Author: admin

Submitted by Michael Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

The last aggressive anti-Bitcoin tirade I recall from Paul Krugman was written on April 14th of this year. It was such an irrational piece of drivel that I decided to respond to his Op-ed nearly paragraph by paragraph in my piece, Paul Krugman Goes on the Attack: Calls Bitcoin “Antisocial,” which I strongly suggest you read if you haven’t already.

What is most interesting about that previous article in hindsight is that he wrote it right after Bitcoin experienced its first major crash of 2013 (there have been two thus far, both after greater than 10-fold increases in the price). While I know Krugman periodically attacks Bitcoin, it’s interesting that this latest Bitcoin hit piece also came directly after the second crash. For those who are holders of Bitcoin, this should be taken as a very positive price signal going forward. Krugman’s prior article was written the day before the absolute low price for the decline was reached at $50/btc on April 15th. It seems that Krugman becomes particularly comfortable slamming Bitcoin only after a price crash.

In any event, his latest Op-ed is almost as bad as the first one, and so I thought it’d be worthwhile to highlight his ignorance, irrationality and blatant use of statist propaganda once again. So let’s go.

From the New York Times:

This is a tale of three money pits. It’s also a tale of monetary regress — of the strange determination of many people to turn the clock back on centuries of progress.

 

The first money pit is an actual pit — the Porgera open-pit gold mine in Papua New Guinea, one of the world’s top producers. The mine has a terrible reputation for both human rights abuses (rapes, beatings and killings by security personnel) and environmental damage (vast quantities of potentially toxic tailings dumped into a nearby river). But gold prices, while down from their recent peak, are still three times what they were a decade ago, so dig they must.

 

The second money pit is a lot stranger: the Bitcoin mine in Reykjanesbaer, Iceland. Bitcoin is a digital currency that has value because … well, it’s hard to say exactly why, but for the time being at least people are willing to buy it because they believe other people will be willing to buy it. It is, by design, a kind of virtual gold. And like gold, it can be mined: you can create new bitcoins, but only by solving very complex mathematical problems that require both a lot of computing power and a lot of electricity to run the computers.

In the three paragraphs above, Krugman in employing a strategy that anti-gold people have used for years if not decades. That it is wasteful and environmentally destructive to mine for gold since it has no real purpose. Interesting. What purpose do diamonds have Paul? Did you buy your wife a diamond ring for your engagement? Did you make sure it wasn’t a blood diamond? Aren’t people likely raped and exploited in the mining of diamonds? I wonder how many articles Krugman has written on the destructiveness of diamond mining, a gem that isn’t even rare to begin with.

I tend to notice a huge hypocrisy from statists that in reality hate gold because it is a competing monetary asset, but then attempt to explain away their disdain using another, more publicly palatable rationale such as environmental destruction. After all, gold should get some credit for having at least has two hugely significant historical purposes. It has been valued for both its beauty and durability as jewelry, as well as for its monetary attributes. Diamonds have one primary purpose only recently established due to extensive marketing efforts (also in drills but you get the point), which is as a status or wealth symbol, so you’d think Krugman and other statists would get far more hot and bothered about blood diamonds than gold; but do they? No, they don’t. The hypocrisy is obvious.

The second thing Krugman does in the latest Op-Ed is to take this faux criticism and then attach it to Bitcoin. See the following paragraph:

Hence the location in Iceland, which has cheap electricity from hydropower and an abundance of cold air to cool those furiously churning machines. Even so, a lot of real resources are being used to create virtual objects with no clear use.

No clear use? Really, Krugman? There is nothing useful about essentially costless transfers of value on a peer-to-peer basis? There is no value to monetary transfers that eliminate expensive and parasitic middlemen? There is no value to using a public key as a way to ask for payment, thus reducing  enormous security concerns caused by providing all your private information to hundreds of merchants using credit cards? No value to being able to send millions of dollars across the globe in minutes rather than days? No value to free market currencies competing with state currencies? No value to economic freedom?

There are plenty of valid criticisms of Bitcoin, and a clear and thoughtful expression of those criticisms can only help the marketplace improve free-market crypto currencies in the future. Yet the irrational, ramblings of a statist who clearly hasn’t taken two minutes to objectively analyze Bitcoin is of no use to anyone and a disgrace to a supposedly highbrow newspaper like the New York Times.

