Author: Paul Handover

Unfamiliar territory for stockmarkets

Stockmarkets in very foreign territory

On August 6th, a Post was published on this Blog with the title of This is going to end in tears!

It was prompted by an article by Karl Denninger and a footnote piece from Dave Rosenberg of Gluskin Sheff.

Also included were the US and UK prices for 4th August (about 7am MT) more for my own curiosity than anything else.  They were:

Dow Jones 9295, S&P 500 1,001, NASDAQ 2002, FTSE 100 (now closed) 4671.

By comparison, here are the figures for these markets (all closed at time of writing) for the 18th September.

Dow Jones 9820, S&P 500 1,068, NASDAQ 2133, FTSE 100 5173.

Well another fascinating muse from Mr Rosenberg was in this morning’s inbox and important extracts are below:

Read Rosenberg’s comments

Another breath-taking picture from Patrick Smith

Cannon Beach, Oregon

Copyright (c) 2009 Patrick Smith Photography
Copyright (c) 2009 Patrick Smith Photography

Patrick says of this picture:

This is a view that includes only one of the needles, so that you can get a closer view of Haystack Rock. The light was too good to resist for about two minutes, so I captured several variations of this scene..

Photograph reproduced with the kind, written permission of Patrick Smith.

By Paul Handover

Naked Capitalism – can you help?

Anybody out there who can offer some support?

Yves Smith is responsible for the Blog, Naked Capitalism.  It’s a great Blog and it must take a huge amount of effort to publish the volume of information that Yves does.

Yves has a problem, read here, an extract from his Post below:

Dear patient readers, this is a bit of sentence first, verdict afterwards, but it is 6:00 AM and I have spent all day and all night dealing with copy edits and am still behind the eight ball and need to sleep too, or my productivity will go from poor to non-existent.

So you get an antidote now, and if you check back later, I will fill in some links for your delectation, and hopefully at least a wee post too.

Sorry about this, I feel bad about neglecting the blog, particularly after the technical difficulties of last week, but the WordPress problems put me further behind schedule. And to be honest, they weren’t just WP.

If you can help or know someone who could, then contact details are here.

By Paul Handover

Barnstorming

As the film says, Friends can really drop out of the sky.

Copyright 2009, Barnstorming Productions, LLC
Paul Glenshaw, Copyright 2009, Barnstorming Productions, LLC

Read about the film Barnstorming

Lehman Brothers – whoops!

Wonderful article in the Financial Times about the importance of IT documentation!

Unwinding derivatives is a complex task at the best of times. In the case of Lehman, one of the biggest dealers in some of the most complex derivatives markets, this has been even more so. Lehman’s global derivatives book included contracts with a notional face value of $39,000bn and deals with 8,000 different counterparties when it went bust. The derivatives business was actually split into multiple strands, backed up by between 20 and 30 different systems.

Once it went bankrupt, the staff who supported these systems “evaporated”, according to Steven O’Hanlon, president of Numerix, a pricing and valuation company which is working with Lehman Brothers Holding Inc to unwind the derivatives portfolio.

Say no more! Full article is here.

By Paul Handover

Lehman – 1 year on.

Exactly a year ago, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy.

I shall avoid the temptation of pontificating on the subject as many, many others, far better qualified, will be doing so!Leyman

But two published articles seem to me to be worth visiting, one from October of 2008 from The Economist, and one from The New York Times.

Lastly, a personal comment from friend Dan that shows powerfully how the last year has affected him.

Read more of this Post

Normal service interrupted!

From the 13th until the 20th September, I shall be away and maintaining two Posts a day is going to be difficult.

I trust that the Post that is published each day continues to retain your interest in the Blog.

Thanks for reading.

By Paul Handover

A Dog Story!

This has been doing the rounds and may be seen on numerous web sites and Blogs.  It may be fiction but, nonetheless, it’s a good message.

Strangely, for a Blog called Learning from Dogs, there have been precious few dog stories.  Maybe the integrity of a dog is so flippin’ obvious that we don’t need to wrap the species up in all sorts of romantic twaddle.  This in no way, however, reduces the power of the message that dogs, along with many other species of warm-blooded animals (e.g. horses) are capable of reminding mankind of the importance of integrity.

Pair GSDs

Read The Dog Story

The International Space Station

Almost taken for granted by so many of us.

Thanks to Dan for passing me the link to a fascinating graphic that was recently published in USA Today showing the

As seen by STS 128
As seen by STS 128

time-line of the International Space Station.  It has been orbiting above our heads for over a decade!  Do click on the link because you will be surprised, unless you work for NASA, how large and complex the ISS now is.

It’s an interesting to consider what has happened since the launch of the first module, Zanya, on the 20th November, 1998.  Bill Clinton was then President of the USA; Tony Blair had been British Prime Minister since May, 1997.  How times change!

But steadily a group of Nations has worked together to keep this project going and now the end of this magnificent enterprise is within sight.  As the NASA web site summarises:

The International Space Station is a partnership of the US, Russian, European, Japanese, and Canadian Space Agencies. The station has been continuously human occupied since Nov 2, 2000. Orbiting 16 times per day at 17,500 miles per hour 250 miles above the ground, it passes over 90% of the world’s surface. When complete in 2010, it will weigh over 800,000 pounds and have a crew of 6 conducting research and preparing the way for future exploration to the moon and beyond.

By Paul Handover

The Saola, what future?

The Saola is one of the world’s rarest mammals, on the brink of extinction.

(Please share this Post as far and wide as you can – thank you.)

NOTE: Thanks to Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism for this amazing picture that came from the BBC. (By the way Yves’ Blog is an excellent subscription if only for the wonderful daily animal pictures.)

If you, like me, had never heard of this creature then be prepared to weep a few tears; this beautiful animal is very unlikely to survive as a species for much longer.

Saola

Read more about the Saola