knavel

Can I throw into the discussion mix the impact of the collapse of sterling? For those of us coming from a euro perspective (or USD, etc), when coupled with price drops this has effectively made the cost of UK real estate near 50% off of what we would have had to pay just 18 months ago! As a result I find myself thinking about buying in London simply on the basis that the euro/sterling currently presents a discount that one may not see in the future, and even with dead cat bounce, if euro craps, then I am still worse off. Of all the predictions I've read for HPC in UK, few seem to think more than 50% off peak. Why not lock that in right now if one can?

Another article like CG's above: ____________________________________ GOVERNMENTS CAN'T HANDLE GLOBAL RUN ON GOLD COINS THERE'S a worldwide run on gold coins. Even as the price of the precious metal itself comes under pressure along with commodities like oil and copper, people around the world are demanding so many of the valuable coins that government mints are having difficulty filling orders. A spokesperson for the US Mint tells me that gold coins in this country, for the past month, "are being allocated because of an increased demand." And the price that the government charges coin dealers has recently been increased by as much as 10 percent for a 10-ounce coin. **** Bill Murphy, chairman of the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee, says the price of spot gold is even more perplexing given the demand for coins and the fact that central banks in Europe have stopped selling gold into the open market. "Gold should be moving up," Murphy says. "How could there be such a dichotomy between the historic high premium for coins all over the world and the low Comex price?" His answer? "Today the public is buying gold like crazy, but the US government and the banks that hold bullion are intentionally keeping the price down." http://www.nypost.com/seven/11182008/busin...n_go_139306.htm

Maybe too late and problem solved, but all solicitors are Commissioners of Oaths and (as a solicitor) I have done attested to signatures in this capacity as recently as today. The law imposes a max £5 charge for witness as commissioner. http://www.legislation.gov.uk/si/si1993/Uk...932297_en_1.htm As you can imagine, solicitors don't like to advertise this fact. If the bank officer doesn't work out, then ring up your local solicitor.

Likewise! I actually checked it a couple of times. Maybe he said something like this more than once.

He didn't say the dollar would be "worthless", just lose its value against everything else. As an anecdote I actually found this site when I was researching Faber when it was proposed I hire him on the recommendation of my Asian director to speak at at party we had in Bangkok. It was an interesting presentation and I had fun taking him to task on a lot of his assertions post the speech. A lot of what he says is great, some BS, but he is definitely food for thought. Only difference is that in our contract we had to play up to his ego and refer to him as "DR Marc Faber." I guess NBC has more weight and doesn't have to call him Dr.

And where do you think that number being tracked by the software comes from? It comes from Comstock, Reuters, Bloomberg and the like (there aren't many data feed providers). I just checked with the people at the back office of my old spread/CFD company and they confirmed that bad prices come from bad feeds from the price supplier. Again, I worked for 5 years as a general counsel for a UK spread/CFD provider. I know or am acquainted with the MDs at many of the companies (and definitely the large ones). Manipulation doesn't happen. Among other reasons it would require the efforts of the back office, who are salaried staff and couldn't channel the funds personally to themselves. If the FSA got sound evidence that a company was "manipulating" the prices it would investigate; mark my words. I worked with the Markets division of the FSA for a long time. In my years the scams I saw were individuals of the general public against the company itself: Cheque and debit card fraud. I've seen *one* scam pulled but it was by traders and against the spread/CFD company itself. You might be surprised to know that the FSA didn't care a whole lot about this since the scam wasn't against the markets/clients. However, I have personally seen to it that these individuals will never get a job in the industry that requires approval by the FSA to perform a Controlled Function. Didn't surprise me that the FSA didn't care so much about this particular scam, but you should know that while the FSA is definitely due some criticism, it's the best regulator I've seen. Again, everytime there was an internal issue the FSA would ask "did it affect your clients in any way" and the response I gave would dictate what they would do next...for clients they would do a lot. Ker, I wondered why I hadn't heard of that company you were trading with...Belize?!?!?! Get your money out of there immediately and into a regulated UK company....offshore companies don't have to be regulated but are still allowed to sell into the UK. Make sure also you are classified as a Retail Customer.