His full Op-Ed is here if you have the stomach.

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/wRWXj2mMEO8/story01.htm Tyler Durden

Submitted by Michael Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

The last aggressive anti-Bitcoin tirade I recall from Paul Krugman was written on April 14th of this year. It was such an irrational piece of drivel that I decided to respond to his Op-ed nearly paragraph by paragraph in my piece, Paul Krugman Goes on the Attack: Calls Bitcoin “Antisocial,” which I strongly suggest you read if you haven’t already.

What is most interesting about that previous article in hindsight is that he wrote it right after Bitcoin experienced its first major crash of 2013 (there have been two thus far, both after greater than 10-fold increases in the price). While I know Krugman periodically attacks Bitcoin, it’s interesting that this latest Bitcoin hit piece also came directly after the second crash. For those who are holders of Bitcoin, this should be taken as a very positive price signal going forward. Krugman’s prior article was written the day before the absolute low price for the decline was reached at $50/btc on April 15th. It seems that Krugman becomes particularly comfortable slamming Bitcoin only after a price crash.

In any event, his latest Op-ed is almost as bad as the first one, and so I thought it’d be worthwhile to highlight his ignorance, irrationality and blatant use of statist propaganda once again. So let’s go.

From the New York Times:

This is a tale of three money pits. It’s also a tale of monetary regress — of the strange determination of many people to turn the clock back on centuries of progress.

 

The first money pit is an actual pit — the Porgera open-pit gold mine in Papua New Guinea, one of the world’s top producers. The mine has a terrible reputation for both human rights abuses (rapes, beatings and killings by security personnel) and environmental damage (vast quantities of potentially toxic tailings dumped into a nearby river). But gold prices, while down from their recent peak, are still three times what they were a decade ago, so dig they must.

 

The second money pit is a lot stranger: the Bitcoin mine in Reykjanesbaer, Iceland. Bitcoin is a digital currency that has value because … well, it’s hard to say exactly why, but for the time being at least people are willing to buy it because they believe other people will be willing to buy it. It is, by design, a kind of virtual gold. And like gold, it can be mined: you can create new bitcoins, but only by solving very complex mathematical problems that require both a lot of computing power and a lot of electricity to run the computers.

In the three paragraphs above, Krugman in employing a strategy that anti-gold people have used for years if not decades. That it is wasteful and environmentally destructive to mine for gold since it has no real purpose. Interesting. What purpose do diamonds have Paul? Did you buy your wife a diamond ring for your engagement? Did you make sure it wasn’t a blood diamond? Aren’t people likely raped and exploited in the mining of diamonds? I wonder how many articles Krugman has written on the destructiveness of diamond mining, a gem that isn’t even rare to begin with.

I tend to notice a huge hypocrisy from statists that in reality hate gold because it is a competing monetary asset, but then attempt to explain away their disdain using another, more publicly palatable rationale such as environmental destruction. After all, gold should get some credit for having at least has two hugely significant historical purposes. It has been valued for both its beauty and durability as jewelry, as well as for its monetary attributes. Diamonds have one primary purpose only recently established due to extensive marketing efforts (also in drills but you get the point), which is as a status or wealth symbol, so you’d think Krugman and other statists would get far more hot and bothered about blood diamonds than gold; but do they? No, they don’t. The hypocrisy is obvious.

The second thing Krugman does in the latest Op-Ed is to take this faux criticism and then attach it to Bitcoin. See the following paragraph:

Hence the location in Iceland, which has cheap electricity from hydropower and an abundance of cold air to cool those furiously churning machines. Even so, a lot of real resources are being used to create virtual objects with no clear use.

No clear use? Really, Krugman? There is nothing useful about essentially costless transfers of value on a peer-to-peer basis? There is no value to monetary transfers that eliminate expensive and parasitic middlemen? There is no value to using a public key as a way to ask for payment, thus reducing  enormous security concerns caused by providing all your private information to hundreds of merchants using credit cards? No value to being able to send millions of dollars across the globe in minutes rather than days? No value to free market currencies competing with state currencies? No value to economic freedom?

