My colleague Oliver Bergmann who heads up our hedge fund incubation business and I were discussing how the world of credit spiralled so quickly out of control. He sent me the following article by David Merkel who writes a very interesting blog called The Aleph Blog (www.alephblog.com).

I rarely make predictions because I hate being wrong. But I shall make this prediction to help make my short positions profitable. Except that you can’t wash your car to make it rain. So here goes.  As long as there is serious skepticism about the fundamental underpinnings of the current equity market rally, as long

The innovation that was accused of being a New Paradigm in the late 1990’s in the wake of the Internet boom and subsequent bust brought amongst other things the concept of Just-In-Time management of inventory and production processes. This has introduced volatility into the cash flow and earnings generation of a large swathe of the

    In the recent investor surveys a number of hedge fund strategies stand out as strategies which investors expect will do well going forward and which they intend to increase their exposure to. Among these are distressed credit, global macro and CTAs. Of the three, distressed debt hedge funds had a poor 2008 whereas

14 April. Retail sales numbers in the US disappointed. Retail sales less autos shrank 0.9% against a forecast of 0.0% and a prior of +0.7%. Advance retail sales were -1.1% versus a forecast +0.3% and a prior -0.1%. PPI numbers were also reported. PPI Ex Food and Energy rose 3.8% YOY versus a forecast 4.0%.