Category Archives: Risk and risk management

The Beginning of the End (Part 2)

No, we don’t mean the end of the world, but the end of this credit cycle. An aside: forgive us if you found some of our posts last week sketchier than usual. We’re at a location with very erratic broadband, which makes it hard to get anything Internet-related done efficiently. We’ve run a few comments […]

Goldilocks and the Bears

Here’s some lighter fare, but in keeping with post above, from Minyanville via Barry Ritzhold’s The Big Picture: Once upon a time there was a family of three bears, a mama bear, a papa bear and a baby bear. This family of bears lived in a quiet cottage in the woods. One day, waiting for […]

Weakening Yen Poses Risk to Carry Trade

While this topic may seem a bit esoteric to some readers, it is just about the most simple-minded trade in the financial markets, which is precisely why so many players are involved in it. You borrow in a currency that has low prevailing interest rates, like the yen, and invest in instruments in a currency […]

ECB Warns of Unstable Markets

We’ve taken note of excessive optimism and leverage (see, as examples, “The Rising Tide of Liquidity” and “More Signs of a Toppy Market“). Now the European Central Bank is also sounding cautionary notes. Ever since Alan Greenspan’s famous “irrational exuberance” observation produced a 140 point (then 2%) fall in the Dow, central bankers have been […]

The Beginning of the End?

We’ve commented from time to time on loose credit conditions (see our “Rising Tide of Liquidity“, plus Part 2 and Part 3 on the same topic) and indifference to risk (“Where Has the (Perception of) Risk Gone?“). The tide may be turning. Today, the New York Times had a lengthy, well researched article, “Tremors at […]

Where Has the (Perception of) Risk Gone?

We have pointed out various signs of complacency in financial markets regarding risk: declining credit spreads (January 16), a lack of concern about systemically high use of leverage (previous post plus January 18), and technical indications that suggest we are near a stock market peak (January 22). Yet there is an almost irrationally high level […]