There are plenty of valid criticisms of Bitcoin, and a clear and thoughtful expression of those criticisms can only help the marketplace improve free-market crypto currencies in the future. Yet the irrational, ramblings of a statist who clearly hasn’t taken two minutes to objectively analyze Bitcoin is of no use to anyone and a disgrace to a supposedly highbrow newspaper like the New York Times.

His full Op-Ed is here if you have the stomach.

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/wRWXj2mMEO8/story01.htm Tyler Durden

While global currency wars have esclataed over the last 4 years (as we noted here), the potential return to fund outflows triggered by the Fed taper, combined with higher demand for funds ahead of Chinese New Year, means there will be continued pressure for China’s money market rates to stay high heading into January. With China’s reform and rate liberalization plans, it seems 2014 may be the year of the Taper Wars.

None of this should come as a big surprise (given we covered the debt problem is great detail here)… but bringing us up to date on the impact of the Fed’s tapering and liquidity flows, WSJ reports,

Analysts said the short-term cash injection didn’t help the underlying problem of banks struggling with funding, in part because the injections go to bigger banks and the funding problems are mostly at midsize and smaller lenders. “It’s mostly meant to prevent financial institutions from suffering an exhaustion of their cash supply, but it doesn’t represent an easing in funding conditions,” said Wu Sijie, senior analyst at Guangfa Bank.

 

…

 

During the squeeze in June, there were rumors that a bank had defaulted on a loan to another bank, but no bank admitted it. However, ahead of its initial public offering in Hong Kong last week, China Everbright Bank disclosed in its prospectus that two of its branches failed to pay 6.5 billion yuan of interbank loans due on June 5. Everbright Bank said it had the cash on hand to repay the loans, but a failure by its branches to tell headquarters that they were short meant the bank was unable to cover the loans before the end of the day.

and Bloomberg’s Tom Orlik,

The beginning of the end of QE3, marked by the U.S. Federal Reserve’s decision to taper its purchases of bonds, could trigger a reversal in China’s capital flows and compound the year-end cash crunch. China’s money market rates pushed above 7 percent Thursday. That conjured flashbacks of June’s liquidity squeeze and forced the People’s Bank of China to wade into the market with a liquidity injection. As of Friday early afternoon, conditions remained tight.

The year-end cash crunch is unexpected because December typically sees massive inflows of cash from the spend-down of fiscal deposits, which approached a trillion yuan in previous years. Capital inflows from September through November, tracked by Bloomberg’s new China Estimated Capital Flow index {CNNMHTMY Index <GO>}, should also have improved liquidity conditions.

Against that backdrop, the current squeeze is a reminder of stressed conditions in China’s financial sector. Chinese banks now rely more on the interbank market for funding because of increased competition for deposits — the result of bottom-up interest rate liberalization and pressure from rolling over non-performing loans.

The central bank retains enormous resources to prevent a liquidity squeeze from turning into something more severe. The PBOC sits on about twenty trillion yuan of reserve deposits, which could be released into the system.

At the same time, the PBOC also wants to tamp down credit growth, and teach banks to manage liquidity without relying on the central bank’s eleventh-hour interventions. A complex market in which big banks attempt to manipulate the system to get higher returns on their excess deposits adds to the difficulty and increases the chance of missteps.

Cross-border capital flow is a key factor affecting China’s interbank market. Inflows add to liquidity and push rates down. Outflows can add stress as funds exit the market.

To track those flows, Bloomberg has created the China Estimated Capital Flow index. The monthly series takes the sum of FX purchases by banks and change in FX deposits as total flows into the country. Netting out the monthly trade and direct investment balances provides an estimate of portfolio flows.

With a current account surplus and controlled capital account, China does not suffer from the volatility introduced into other emerging markets by international capital flows. Still, over the course of 2013, the index illustrates the impact the Fed’s policies have on China’s capital flows and on the mainland’s money markets.

In May and June, the suggestion of a taper in the Fed’s asset purchases saw rates in the U.S. rise. That triggered a sharp reversal for China’s cross border flows, with an exodus of capital contributing to the spike in money market rates. Since September, the delay in U.S. tightening seems to have stimulated a return of capital inflows.

