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Coffee Mourning
Cost-cutting measures in one stressed investment bank have reached such an extreme that bankers will have to forego a coffee service during their meetings from now on. Admittedly, the saving is hardly...
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Is the Eurozone Debt Crisis Back?
Allegations of a political slush fund in Spain and anti-reform electoral promises in Italy combined to do some meaningful damage on the respective stock markets yesterday. But why? About Spain,...
View ArticleDAX-Sentiment: Investors seek a refuge for the correction
6 February 2013. FRANKFURT (Börse Frankfurt). Fully nine percent of Boerse Frankfurt’s sentiment panel quit the bullish camp over the past week. And there are no prizes for guessing when this selling...
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No Grexit from London Luxury Property Market
International investors are fleeing former financial safe-havens in huge numbers this year. Compare this to 2012, when fears of a Greek departure from the eurozone prompted its well-heeled nationals...
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Are We Doing Well with the Euro?
The title of this post was one of the questions an economist from a major French banking group asked the audience during a lecture to Franco-German business group yesterday evening. His answer was a...
View ArticleDAX-Sentiment: An Urgent Need to Buy
DAX investors give up on ‘big’ correction 13 February 2013. FRANKFURT (Börse Frankfurt). A little less than two weeks ago investors took fright in response to the latest developments in the eurozone....
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The Repairman Always Rings Twice
Wretched dishwasher: it stopped running just minutes before the end of the program, leaving the plates in a damp, cold mist. It is always a grim moment when one realises that a call to the repairman is...
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It Helps to Look the Part
Strasbourg played host to the 20th Independent Wine Producers and Wine Fair last weekend. It was a great event: it not only gives wine-lovers the chance to sample hundreds of wines from every French...
View ArticleDAX-Sentiment: The Correction that Never Was
20 February 2013. FRANKFURT (Börse Frankfurt). On the face of it, German institutional investors have given the domestic equity market a huge vote of confidence. Since last week’s survey there has been...
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A Weighty Problem
A generous waistline is my sin in life; diets are my suffering. It doesn’t seem to matter which diet I try, the kilos I fight so hard to lose always seem to creep back again. It makes no difference...
View ArticleDAX-Sentiment: Reference point makes Italian election look worse
Investors had grappled with the prospect of gridlock two weeks ago 27 February 2013. FRANKFURT (Börse Frankfurt). Investors have eyed the lofty levels of German blue-chips with thinly-veiled...
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A Pleasure Shared is a Pleasure Halved
“My book got a great review today,” my colleague announced proudly. “Aren’t you supposed to say ‘our’ book,” I interjected, “there were two of you who wrote it after all?” “Of course, I meant ‘our’...
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Naughty Nudgers
Economists continue to rail against the kind of libertarian or ‘soft’ paternalism pioneered by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein in their 2008 book, ‘Nudge’. A nudge is essentially a method of...
View ArticleDAX-Sentiment: Empty Promises
Institutional investors lost patience with the idea of a correction 6 March 2013. FRANKFURT (Boerse Frankfurt). For more than a month, the DAX had promised to move lower. The market had delivered an...
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Freedom for Me, Myself or I?
A online debate about the merits and dangers of nudging – the ‘soft’ paternalism Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein promoted in their 2008 book, ‘Nudge’, came to the brink of degeneration last week. The...
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Warning: Triple-Peak Forecasters Ahead
As the US equity benchmark, S&P 500, approaches the levels where it peaked in 2000 and in 2007, it feels like open-season for equity analysts predicting a triple-top for the index. I do not want to...
View ArticleDAX-Sentiment: Death by Profit-Taking
13 March 2013. FRANKFURT (Börse Frankfurt). ‘Nobody ever died from profit-taking’ was an old market chestnut we heard last week for the first time in at least six months. Certainly, its revival had...
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Jesus in the Eurozone
When the financial website “Business Insider” proposed a solution to the euro crisis I was all ears. But when the saviour turned out to be none other than the Saviour, one could forgive me for being a...
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The Cyprus Shell Game
Given the number of prominent voices that have been raised against the controversial Cyprus bank levy, it was a wonder it found so much support among the troika – the ECB, EU and IMF. Dmitry Medvedev...
View ArticleDAX-Sentiment: Crisis; What Crisis?
Media reports overstate investor anxiety 20 March 2013. FRANKFURT (Börse Frankfurt). If financial journalists had a vote on Boerse Frankfurt’s DAX sentiment panel, optimism would be in the cellar. The...
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