Lords of Finance Business Book Award Winner

Stock Trading for Beginners - The Lords of Finance wins prestigious Business Book of the Year Award

Want a break from stocks and shares and online stock trading? Looking for a good book idea for Christmas? Then look no further than The Lords of Finance by hedge-fund manager Liaquat Ahamed. 'The Lords of Finance : 1929, The great Depression, and the Bankers Who Broke the World' has just been awarded the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award 2009. As the title says, it is a history of how four central bankers brought about the Great Depression.

Peter Mandelson, UK Eminence Grise par excellence, and currently Secretary of State for Business, Innovation & Skills (but who knows where he will end up?), was the keynote speaker at the event (nice work if you can get it - or maybe it's all part of his job?).

Lionel Barber presenting the award said of the Lords of Finance "A brilliant book, which brings to life the 1920s and the role of its great public servants in trying, but ultimately failing, to manage the world financial system. A must for anyone who wants to understand economics.”

The Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World is published by Heinemann/Penguin Press and traces the role played by four central bankers once named the World’s Most Exclusive Club -- Benjamin Strong of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Montagu Norman of the Bank of England, Hjalmar Schacht of the Reichsbank and Emile Moreau of the Banque de France.

These four most powerful financiers on the planet attempted after the First World War to fix global finances but ended up destroying it instead. When it was too late to stop what they had done Montagu Norman concluded that they had achieved “absolutely nothing.”

Liaquat Ahamed argues that “The Great Depression was not some act of God or the result of some deep-rooted contradictions of capitalism but the direct result of a series of misjudgments by economic policymakers, some made back in the 1920s, others after the first crises set in -- by any measure the most dramatic sequence of collective blunders ever made by financial officials.”

The book is not as dry as it sounds and is in fact highly readable and all the more relevant given the current financial turmoil so a fine Christmas present for anyone interested in the murky world of high finance - The Lords of Finance
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Stock Market Crash Imminent?

Stock Trading for Dummies - Stock Market Crash Imminent?

There are quite a few people who are expecting the stock market to slump back down to the lows seen in March and even lower. I have seen a number of videos with just that scenario, but of course so far it hasn't happened and this market seems to be stubbornly determine dto prove all the doom and gloom merchants wrong. Nevertheless it is worth taking their warnings on board.
The following video - Crash Alert is by Tony Cherniawski, from the practicalinvestor.com - he envisages the possibility of the DOW back at 6000 and the S/P at 600 - Mr Cherniawski's video has the merit at least of being clear and easy to understand. For other indications that the market may be topping out and preparing to crash back down see - stock charting for beginners



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Thursday Newspaper Share Tips

Online Stock Trading for Beginners - Thursday Shares Magazine and Newspaper Share Tips

SHARES MAGAZINE
Plays:

Buy Kiwara

Updates:

Hold EasyJet
Hold ZincOx

Life Insurance

Buy Legal & General
Buy Prudential
Sell Standard Life

FINANCIAL TIMES

Falklands oil rumours around Rockhopper and Desire Petroleum

THE TIMES

Tempus Share Tips

Buy JP Morgan Private Equity
Hold Cranswick
Hold Sportingbet

Comment:
Rumour of the day

RBS shortlist of six European major cos. likely to make a large acquisition in the next 12 months include Diageo and Xstrata.

Bet of the day

Australia is the first G20 nation to raise interest rates, from 3% to 3.25%. The BofE has kept UK rates at 0.5%. Spreadex has a December-based UK short sterling quote of 99.41-99.45.

Tiddler to watch
Intercede reported sales up 40% on last year, its share price rose nearly 10% to 45p. FinnCap says they are making good progress outside its Western European core market and has the potential for further outperformance.

DAILY TELEGRAPH

Questor Share Tips

Buy Petropavlovsk
Buy Cranswick

Amazon takes the Kindle Ebook Reader global as sales soar
Amazon cancels Royal Mail contract

Comment:

Smith & Nephew falls despite talk of break-up

THE INDEPENDENT

Investment Share Tips

Buy Nighthawk Energy
Hold United Drug
Buy Shepherd Neame

DAILY MAIL

Circle Oil up on rumours of huge oil discovery in Egypt

Homte : Online Stock Trading for Beginners

Online Trading Tuesday Newspaper Tips

Online Stock Trading for Beginners - Tuesday Newspaper Share Tips

FINANCIAL TIMES

Britvic supported by Pepsico bid rumours

THE TIMES
Tempus:

Speculative buy - Lonmin
Solid hold - PZ Cussons
Immunodiagnostic Systems - Pass

Comment:

Price of govt/ help for RBS and Lloyds could be to get rid of 10% of customers

Talk that Innovation Group has rejected a bid from EXL Service Holdings of New York

Rumours that Matalan may be up for sale

Bet of the day: Sainsbury

Tiddler to watch - Animalcare

DAILY TELEGRAPH
Questor Share Tips

Buy CVS Group
Buy Standard Chartered

THE INDEPENDENT
Investment Share Tips

Buy Tesco
Sell Wolfson Microelectronics
Buy Eros International

DAILY MAIL

Punters betting on a 139p/share bid for 888 Holdings by Ladbrokes
Britvic up on Diageo bid speculation
Gulf Keystone Petroleum excited by Chinese bid speculation

DAILY EXPRESS

Rumours that Russian and Chinese predators are looking at Gulf Keystone Petroleum

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Related posts - Stock charts trend lines at critical juncture -

Stock Markets at Crtiical Juncture

Online Stock Trading for Beginners - Stock Charting for Beginners

The stock market appears to be at a critical juncture right now. There are many people expecting a significant correction or possibly even a crash back to the March lows. The reason being that the markets have bounced around 50% since and that is exactly what happened back in 1929. In 1929 the bear market lasted 34 months, this time round from October 2007 to March 2009 was only 17 months if we add the 6 month since march then there could be still another 11 months to go to make it 34 months of a bear market.