A potential return to fund outflows triggered by the Fed taper, combined with higher demand for funds ahead of Chinese New Year, means there will be continued pressure for China’s money market rates to stay high heading into January.

A far-reaching commitment to reform by China’s leaders has buoyed confidence in the outlook for 2014 and beyond. December’s surge in rates is a reminder that there’s no easy fix for an over-extended financial system. Necessary shifts such as interest rate liberalization can add to the pressure. With rates high, credit growth is likely to decelerate, and equities may extend their lackluster run into the New Year.

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/h75-mXGbh4M/story01.htm Tyler Durden

While global currency wars have esclataed over the last 4 years (as we noted here), the potential return to fund outflows triggered by the Fed taper, combined with higher demand for funds ahead of Chinese New Year, means there will be continued pressure for China’s money market rates to stay high heading into January. With China’s reform and rate liberalization plans, it seems 2014 may be the year of the Taper Wars.

None of this should come as a big surprise (given we covered the debt problem is great detail here)… but bringing us up to date on the impact of the Fed’s tapering and liquidity flows, WSJ reports,

Analysts said the short-term cash injection didn’t help the underlying problem of banks struggling with funding, in part because the injections go to bigger banks and the funding problems are mostly at midsize and smaller lenders. “It’s mostly meant to prevent financial institutions from suffering an exhaustion of their cash supply, but it doesn’t represent an easing in funding conditions,” said Wu Sijie, senior analyst at Guangfa Bank.

 

…

 

During the squeeze in June, there were rumors that a bank had defaulted on a loan to another bank, but no bank admitted it. However, ahead of its initial public offering in Hong Kong last week, China Everbright Bank disclosed in its prospectus that two of its branches failed to pay 6.5 billion yuan of interbank loans due on June 5. Everbright Bank said it had the cash on hand to repay the loans, but a failure by its branches to tell headquarters that they were short meant the bank was unable to cover the loans before the end of the day.

and Bloomberg’s Tom Orlik,

The beginning of the end of QE3, marked by the U.S. Federal Reserve’s decision to taper its purchases of bonds, could trigger a reversal in China’s capital flows and compound the year-end cash crunch. China’s money market rates pushed above 7 percent Thursday. That conjured flashbacks of June’s liquidity squeeze and forced the People’s Bank of China to wade into the market with a liquidity injection. As of Friday early afternoon, conditions remained tight.

The year-end cash crunch is unexpected because December typically sees massive inflows of cash from the spend-down of fiscal deposits, which approached a trillion yuan in previous years. Capital inflows from September through November, tracked by Bloomberg’s new China Estimated Capital Flow index {CNNMHTMY Index <GO>}, should also have improved liquidity conditions.

Against that backdrop, the current squeeze is a reminder of stressed conditions in China’s financial sector. Chinese banks now rely more on the interbank market for funding because of increased competition for deposits — the result of bottom-up interest rate liberalization and pressure from rolling over non-performing loans.

The central bank retains enormous resources to prevent a liquidity squeeze from turning into something more severe. The PBOC sits on about twenty trillion yuan of reserve deposits, which could be released into the system.

At the same time, the PBOC also wants to tamp down credit growth, and teach banks to manage liquidity without relying on the central bank’s eleventh-hour interventions. A complex market in which big banks attempt to manipulate the system to get higher returns on their excess deposits adds to the difficulty and increases the chance of missteps.

Cross-border capital flow is a key factor affecting China’s interbank market. Inflows add to liquidity and push rates down. Outflows can add stress as funds exit the market.

To track those flows, Bloomberg has created the China Estimated Capital Flow index. The monthly series takes the sum of FX purchases by banks and change in FX deposits as total flows into the country. Netting out the monthly trade and direct investment balances provides an estimate of portfolio flows.

With a current account surplus and controlled capital account, China does not suffer from the volatility introduced into other emerging markets by international capital flows. Still, over the course of 2013, the index illustrates the impact the Fed’s policies have on China’s capital flows and on the mainland’s money markets.

In May and June, the suggestion of a taper in the Fed’s asset purchases saw rates in the U.S. rise. That triggered a sharp reversal for China’s cross border flows, with an exodus of capital contributing to the spike in money market rates. Since September, the delay in U.S. tightening seems to have stimulated a return of capital inflows.

