Organizational Transformation in the Financial Sector Due to HFT

"The rapid-fire growth of high-frequency trading, HFT, has spawned a new breed of market mavens whose backgrounds are far different than the traditional suit-clad Wall Street titans.  Their resumes are rich in rocket science and other non-financial fields and they may never have traded a stock, read an earnings report or scrutinized a balance sheet.  They are engineers, mathematicians and computer scientists—armed with cutting-edge technology and often located hundreds of miles from New York City."

Mr. Dharm Kapadia forwards an excellent article on a trend that is rapidly becoming mainstream in the financial sector holistically, see "Man Vs. Machine: The New Kings Of Wall Street" at CNBC here.  Please see my previous post on high frequency trading "Dis-ruptive Innovations - Technology in Retail Investment Sector" here.

China Update

Good friend Mr. Tony Tsai, CEO – BHG Retail Innovation Institute and EVP Operations – The BJ Hualian Hypermarket Co. forwards key China updates:

"Five future development trends of China's foreign trade. Five future development trends of China's foreign trade are analyzed by Liu Jingdong, a researcher at the International Law Research Institute at the China Academy of Social Sciences. The five trends are as follows: 1) China will maintain its leading position in worldwide foreign trade for a long period of time; 2) the structure of China's imports and exports will change and energy and resources trade will play important roles in China's foreign trade; 3) legislation and policies regarding the environment will have a significant affect on China's foreign trade; 4) the renminbi will become the main currency for China's foreign trade settlement; and 5) trade protectionism against China will exist for a long period of time and trade friction between China and its major trade partners will increase."

"Three big mountains" for Chinese economy: housing vacancies, the trade surplus and foreign exchange reserves. Chinese decision-makers will lie awake all night thinking of three numbers. The first is 65.4m, the number of vacant houses in China. Second is $28.7b, the estimated value of China's trade surplus in July. The third is $2.45tr, China's foreign exchange reserves. The three numbers reflect the distorted part of the Chinese economy. China is encouraging investment by suppressing the cost of capital and other factors. The cost to get this investment is the sacrifice of the interests of consumers. Low salaries and low deposit interest rates have suppressed the purchasing ability of consumers."

"Vice governor of People's Bank of China: China to gradually deregulate restrictions on cross-border use of renminbi. Aug. 31, Hu Xiaolian, vice governor of the People's Bank of China, says in an interview with foreign media that China will gradually deregulate restrictions on cross-border use of the renminbi. However, variation in the exchange rate will not solve the China-US trade imbalance. China is also considering allowing enterprises to invest in overseas markets with the renminbi."

"China expands scope of property tax pilot program; evaluation technologies become mature. The Ministry of Finance and State Administration of Taxation has expanded the property tax pilot program across the country. Each province can select one city to take part in the pilot program. In addition, the State Administration of Taxation has accelerated technical training of local tax officials in property tax evaluation."

"China creates new regional economic structure; breaking regional economic development imbalance problems. From May to Dec. 2009, nine plans for regional development were upgraded and made strategic national plans. This indicates China is trying to reverse the imbalance in regional economic development across the country and transforming its export-oriented economic development model, which depends excessively on external demand, as well as exploring an overall way to combine energy-conservation, environmental protection, ecology and civilization."

"China to accelerate construction of credit system in rural areas. Du Jinfu, deputy governor of the People's Bank of China, says China will accelerate the construction of the credit system in rural areas, further supporting agriculture through financial measures."

Jeremy Grantham on Financial Bubbles - Excellent!

Jeremy Grantham states - "Bernake has happily picked up the mantle, and seems totally unconcerned about creating another bubble.  He has got interest rates so low, banks can't possibly not make a fortune, savers are being penalized, anyone who wants to buy cash faces a painful experience... so we are all tempted into speculating, which is apparently what he wants and we have just had one of the great speculative rallies in history second only to 1932-33."  Watch the complete interview here.

Debunking "Wisdom of Crowds" Myth - Two Examples

Crowds are not wise... crowds are equivalent of herds. Communities formed by choice are ones that constitute anything close to wisdom. To clarify how I look at defining wisdom, please see the diagram below:


Wisdom is the country of gods!

