Business

The world’s second-largest reinsurer, German Munich Re which is roughly twice the size of Berkshire Hathaway Re, is boosting its gold reserves and buying gold in the face of the punishing negative interest rates from the European Central Bank, it announced today.

As caught by Mark O'Byrne at GoldCore and reported by Thomson Reuters this afternoon, the world’s largest reinsurer is far from alone in seeking alternative investment strategies to counter the near-zero or negative interest rates that reduce the income insurers require to pay out on policies.

Over five years ago, months before most had heard of "expert networks", soon to be the fixture in the biggest FBI/DOJ/SEC crackdown against hedge fund insider trading in history, and years before it would become clear to everyone that the now defunct SAC Capital was nothing but a fund making billions by trading on inside information, we quietly exposed just how it was that Steve Cohen's hedge fund would almost as if by magic, always buy (or short) biotech companies, just ahead of successful (or not) Phase 1, 2 or 3 studies.

Japan just posted its largest trade surplus in 5 years (+JPY243bn) as exports dropped 4% YoY (worse than expected) but imports fell 14.2% (better than expected). However, the biggest standout was the ongoing deterioration in Japanese exports to the US which dropped by the most since 2011 as the 'advantages' of a devalued currency appear to have hit their limit. Time for some more devaluation Abe... or Peter Pan(ic).

One week ago, we documented the Hollywood-esque theft of $100 million from accounts held at the NY Fed and belonging to the central bank of Bangladesh.

In many ways, the heist was elegantly planned and executed and in others it was comically amateurish.

PBoC governor Zhou Xiaochuan thought about it, and decided it’s probably not a good idea for borrowers to get P2P loans for down payments on homes.

In fact, he said last weekend, it’s illegal: “Funds used for down payments cannot be borrowed."