A potential return to fund outflows triggered by the Fed taper, combined with higher demand for funds ahead of Chinese New Year, means there will be continued pressure for China’s money market rates to stay high heading into January.

A far-reaching commitment to reform by China’s leaders has buoyed confidence in the outlook for 2014 and beyond. December’s surge in rates is a reminder that there’s no easy fix for an over-extended financial system. Necessary shifts such as interest rate liberalization can add to the pressure. With rates high, credit growth is likely to decelerate, and equities may extend their lackluster run into the New Year.

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/h75-mXGbh4M/story01.htm Tyler Durden

This morning's incredible 6-month-range busting, 11-sigma, so-called "fat finger" in Treasury futures markets was brushed under the carpet by most of the mainstream media since it had no effect on what is important – US equities. However, as the following detailed charts from Nanex show, it looks like anything but an 'accidental' fat finger and merely highlights just how fragile the world's largest (and supposedly most liquid) markets have become. Still, with Virtu's CEO doing so well, how will it ever stop?

 

The 11-sigma spike in all its glory… (via Nanex)

(3-month front-month 30Y Futs intraday range mean is ~0.9 points and standard-deviation is ~0.5 points)

 

And the still showing the bid-ask dissolves…

 

and the full break-down as multiple contracts were affected…

On December 23, 2013 at 2:37:51, Treasury Futures skyrocketed on heavy volume! Specifically, the March 2014 contract for the 30-Year (ZB), the 30-Year Ultra (UB), the 10-Year (ZN) and spread between the two (NOB). In 10 seconds, the 30-Year T-Bond moved 5 handles – the equivalent of the high-low range of the last 3 months.

1. March 2014 30YR T-Bond (ZB) Futures

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2. March 2014 30YR T-Bond (ZB) Futures. Zooming in on 18 minutes of time.

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3. March 2014 30YR T-Bond (ZB) Futures – showing quotes.

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4. March 2014 10YR T-Note (ZN) Futures.

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5. March 2014 10YR T-Note – 30YR T-Bond (NOB) Futures.

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6. March 2014 30YR Ultra T-Bond (UB) Futures.

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7. March 2014 30YR Ultra T-Bond (UB) Futures. Zooming to 27 seconds of time.

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8. March 2014 30YR T-Bond (ZB) Futures. Zooming to 27 seconds of time.

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9. March 2014 10YR T-Note (ZN) Futures during same time period as charts 7-8 above.

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10. March 2014 10YR T-Note – 30YR T-Bond (NOB) Futures during same time period as charts 7-9 above.

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Source: Nanex

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/nYAljDrZPiY/story01.htm Tyler Durden

This morning's incredible 6-month-range busting, 11-sigma, so-called "fat finger" in Treasury futures markets was brushed under the carpet by most of the mainstream media since it had no effect on what is important – US equities. However, as the following detailed charts from Nanex show, it looks like anything but an 'accidental' fat finger and merely highlights just how fragile the world's largest (and supposedly most liquid) markets have become. Still, with Virtu's CEO doing so well, how will it ever stop?

 

The 11-sigma spike in all its glory… (via Nanex)

(3-month front-month 30Y Futs intraday range mean is ~0.9 points and standard-deviation is ~0.5 points)

 

And the still showing the bid-ask dissolves…

 

and the full break-down as multiple contracts were affected…

On December 23, 2013 at 2:37:51, Treasury Futures skyrocketed on heavy volume! Specifically, the March 2014 contract for the 30-Year (ZB), the 30-Year Ultra (UB), the 10-Year (ZN) and spread between the two (NOB). In 10 seconds, the 30-Year T-Bond moved 5 handles – the equivalent of the high-low range of the last 3 months.