That's closer to what I was driving at. If someone sends me an opening email like that, i.e., wholly defamatory, accusatory, I will do my best to make sure that we play by the book with them....yes, I did handle the complaints, at least the formal ones when I was in the industry. Only when you get ignored or rebuked do you up the tone. The bigger concern to me was missed...namely that this company didn't see the spike in their systems until it was brought to their attention. That didn't ever happen to my knowledge at my company and we would automatically reverse--in this case the error closing trade. I've never heard of the company you were using, maybe you should try someone else who has a better back office. Finally, as a general comment there is this general consensus of conspiracy theory, that if you get too big as a client they spread providers will manipulate or take other measures to screw you. Let me clear the air: there is no such monitoring or effort. There is enough money to be made off commissions and/or not hedging as punters statistically always lose. I say this after 5 years+ as a director at an FSA authorised spreads firm. Further, if this sort of behaviour was tried on with one of the hedge funds or other high worth clients, they'd see it immediately and the reputational damage would be devastating to the firm, let alone possible legal consequence.

False. Spread betting is a financial service regulated by the Financial Services Authority--it has been specifically removed from gambling laws per the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000. Spread bettings is as enforceable as any contract. If the firm fails, you will have standing as a creditor in bankruptcy should you have funds with the firm. See my other historical posts on the advantages of ensuring you are a segregated funds client in anticipation of exactly this circumstance. If the systems fail, we've already seen that Ker got his trade reinstated, and even when s/he took a wholly agressive, inappropriate approach to lodging his complaint.

For any EU based company to get a license to trade they have to have a pretty large balance sheet since they are a securities ISSUER. This amount used to be fixed but post MiFID last year, it's more or less negotiated with the regulator like the FSA. Compare: Pre-MiFID a traditional agency-broker needed about 1/3 the balance sheet of a CFD/spread house. So a lot more room to be bucket-shoppy. Just check out the bankruptcy of Pacific Continental Securities. That depends largely on the size of your trade and who the company is. CMC - you are pretty much correct Cgnao; they hedge nothing on the market. By contrast my old company used to market hedge all CFD trades and all but the smallest spread bets since it was uneconomical to do so. I remember once helping the SEC in a joint investigation with the FSA as these things are almost non existent in the USA. The SEC was quite shocked to find that there could be a big stake put on a USA issuer that the SEC would never know about. I've never done it myself and if you let someone make your odds then you are all the more correct. This odds-making race track approach is supposed to have been done away with post MiFID as everyone is required to give "Best Execution". But no one actually agrees as to what BE means! That said, if you shop around you can get quite competitive rates. On CFDs we used to give as low as 5 bps (one fifth of one percent) above/below the trading floor price. If you are a really good customer you can also get Direct Market Access where you effectively place the company's hedge on the underlying exchange, they then cut a CFD for you at a pre agreed +/- bps on the exchange trading floor price you got.

I decided to stop posting after that 1.62 Euro thread incident, but I feel for you on this one so I'll come out of retirement. I can't speak for IG (although I know a lot of people there) but if that happened with us it would have been a price feed error. We would have corrected and reinstated the original trade automatically. This sort of thing can cut both ways, as sometimes the error is up and a Take Profit triggers. (In those instances clients are always irate that the trade is being reversed.) You ought to confirm with IG what happened. As a matter of customer service they should sort you out. If it gets nasty have a look at their terms and conditions in the Manifest Errors section and any other place they talk about price feeds and see what you find. Coincidently, I am revising the spread terms and conditions for my old company as we speak and I am really strengthening up these very provisions because these errors do happen and I am tired of dealing with clients who think they should get a windfall when the mistake is on the upside. But we are fair about it and make it so it cuts both ways obviously. As an aside, in the industry "guaranteed" stops are a bolt on feature. You pay for a premium for those so that if there is a Sept 11 sort of market gap you aren't holding the bag where the market resumes---you get the (standard) stop loss you would have had in an incrementally downward market. Most spread systems I think make you put in a stop loss so that your margin can be calculated. If you want to avoid stop losses try buying CFDs instead of spread bets as a lot of CFD clients hate stops and get around having to set them in place. If you are subject to UK tax and want the "bet" tax free treatment then you should ask for their "rolling cash" product...it's a CFD designed as a spread. Search my posts on here for more info, I talked at length about how spreads work legally and such a few months ago.