Not everyone is convinced this is going to happen of course, but most people believe this month is critical and in particular this week. If the markets don't sell off and fall below important support levels then the markets could continue on upwards, if they do fall through those critical levels then things could get very ugly. Today was a positie day with the DOW up 112 points and the S&P up 15 to 1040 but tomorrow is another day. So beginners to stock market investing in particular should take care. In this video June from www.tplinvestment.com explains where this support level is

Weekend Newspaper Share Tips Oct3

Online Stock Trading for Beginners - Weekend Newspaper Share Tips

SUNDAY TIMES

Tesco to announce like-for-like sales slowing down in the UK

SFO's phoney war with BAE Systems will end in a settlement

BAE Systems rejected a £300 million settlement on advice that they could be taken to court for misuse of shareholders' funds

A secret run on RBS almost causd the bank to collapse in each of the last 4 trading days before the government bailed it out

Sharewatch: Wolseley

SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

Questor Share Tips

Avoid Smith & Nephew at 553p
Avoid ASOS at 325p
Buy May Gurney at 218p

Comment:

BAE Systems to admit bribe guilt

MAIL ON SUNDAY

Midas Share Tips

Buy Chesnara at 170p

Update:

Buy Coal of Africa at 108p

Other comment:

Scottish & Southern Energy profits set to double

Breweries see profits dry up

Tesco plans to increase sales of plasma TVs and laptops this Xmas

SUNDAY EXPRESS

Goldman Sachs gets nearly £4 million from taxpayers after advising Northern Rock
Emirates airline says recession is lifting

SATURDAY

FINANCIAL TIMES
Lex

US non-farm payrolls report made depressing reading

Anite benefits from Bluesky Travel System's collapse

Renewable Energy blows away its debt -- Carillion misses out on rally

THE TIMES

Tempus:

Renewable Energy shares - good wind from Copenhagen behind them
Bet of the day: Tesco
Tiddler to watch - Arteon
Review of portfolio - 10 share tips back from the brink

Sage, Workspace, 3i Group, Vodafone, AB Foods, Tesco, AstraZeneca, National Grid, Reed Elsevier

DAILY MAIL

Intec Telecom benefits from revived takeover rumours and talk that trading is strong

Kiwara rumoured to have started pre-feasibility study for Zambia copper project

DAILY EXPRESS

Property Investments worth a look at 78.5p
Tuck some Ceres Power away at 191p - potential for growth

Comment:

Britvic up on Diageo bid hopes
Avacta Group - speculation that they are about to announce second order for its Optim product
South African company rumoured to looking to buy large chunk of Mwana Africa's Bindura Nickel holdings
Hopes of Lesotho main pipe stake sale boost Kopang Diamond Developments

What is High Frequency Trading?

How to Trade Stocks - What is High Frequency Trading?

High frequency trading, also called arbitrage trading or HFT, is a form of automated trading employed by professional institutional investors using powerful computers to carry out millions of orders on multiple stock markets in just a few seconds. This gives the institutions that use high frequency trading a significant advantage.

This method of stock trading is of course not for beginners ! The institutions that use it, however, can spot new trends in a fraction of a second. By anticipating these trends institutions that make use of high frequency trading can realize significant profits on their trades as a result of the bid-ask spread.

Although the spreads only provide a fraction of 1% profit per trade, high profits are nevertheless achievable due to the extremely high volume of trades involved.

High frequency trading is seen by many to offer large firms an unfair advantage over smaller institutions and ordinary investors. Basically what these institutions do is use their speed advantage to buy a stock before others notice that it is moving, then when the rest of the pack start buying and the price moves up further they sell the stock back at the higher price. This is of course what happens all the time in stock markets, the difference this time is that the whole transaction takes only a fraction of a millisecond. The gains are small but repeated millions or even billions of a times a day the profits add up. This is the beauty of high frequency trading. It may all sound rather mechanical and boring but when millions are at stake then you can see why people would want to do it.

Andrew M. Brooks at mutual fund and investment company T. Rowe Price, a says “we’re moving toward a two-tiered marketplace of the high-frequency arbitrage guys, and everyone else. People want to know they have a legitimate shot at getting a fair deal. Otherwise, the markets lose their integrity.”

It seems to me that it was ever thus, the guy who gets the information first has an advantage.

Tim Worstall at the Examiner says the real question should be not "what is high frequency trading?" but "what is the problem with high frequency trading?" to which, he argues, the answer is "nothing".

According to Worstall the problem is not high frequency trading, but "flash trading", and unfortunately even people who ought to know better confuse the two.

Flash trading allows a trader to get a "peek" at the orders of other traders. It is, says Worstall, this flash trading that is the problem as it allows "front-running" a form of insider knowledge that can give you an advantage and that ought to be illegal.

Flash trading, however, is not high frequency trading or arbitrage trading.

High speed trading is just another form of arbitrage (buying something cheap in one place and selling it for more in another place). With high speed trading the trades are carried out so fast that the actual physical proximity of the computers involved to the computers on the stock exchange is a factor. Firms with computers right next door to the stock exchange can trade faster than firms with computers further away.

You would think that the Securities and Exchange Commission would know the difference between high frequency trading and flash trading but apparently they don't as the ban they have proposed covers both high frequency and flash trading. Ah well it's nice to know that idiots can make money too, there's hope for me yet !