1. March 2014 30YR T-Bond (ZB) Futures

---

---

2. March 2014 30YR T-Bond (ZB) Futures. Zooming in on 18 minutes of time.

---

---

3. March 2014 30YR T-Bond (ZB) Futures – showing quotes.

---

---

4. March 2014 10YR T-Note (ZN) Futures.

---

---

5. March 2014 10YR T-Note – 30YR T-Bond (NOB) Futures.

---

---

6. March 2014 30YR Ultra T-Bond (UB) Futures.

---

---

7. March 2014 30YR Ultra T-Bond (UB) Futures. Zooming to 27 seconds of time.

---

---

8. March 2014 30YR T-Bond (ZB) Futures. Zooming to 27 seconds of time.

---

---

9. March 2014 10YR T-Note (ZN) Futures during same time period as charts 7-8 above.

---

---

10. March 2014 10YR T-Note – 30YR T-Bond (NOB) Futures during same time period as charts 7-9 above.

---

 

Source: Nanex

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/nYAljDrZPiY/story01.htm Tyler Durden

Everyone knows that the most parasitic form of trading, that would be high frequency trading for those who may not have followed this website since 2009, is very profitable. Well, it is certainly profitable for those who operate the momentum-igniting, quote churning, HFT firms in control of what’s left of the “market”, if not so much for anyone else. Just how profitable is it? Judging by the house that Vincent Viola, head of Virtu Financial, one of the largest high frequency electronic trading and market making firms, which according to Cifu accounts for more than 5% of US equities volume and over 10% of the of the average daily volume of MSFT, and which tried to expand even more aggressively with a failed bid for Knight Capital last year, has just put on the block.

According to the NY Daily News, the house that the HFT behemoth is trying to offload, is a “40-foot-wide mansion, one of the largest homes in the city, is on the market for a whopping $114 million — or half the price its owner, Wall Street investor Vincent Viola, spent to buy the Florida Panthers hockey team earlier this year.”

The asking price for this seven-bedroom, nine-bath house would not only break the current record, but rip out its heart and step on it. The most expensive home in city history was The Harkness Mansion at 4 E. 75th St., a 36-footer that sold for $53 million in 2006.

And while it may not have been a high frequency flip, if purchased at the asking price, Viola is set to make nearly 5 times his money in just 8 years: Viola and his designer wife, Theresa, bought the house for $20 million in 2005. At the time the 16,000-foot spread was broken up into four large apartments and doctor’s offices, however it has since been redesigned into a mine-Versailles mansion with the help of Theresa Viola’s firm Maida Vale Design.

If the offer is lifted, we will finally have validation that the housing bubble has taken out all previous highs. “Since the real estate bubble burst, no townhouse has broken the $50 million mark, though a few have tried, including the $90 million Woolworth mansion that most recently belonged to Lucille Roberts, the exercise queen. It has been taken off the market.” It will also confirm that HFT does indeed pay well. Although, in all fairness to Viola, he did serve as former Chairman of the NY Merc.

That said, we expect Viola’s next house to be even bigger: after all it is only a matter of time before the HFT powerhouse goes public as it has been trying since May. A quick reminder on just what Virtu does via Bloomberg:

Virtu, which provides bids and offers on 205 venues around the world in products from U.S. equities to silver and copper futures, says its fastest growth is currently in currency trading and providing liquidity to stocks in Asian markets including Japan and Australia. It expects rapid growth in new products that will become available when over-the-counter derivatives start trading electronically under rules mandated by the Dodd-Frank Act, Cifu and Concannon said.

 

Concannon and Cifu run the firm’s daily operations with Vincent Viola, Virtu’s controlling shareholder, chairman and chief executive officer. Viola, who was chairman of the New York Mercantile Exchange from 2001 to 2004, cofounded the company in 2008 with Cifu and Graham Free, its global head trader. Cifu, who is also chief operating officer, previously was a partner and co-head of the private-equity group at law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP.

 

Concannon, a former executive vice president at exchange operator Nasdaq OMX Group Inc., met with the SEC’s new chairman about running the agency’s division that regulates exchanges and sets policies for markets on April 10, White’s first day on the job, according to people briefed on the discussions who spoke on condition of anonymity because the meeting was private.

 

The lawyer and former exchange executive said he plans to stay at Virtu. He worked at the SEC in the mid-1990s and later held several positions at Island ECN and Instinet Group Inc. before joining Nasdaq Stock Market in 2003 when it bought a business owned by Instinet.

