Work got in the way the past two days, my apologies.
First, the FBI charges a “bone idle” day trader operating in his parent’s basement outside London near Heathrow Airport with bringing down — in a flash crash — the most liquid market in the world.
Please, that makes me laugh. It’s even more absurd than the SEC’s “fat finger” explanation, which was probably made in a book depository at the Kansas offices of Waddel & Reed.
Navinder Sarao — the trader — is fighting extradition to the US to face the charges that he used a tactic known as “spoofing” — where traders bluff or fake large orders that they don’t intend to execute and cancel it just prior to execution — to manipulate the futures market pricing.
The Nasdaq is back. The tech-ladened exchange moved above its Internet bubble high of 5,048 points on Thursday.
From peak to trough to peak took roughly 15 years. The difference this time is revenue and profits for some. Amazon is the outlier, they have yet to book profits from the last high.
So “irrational exuberance” led to the first high in 1999 and now “QE” has led to this new high. My question is what will be the level of the next bottom?
The Greek drama is moving along the usual timeline. Bluster and bravado by EU financial officials as they plan to kick the can.
Blaming Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis for dragging his feet. Yet EU finance ministers are already pushing the end of April deadline out to a new June deadline.
Greek will not be making the payment no matter what date is used, but the EU cannot fathom the ramifications of Grexit.
Hence teeing up the can to kick it further down the road.