Letture interessanti - vado a farmi una doccia
Da investmentexecutive...
Hedge funds active in U.S. Treasury market
Make record US$33 billion of U.S. Treasuries since last April
Tuesday, September 21, 2004
By James Langton
Hedge funds are replacing central bankers as big players in the U.S. Treasury market, suggesting that the sector could become more volatile, says National Bank Financial.
NBF says in a report that data released last Thursday by the U.S. Treasury department shows foreign holdings of U.S. treasuries increasing to US$1.8 trillion in July. Unlike previous months, however, most of the accumulation in July was from the private sector, as purchases of foreign central banks have levelled off recently following a Bank of Japan-led buying frenzy earlier this year.
“So who's picking up the slack?” NBF asks. It finds that answer in Caribbean banking centers, largely representing hedge funds, have been the most active in recent months, accumulating a record US$33 billion of U.S. Treasuries since last April. As of July, Caribbean banking centres had jumped ahead of Korea to become the fourth largest holders of U.S. Treasuries at US$90.9 billion, NBF says.
“This development could add volatility to the bond market in the coming months because hedge funds are certainly not as predictable as foreign central banks when it comes to accumulation of U.S. Treasuries,” it suggests.
Da australia financial review
Speculators take the rap for oil volatility
Sep 22
Peter McKay | Wall St Journal
When oil prices get whipped around, people start pointing fingers at speculators. That seems reasonable - except no one really has a good idea what those "speculators" are actually doing.
As oil hit 21-year highs of nearly $US50 a barrel last month, then quickly retreated to around $US46, many analysts and economists blamed the price swings on trading by hedge funds and other entities making bets based solely on where they thought the price of oil was headed, rather than on holdings of actual commodities. That kind of trading, critics contend, adds unnecessary volatility to prices that can eventually trickle down to consumers at the pump.
But that criticism hasn't been borne out by a key indicator of such activity; the weekly commitments of traders' reports published by the US federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The reports, which have a category dubbed "non-commercial traders" that aims to approximate speculative activity on regulated exchanges, have been showing a relatively small amount of such trading.
Oil futures in New York rose US76¢ to $US46.35 a barrel on Monday night.
In the most recent report, non-commercials represented about 10 per cent of bullish futures and options positions and nearly 5 per cent of bearish ones on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
The CFTC and some analysts and traders say that proves that talk of a speculative energy boom has been overblown. Some of the critics counter that the reports themselves are flawed, for a number of reasons, and need an overhaul or perhaps should be scrapped entirely.
"They're really very raw data that tells us almost nothing about speculation in energy," said independent energy economist Phil Verleger, who estimates speculators really constitute about 70 per cent to 80 per cent of bullish bets these days.
"The CFTC reports were created a long time ago for the agricultural markets, when there was a clearer definition between commercials and non-commercials. They should just stop doing them, really, until they can clarify what they're measuring."
For its part, the CFTC says the commitments data, regularly released on Fridays, offer a good sketch of the markets, not a precise schematic. In that context, the reports remain a useful, accurate tool, said John Fenton, the CFTC's deputy director of market surveillance.
"Sure, it's possible the reports don't capture certain things," MrFenton said. "But that hasn't been our experience, especially in crude oil."
The federal agency has been releasing commitments data for more than 40 years, regarding trading of everything from wheat to gold to sugar. Lately, reports on crude oil and other energy products have gained extra attention, even from Wall Streeters who previously paid little notice.
Fans and critics agree the reports have some parameters built in that could limit their usefulness and accuracy.
They only cover trades at the CFTC-regulated Nymex, not the off-exchange transactions that companies broker privately via the phone or the internet. Nymex, where the oil contracts outstanding cover $52billion of exposure to the commodity, is clearly an influential source of "price discovery", as trader jargon would put it.
No one knows how large the over-the-counter market is, but many analysts believe its value is even larger than Nymex's market and thus is an attractive arena for speculators.
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? Per quanto riguarda lo studio, ehm, la mia risposta è...si e no... 
sto studiando...di cucina (e parecchio 
- prometto che recupererò al più presto 