 

Private-equity firm Silver Lake Partners LLC invested in Virtu in 2011 in connection with the market maker’s acquisition of Madison Tyler Holdings LLC, which Viola and David Salomon, a former arbitrage trader at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., cofounded in 2002. Virtu is profitable every day, according to Cifu.

 

“As a market-making firm that does not take a directional view of the market, we historically have not had trading days where we lose money across the firm,” he said.

So for just under $120 million one can buy either Steve Cohen’s Bloomberg building duplex, or the following:

The owners of 12 E. 69th St. have put a bow around their $114 million townhouse … the perfect Christmas present?

The screening room was modeled on Theresa Viola’s favorite movie palace in Queens, where she grew up.

The basement was expanded to accommodate a pool, sauna, game room, gym and a two-story screening room.

The master bathroom features a soaking tub made from a giant geode.

The coffered ceiling the grand living room features 14-karat gold leaf, and the floors are walnut and mahogany.

The massive kitchen features a pizza oven and huge TV among its features. The penguins are just for decoration.

An
intricate grand staircase connects the first three floors of the home.

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/HQN0qWe6uHk/story01.htm Tyler Durden

As students vie for 2014 internships, Bloomberg finds a fraternity-based network whose Wall Street alumni guide resumes to the tops of stacks, reveal interview questions with recommended answers, offer applicants secret mottoes and support chapters facing crackdowns. Despite apparent crackdowns on cronyism, nepotism, and fraternism; it seems nothing has changed as “secret handshakes” and the fraternity pipeline helps undergraduates beat odds three times steeper than Princeton University’s record-low acceptance rate… “People like people who are like themselves,” notes one recruiter, seemingly proven by the fact that JPMorgan employs 140 Sigma Phi Epsilon members with BofA and Wells Fargo even more.

 

Via Bloomberg,

Conor Hails, head of the University of Pennsylvania’s Sigma Chi chapter, was in a Philadelphia hotel ballroom last month for a Barclays Plc (BARC) recruiting reception. A friend pointed out a banker from their fraternity. Hails, 20, approached with a secret handshake.

 

“We exchanged a grip, and he said, ‘Every Sigma Chi gets a business card,’” Hails recalled. “We’re trying to create Sigma Chi on Wall Street, a little fraternity on Wall Street.”

 

As students vie for 2014 internships in an industry where 22-year-olds can make more than $100,000 a year, interviews with three dozen fraternity members showed a network whose Wall Street alumni guide resumes to the tops of stacks, reveal interview questions with recommended answers, offer applicants secret mottoes and support chapters facing crackdowns.

 

…

 

The fraternity pipeline helps undergraduates beat odds three times steeper than Princeton University’s record-low acceptance rate

 

…

 

Fraternities retain influence in the face of scrutiny by parents, politicians and police for binge drinking, hazing and at least 60 deaths in the U.S. since 2005.

 

The largest U.S. banks say they are meritocracies and run diversity programs to shift an industry that once only let women onto the New York Stock Exchange floor as clerks during wartime shortages. Goldman Sachs added 10 women last year to a partnership that had one when CEO Lloyd C. Blankfein was elected to it in 1988.

 

“There obviously has been much progress since 20 years ago,” said Siegfried von Bonin, head of Dartmouth’s Alpha Delta chapter. “But the reality is that it’s still very much a male-dominated culture.”

 

…

 

Fraternity members who went to work for Goldman Sachs, Citigroup Inc. (C) and Bank of America Corp. said they were sent back to campus on recruiting trips, where they could tap people from their houses for interviews ahead of other candidates, some more qualified. One said he would sometimes invent endorsements to send to bosses that didn’t mention fraternity connections.

 

…

 

When alumni don’t reach out, fraternity members know how to find them. Von Bonin, 21, asked two at one of the world’s largest banks for interview advice, he said. They taught him to describe the benefits of the firm’s U.S. growth, fast-paced environment and training program.

 

…

 

That national fraternity has sent almost 3,000 men into finance, according to resumes on LinkedIn, which shows no other industry employing more than 1,800.

 

…“People like people who are like themselves,”

 

…“I wish I did have more networks,” said Emily Hendrix, who plans to graduate in May after three years at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida. “It would maybe make finding a job a little easier, a little less stressful.”

