Good morning

The normal note about subscribing: if you’d like to receive the daily posts by mail, you can sign up at the top of the sidebar →

The headlines:

1. UNLIMITED BOND BUYING.

   Link: they did it.

   Wrote about it here.

2. China’s investment in infrastructure.

   Link: the building of roads.

   2,018 km of road. That is a lot of road works. I’m sure that Jeremy Clarkson will send James May to investigate for an episode of Top Gear.

   There is a stack-load of new infrastructure projects being approved there. Too long to list in this post. But the point is – infrastructural investment does good long-term things for growth.

   The US could learn a few things about it.

3. JP Morgan’s CIO/London Whale loss saga isn’t over.

   Link: the Senators are on our side.

   The Senate is investigating further. Especially now that the loss has grown from $2 billion to $5.8 billion and may reach $7.5 billion before JPM can close out the position.

   That said – I’m interested to see what impact the ECB buy-everything plan will have on that credit-derivative index that’s causing the trouble. If I remember correctly (I only remember vaguely – so I may be entirely wrong), Mr Iksil was taking positions that were betting on sovereign defaults happening later rather than sooner. The market had started to think that those were going to happen sooner rather than later. Post ECB action, we may well be on the path to the Iksil bet being the right one?

   UPDATE: hang on. The Iksil bet was the other way round. AWKS. Short JPM shares today:

   

4. The Xstrata vote today for Glenstrata.

   Link: pessimism?

   Baited breath.

That’s all for now.

Have a good day.