Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,
In 1999 my colleague Tim Price had front row seats to the first Internet bubble.
He tells a great story about being a private client portfolio manager at Merrill Lynch in London at the time, and describes how clients were clamoring to buy technology stocks.
‘Giddy’ doesn’t really do the mania justice. ‘Insane’ comes closer to describing the popular mood.
The following article by David Haggith was published first on The Great Recession Blog:
One of the kookiest moments last month came when Fed Chairwoman Yellen spoke about seeing no financial collapse in sight during our lifetimes
While on the surface the market last week did nothing all that exciting, below it things were in abrupt turmoil - driven by the decoupling between stocks and bonds and the volatile, countertrend move in commodities and oil in particular - which was nowhere more evident than in the world of Risk-Parity funds and CTA, which suffered their worst two-week plunge since 2003.
In a quiet overnight session, S&P 500 futures are fractionally in the green (2,426, +0.2%) with European and Asian stocks as oil drops second day after an initial ramp higher amid speculation that LIbya and Nigeria may be asked to cap their production. Nasdaq 100 Index are again higher, following the biggest daily advance in more than a week, up 0.4% as of 6:20 a.m. in New York.
S&P futures are little changed following yesterday's rout even as Asian and European markets continued selling; the pound slid on poor factory data, the yen tumbled after the BOJ intervened to stabilize the JGB bond market, precious metals flash crashed early in the session, while the selloff in oil accelerated despite yesterday's massive inventory draw, although at least yesterday's sharp bond tantrum has stabilized.