TLDR

  • 21 Sep 2012 at 2:13 PM

John Paulson Pretty Sure Dodd-Frank, New Hedge Fund Disclosure Rules Are The Most Fakakta Thing He’s Seen In A Long Time

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“I couldn’t even read the whole application,” he said to guffaws from several hundred young Jewish professionals gathered sipping on spirits and kosher wine at event space Chelsea Pearl to hear his advice on how to make it in finance. “I did review part of the application, about 40 pages [out of 500], and the information we provided doesn’t make any sesne to me. How could it possibly make sense to the SEC? It’s a complete waste of time,” he added. “They don’t know what they’re looking for, the just asked for everything in every possible way…I don’t believe the Dodd-Frank law is a positive piece of legislation,” he said dryly, understating his distaste. “I ordered the bill; there are 2,000 pages. I couldn’t read the table of contents. I don’t know anyone who has read it. I think it has retarded the recovery…it’s complete gobbledygook.” [AR]

  • 03 Feb 2012 at 5:03 PM

Dealbreaker’s Senior Bookmaker Has A Few Things He’d Like To Get Off His Chest

By Anonymous Sports Book Manager

Anonymous Sports Book Manager left academia to run a trading department at one of the world’s largest offshore bookmaking outfits. He now works onshore with his cellphone, pencil, rice paper, and a bucket of water. He’s trying to go legit as a consultant (please send job offers), but every time he gets out of the bookie business, they pull him back in.

I’m cranky. It’s probably because the Giants opened +3.5 in the Super Bowl and now it’s nearly +2.5 and I’ve taken in a lot of sharp money I don’t want. “3” is the biggest number in football. That’s a problem, and it’s put me on edge. So other stuff is getting my goat—especially stupid stuff. Like this: Read more »

Volcker Rule Too Long, Say Banks, Guy Who Stayed Up All Night Summarizing It

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Apparently lawyers at Davis Polk pulled an all-nighter reading and summarizing the Volcker Rule draft that was published yesterday. And they’re not the only people annoyed by the regulators’ refusal to get to the point:

As people drilled down into the details of the draft, many were concerned that it appeared to require very granular policing of individual traders at banks as part of the stringent, multilevel compliance regime described in the document.

“They have chosen the most burdensome way of doing it,” said Tim Ryan, chief executive of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, a Wall Street trade association, in an interview.

While last night’s rule-summarizing festivities undoubtedly distracted some young lawyers from the Yankees game / general yearning for death, there may be other more consequential distractions. Read more »

  • 13 Jul 2011 at 12:06 PM

Today in Visual Display of Quantitative Information (Nerdy)

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Zero Hedge points out this awesome chart in an otherwise kind of back-test-eriffic Stanford paper on credit-equity correlation trading:

The chart graphs 2003-2010 investment grade credit spreads (left axis) versus the S&P (bottom axis), with the size of the circles corresponding to the level of the VIX volatility index and the colors distinguishing the year of the observations.
Read more »