I am providing two examples, and these are not anecdotes.

First example: Did Toyota Prius make economical sense? No! I will let the reader search through the plethora of data out showing how buying a used or a modern car was far more economical than buying a Prius in the short and long term. See graph below of a test conducted by Good Clean Tech.

Yet the crowds thronged to buy the Prius creating an instant back log. As soon as the oil price dropped, the Prius is lined up on Toyota's dealership lots.

USA's oil consumption is nicely creeping back up and steadily climbing, see here from CENIMAR. Now, would a "wise" crowd try to dig themselves into the same hole they just climbed out of?

Second example: Consider the recent case of the investment manager Bernard Madoff. Please read and hear details here on NPR. Unfortunately the financial markets are full of other similar concerns.

I rest my case!

Dubai - Financial Health

A good article here (by way of Dharm Kapadia) evaluating the concerns and possible ramifications of Dubai's current financial leverage and the US economic crisis. The article states:

"Dubai's biggest risk is its daring reliance on debt to drive its breath-taking building boom. Last week, Moody's estimated that in 2006, the most recent year for figures, Dubai's government and public sector company debt was at least $47 billion, a staggering 103% of Gross Domestic Product. The investment rating agency said it expected Dubai's debt to continue outpacing GDP for another five years, exposing Dubai to pronounced financing and geopolitical risks."

Yet the article goes to conclude in positive terms providing regional insights and a little bit of history of Dubai and Abu Dhabi's relationship:

"An underlying reason for the relative lack of panic so far is that Dubai real estate remains a financial haven for wealthy individuals from riskier nearby countries like Iran and Pakistan. What's more, Dubai's real estate sector is dominated by a handful of major companies — collectively dubbed "Dubai Inc." — that are directly or indirectly owned and controlled by the government. This means, analysts say, that Dubai authorities could effectively stave off a bubble burst by keeping finished projects off line until market conditions improved. In the event of a systemic threat, Dubai can probably rely on super-rich Abu Dhabi for a bailout. "We consider it highly likely that the authorities will step in at some level to support entities that are strategically important for the economy," Moody's analyst Tristan Cooper tells TIME."

UPDATE: The above article on TIME online has sparked exciting and interesting conversations among my friends in Dubai. The insight is that over 90% of the demographic represented by my friends engaged in the discussion (male-70% and female-30%) (1) South Asians, Middle Easterners and North Africans, (2) Are between the ages of 28 and 44, (3) Married (or about to be), (4) Educated in the West (or equivalent Western University in the region) and lived there prior to moving to Dubai, and (5) Have lived in Dubai for over 2 years - (a) Are not planning to leave Dubai, (b) Are happy to see "small timers", "short timers" leave or "Go Dubizzle" (as one person stated), (c) Are confident in Dubai claiming and taking the place of being "The Financial Center" of "Middle Earth" (as one person put it).

I like to suggest ~10% margin of error to the above qualitative analysis to what the individuals actually do.

Could it be that Dubai "may" have created the method of capturing the Knowledge Worker? See my future post on challenge from Qatar in the from of Qatar Foundation, see here.

Frontier Markets

A new kind of market awaits the hype cycle and inflow of capital - the Frontier markets. Developed, developing, emerging, emerged... now Frontier!

The BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) financial markets are now fluctuating with theUS markets and in some cases their peaks and valleys seem to have a larger spike and dip, respectively. Having seen the growth numbers of some of the BRIC countries, I have to confess I do find myself scratching my head because their is no reason for those markets to fluctuate like the US, perhaps some... but by no means go to the extremes. Here (2007 Report to Congress of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commision) is an interesting read that may shed light on my head scratching.

In comparison, the Frontier markets such as Middle East (a few Gulf region nations and Israel), Africa (South Africa, Eqypt, Morocco) seem to be holding their own. I predict that soon the financial media outlets and the investment analysts will be touting the unprecedented growth to be had from the Frontier markets and we will see a mass exodus of funds from the BRIC equity markets and other retail investment vehicles.

I will restrain myself from giving specific examples, yet as proof I guide the reader to look at ETFs and Mutual Funds portfolios built of the Frontier countries mentioned above and compare to the DOW Industrial Ave. The strength will be obvious.