of business... is way in excess of double what we did last week,... there’s been people running through the gate," and Japanese individual investors doubled gold purchases yesterday at Tokuriki Honten, the country’s second-largest retailer of the precious metal. The panic selling by a weaker 'imminent inflation-based' investor base has sparked physical shortages - "there’s been significant sales made as people see this as great value." It seems our previous discussions of a rotation from paper to physical were correct and this physical demand will eventually leak back into the paper markets.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-04-17/gold-buying-frenzy-continues-china-japan-and-australia-scramble-physical


Gold Wipes $560 Billion From Central Banks as Equities Rally


Exchange-traded products linked to gold dropped $37.2 billion in 2013 as the metal reached a two-year low yesterday. Gold funds suffered net outflows of $11.2 billion this year through April 10, the most since 2011, while global and U.S. equity funds had net inflows of $21.25 billion, according to Cambridge, Massachusetts-based EPFR Global.
Central banks are among the biggest losers because they own 31,694.8 metric tons, or 19 percent of all the gold mined, according to the World Gold Council in London. After rallying for 12 straight years, the metal has tumbled 28 percent from its September 2011 record of $1,923.70 an ounce. Growing economies and corporate profits, along with slowing inflation, boosted global equities by $2.28 trillion this year at the expense of the traditional store of value, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Monday, April 15, 2013

Some suspect institutional gold sales drive price down


According to Andrew Maguire, on Friday, April 12, the Fed’s agents hit the market with 500 tons of naked shorts. Normally, a short is when an investor thinks the price of a stock or commodity is going to fall. He wants to sell the item in advance of the fall, pocket the money, and then buy the item back after it falls in price, thus making money on the short sale. If he doesn’t have the item, he borrows it from someone who does, putting up cash collateral equal to the current market price. Then he sells the item, waits for it to fall in price, buys it back at the lower price and returns it to the owner who returns his collateral. If enough shorts are sold, the result can be to drive down the market price.
A naked short is when the short seller does not have or borrow the item that he shorts, but sells shorts regardless. In the paper gold market, the participants are betting on gold prices and are content with the monetary payment. Therefore, generally, as participants are not interested in taking delivery of the gold, naked shorts do not need to be covered with the physical metal.
In other words, with naked shorts, no physical metal is actually sold.
People ask me how I know that the Fed is rigging the bullion price and seem surprised that anyone would think the Fed and its bullion bank agents would do such a thing, despite the public knowledge that the Fed is rigging the bond market and the banks with the Fed’s knowledge rigged the Libor rate. The answer is that the circumstantial evidence is powerful.
Consider the 500 tons of paper gold sold on Friday. Begin with the question, how many ounces is 500 tons? There are 2,000 pounds to one ton. 500 tons equal 1,000,000 pounds. There are 16 ounces to one pound, which comes to 16 million ounces of short sales on Friday.
Who has 16 million ounces of gold? At the beginning gold price that day of about $1,550, that comes to $24,800,000,000. Who has that kind of money?
What happens when 500 tons of gold sales are dumped on the market at one time or on one day? Correct, it drives the price down. Investors who want to get out of large positions would spread sales out over time so as not to lower their sales proceeds. The sale took gold down by about $73 per ounce. That means the seller or sellers lost up to $73 dollars 16 million times, or $1,168,000,000.
Who can afford to lose that kind of money? Only a central bank that can print it.
I believe that the authorities would like to drive the gold price down further and will, if they can, hit the gold market twice more next week and put gold at $1,400 per ounce or lower. The successive declines could perhaps spook individual holders of physical gold and result in actual net sales of physical gold as people reduced their holdings of the metal.
However, bullion dealer Bill Haynes told kingworldnews.com that last Friday bullion purchasers among the public outpaced sellers by 50 to 1, and that the premiums over the spot price on gold and silver coins are the highest in decades.

Markets potential bloodbath


Gold is crashing this morning, falling over $90 to $1413 per ounce.

This move is looking to be largely based on institutional liquidation in Asia where Japanese bonds are being sold.

The Bank of Japan announced a massive $1.2 trillion QE effort on April 6. The move was lunacy given that Japan has already announced QE equal to over 20% of its GDP in the preceding years and GDP growth was still slowing.

According to Central Banker thinking, if something doesn’t work for 20 years the only answer is to do even more of it. So the Bank of Japan attempted a “shock and awe” move with an unprecedented QE equal to $1.2 trillion. Japanese bonds, already strained as investments by the demographic and economic issues plaguing Japan, have since become extremely volatile.

With this in mind, the move in Gold looks to be several large institutions liquidating positions to meet margin calls or redemptions due to the plunge in Japanese bonds. The technical damage to Gold has been severe.


Another factor here is the slowdown in China. The post-2009 “recovery” has largely been driven by China’s growth. The People’s Republic reported GDP growth of 7.7% on expectations of 8% last week. This, combined with misses in retail and industrial production, doesn’t bode well for the global economy.

On that note, now is the time to be preparing for a potential bloodbath in the markets. Just looking around the globe we see China’s economy slowing, Japan’s bond bubble bursting, Gold crashing, and more.

We offer several free Special Reports outlining these issues and more for individual investors. You can pick up individual copies at:




http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2013-04-15/gold-crashes-and-asia-sinks

Gold down more as Boston bombed


Gold Plummets By Most In 30 Years, Stocks Have Biggest Drop Of 2013


A bad day all around. Liquidation continued from Asia and commodities were Baumgartner'd - especially gold and silver, suffering their biggest single-day drop in 30 years. Weak NAHB data stalled any BTFD in stocks and despite a couple of tries at EUR ramps, stocks had their biggest drop in 5 months. The horrible acts in Boston seemed a catalyst for late-day weakness in stocks but there was no bid and heavy volume ashomebuilders were hit their hardest in 10 months and US equity indices plunged into the close. Dow Transports had its worst day in 17 months. Away from stocks, FX markets were just as volatile with JPY's 2-day rally the biggest in 35 months (and AUD the biggest down day in 5 months). Swiss 2Y rates dropped to their lowest of the year and US Treasuries were relatively calm (though bid) until Boston hit and then dropped 3-4bps on the day. VIX also surged higher by 5.2 vols to 17.25% (its highest since the Italian elections).

S&P futures ended at the lows...

and VIX surged...


which took everything but the magic Dow below Cyprus levels...

As FX Carry was dumped in a hurry... AUDJPY especially...

But some other markets had seriously bad days...


and Gold broke all kinds of records...

after-hours gold dropped more and S&P futures also followed...
Charts: Bloomberg

Gold plunges to two-year low


Gold plunged nearly 9% to its lowest level in over two years Monday as a global sell-off in commodities gave new impetus to last week's rout in the precious metal.

Monday's broad decline was sparked by slowing growth in China. The world's second biggest economy grew by 7.7% in the first quarter of the year, down from 7.9% in the fourth quarter of 2012.