My name in Andrew Abraham. I have been investing in commodities and managed futures since 1994. I adhere to the philosophy of trend following.
Trend following stresses a disciplined approach to commodity/ futures trading. Successful trend following and commodity futures investing requires patience, discipline and actively managing the risk. What sets me apart from other traders is that I am not only concerned about the return on investment but how much risk I will have to tolerate to achieve my goals.
The systemic risk revealed by MF Global’s collapse
Ritholtz highlights 6 major points
The MF Global story contains six elements that I found astonishing:
1. What MF Global did with client monies was “technically” legal (though it probably violated the spirit of the law).
2. Britain’s leverage loopholes provided a back door for U.S. firms such as Lehman Brothers and MF Global to “re-hypothecate” client assets — and leverage up.
3. As a result of MF Global’s lobbying, key rules were deregulated. This allowed the firm to use client money to buy risky sovereign debt.
4. In 2010, someone from the Commodities Futures Trading Commission recognized these prior deregulations had dramatically ramped clients’ exposure to risk and proposed changing those rules. Jon Corzine, MF Global’s chief executive, successfully prevented the tightening of these regulations. Had the regulations been tightened, it would have prevented the kind of bets that lost MF Global’s segregated client monies.
5. None of MF Global’s Canadian clients lost any money thanks to tighter regulations there.
6. Little noticed in this affair is (once again) the gross incompetency of the ratings agencies. Had they not been maintaining “A” ratings on Spain and Italy, MF Global could not have made its disastrous bets there.
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