 

…

 

“You tend to think of an institution in a structured way, but it’s actually a big organic entity,” Urwin said. “Driving any kind of change that gets at the culture in an organism is hard because it tends to return to the original form, if you don’t maintain that consistent pressure to drive that change.”

 

…

 

JPMorgan employs 140 Sigma Phi Epsilon members, according to an article on job preparation in the fraternity’s magazine this year. It shows only Bank of America and Wells Fargo employing more.

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/vZJiYGOYdno/story01.htm Tyler Durden

As students vie for 2014 internships, Bloomberg finds a fraternity-based network whose Wall Street alumni guide resumes to the tops of stacks, reveal interview questions with recommended answers, offer applicants secret mottoes and support chapters facing crackdowns. Despite apparent crackdowns on cronyism, nepotism, and fraternism; it seems nothing has changed as “secret handshakes” and the fraternity pipeline helps undergraduates beat odds three times steeper than Princeton University’s record-low acceptance rate… “People like people who are like themselves,” notes one recruiter, seemingly proven by the fact that JPMorgan employs 140 Sigma Phi Epsilon members with BofA and Wells Fargo even more.

 

Via Bloomberg,

Conor Hails, head of the University of Pennsylvania’s Sigma Chi chapter, was in a Philadelphia hotel ballroom last month for a Barclays Plc (BARC) recruiting reception. A friend pointed out a banker from their fraternity. Hails, 20, approached with a secret handshake.

 

“We exchanged a grip, and he said, ‘Every Sigma Chi gets a business card,’” Hails recalled. “We’re trying to create Sigma Chi on Wall Street, a little fraternity on Wall Street.”

 

As students vie for 2014 internships in an industry where 22-year-olds can make more than $100,000 a year, interviews with three dozen fraternity members showed a network whose Wall Street alumni guide resumes to the tops of stacks, reveal interview questions with recommended answers, offer applicants secret mottoes and support chapters facing crackdowns.

 

…

 

The fraternity pipeline helps undergraduates beat odds three times steeper than Princeton University’s record-low acceptance rate

 

…

 

Fraternities retain influence in the face of scrutiny by parents, politicians and police for binge drinking, hazing and at least 60 deaths in the U.S. since 2005.

 

The largest U.S. banks say they are meritocracies and run diversity programs to shift an industry that once only let women onto the New York Stock Exchange floor as clerks during wartime shortages. Goldman Sachs added 10 women last year to a partnership that had one when CEO Lloyd C. Blankfein was elected to it in 1988.

 

“There obviously has been much progress since 20 years ago,” said Siegfried von Bonin, head of Dartmouth’s Alpha Delta chapter. “But the reality is that it’s still very much a male-dominated culture.”

 

…

 

Fraternity members who went to work for Goldman Sachs, Citigroup Inc. (C) and Bank of America Corp. said they were sent back to campus on recruiting trips, where they could tap people from their houses for interviews ahead of other candidates, some more qualified. One said he would sometimes invent endorsements to send to bosses that didn’t mention fraternity connections.

 

…

 

When alumni don’t reach out, fraternity members know how to find them. Von Bonin, 21, asked two at one of the world’s largest banks for interview advice, he said. They taught him to describe the benefits of the firm’s U.S. growth, fast-paced environment and training program.

 

…

 

That national fraternity has sent almost 3,000 men into finance, according to resumes on LinkedIn, which shows no other industry employing more than 1,800.

 

…“People like people who are like themselves,”

 

…“I wish I did have more networks,” said Emily Hendrix, who plans to graduate in May after three years at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida. “It would maybe make finding a job a little easier, a little less stressful.”

 

…

 

“You tend to think of an institution in a structured way, but it’s actually a big organic entity,” Urwin said. “Driving any kind of change that gets at the culture in an organism is hard because it tends to return to the original form, if you don’t maintain that consistent pressure to drive that change.”

 

…

 

JPMorgan employs 140 Sigma Phi Epsilon members, according to an article on job preparation in the fraternity’s magazine this year. It shows only Bank of America and Wells Fargo employing more.

via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/vZJiYGOYdno/story01.htm Tyler Durden