Financial Betting Articles

Have you ever had that txt thing where you type in a word and the phone suggests a different word from the combination of letters and you send it without checking? And your friend/lover/ stalking victim gets a completely different message from what you meant to send?

I txt'd a friend at the weekend to say "I think Gordon Brown's rescue package was well thought out and should downgrade a disaster into merely a crisis" and the message my friend actually got was, "We're doomed". Tsch.

No one knows anything.

I am an expert in dinner parties. If it was an Olympic event I honestly think I could win a medal. Not Gold, because Gold winners don't attempt Heston Blumenthal recipes the wrong side of a bottle of Chablis. But who knows, maybe a Bronze.

So this weekend I have Market Expert over for a bite. Market Expert saw this coming. Market Expert knew the party was going to end in a hangover. Market Expert was every Told You So that ever cried, "You Should Have Listened To Me". He spent the evening putting the Grand into Standing.

So I asked a question I would encourage you to ask yourselves.

"So, you must have made a lot of money then? You must have been short banks, mining stocks, the lot? You must have been short all the way down?"

What will follow will be an explanation of why they didn't make a penny from their wisdom. If you sit there staring at them long enough they'll get their coat.

(Don't worry. I only know to say that because a very good trader would say it to me if I ever made a Look-At-Me market prediction. "Backing it with your own money, are you?")

No one knows anything.

They're already crawling out of the woodwork. Pundits and commentators trying to catch the wave of remorse with tub-thumping articles berating the City. Their tubs were very quiet during the boom years.

Ignore these opportunists, these parasites.

The bankers, the company executives, those that presided over the decimation of value they will do what we all do in times of crisis. Tell anybody who will listen, "We were victims of a systemic failure of the financial ystem," "We're doing no worse than our competitors". Not true.

Certain people have done very well out of this financial collapse. Certain hedge fund managers have been short and done well, thank you very much. I wish people like that had been running the banks. I wish people who had the correct view on the markets had been running the show. Who knows, the show might not have happened.

No one knows anything.

Funny thing about Captains of Industry. During the Good Times it's profile this, interview that. I Am A Leader. I Am A Visionary. I Chart A Course Through The Seas.

But come the Bad Times and people can't demote themselves to the position of General Manager fast enough. People who felt their seven figure salaries were not enough reward for their Leadership suddenly claim helplessness. As if leadership didn't mean planning ahead, expecting the unexpected, seeing what others do not see. Me? I just manage the shop...

Too many leaders are desperate to melt into the crowds, like a defeated army disguising itself as citizens, cheering the conquering army, their chests burning with bitterness and hate. Good. Let them stew for their part in all this.

No one knows anything.

That's what the cleverest man said to me. In a pizzeria in Chelsea at the beginning of 2008. When he called the bullish mood in the City a "Suckers rally". Told me how he had options all the way down. I dread to think how much that fund manager made. But I remember him telling me that Socrates said it first. "No one knows anything. I don't know anything."

And out of this carnage, it is the man who told me that he knew the least that seemed to know the most.

The FTSE was up by 130.90 points in the past week

Wall Street was up by 389.80 points last week

The DAX was also up by 139.31 points in the last week

Shakespeare invented the word "assassination" and "bump."

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