Finance

An analyst has been accused of using working-from-home rules to make nearly £1 million from insider trading.

Redinel Korfuzi, 37, a former Janus Henderson research analyst, denies money laundering and conspiracy to commit insider dealing.

OK, naughty boy etc etc.

They are said to have netted £963,000 in relation to 11 companies’ shares including Daimler, Jet2 and THG and Russian tech firm Mail.ru, now known as VK. Mr Korfuzi is accused of misusing confidential information on these companies.

Jamie Ross, who worked with Mr Korfuzi at Janus Henderson on European equities, …………The fund manager was then taken through a list of the potential transactions through which Korfuzi is said to have profited through confidential information.

Asked about a transaction involving Mail.ru, a personal email service, between September 22 and October 2, 2020, Mr Ross said he had “initial interest” in the transaction but “would have quickly lost that interest when I found out the aim of the company”.

Mr Forster asked: “In terms of Mr Korfuzi’s interest, would you have expected him to show much interest in this, in your view of it?”

Mr Ross replied: “It would have been very clear to him this was not something I would have sanctioned, and was an investment I would not have been interested in.”

The prosecutor then asked Mr Ross about a transaction involving Jet2, between February 4 and February 12, 2021. Mr Ross replied that Janus Henderson did not have a position on the package holiday company, adding that the proposed transaction would not have interested him at all.

Yes, of course this is all going to be more complicated etc. But so far the coworker/manager seems to be saying that whatever he did with those two companies wasn’t insider – or at lesat, not abuse of the Janus position because they didn’t have an interest.

So, you all do take my investment advice, yes?

A 110% rise on a 20 day old stock tip. Woot!

Be even better if I’d got the reason right of course. This isa takeover bid, not as I suggested a rise in the price of steel scrap in the US due to tariffs…..

He doesn’t really think anybody gets it except him. “Nobody on the whole fucking left understands what’s happening on the financial markets except me,” he says. “I’m on all these left-wing WhatsApp groups, I’ve had spads messaging me, saying: ‘What can we say?’ Because I’m the only guy that knows. And I’ve been screaming, for months: ‘Watch the bond yields, watch the bond yields, watch the bond yields.’”

Gazza did something I never did, which is get onto a trading desk. His time there wasn’t quite the victory and global conquering he says it was but then, you know, traders.

But on this macroeconomics stuff he’s not so hot. He keeps – keeps – telling us about the damage being done by rising inequality. Yet inequality isn’t rising. The Wealth Gini is pretty much unchanged over 15 years, the income Gini actually loower than in 2008. So, you know.

But that claim that this is the best the left can do? Well, erm…..

“Traders individually are smart people, but the market itself is a little bit of a wild beast. But the thing is, the traders are probably right. If you look at the UK government, it’s not on a sustainable financial path. There’s been no sustained growth in this country for a long time. The government’s stripped to its bones. The middle class is dying. Where’s the growth going to come from? What is the actual plan here?”

On the other hand that is indeed true. Well, govt’s not stripped to its bones and the middle class isn’t dying but where is the growth to come from, yes?

He was already embroiled in a battle with his employers, who didn’t want to pay his astronomical bonuses unless he stayed. This is apparently very common in the City, and maybe doesn’t come up in conversation much because people making huge bonuses never want to leave.

Snigger. It’s the fucking law. You know all that shouting about huge bonuses? About how they must be controlled? All that? One of the controls is that they pay out over time – and you only get them if you stay. In order that you don;t do short term trades which boost your bonus, cash out and then the bank crashes. This isn’t capitalists screwing the workers, this is the law put in place by lefties.

Sigh.

An economically strong Britain, outside the great blocs of the US, the EU and China/Russia, might have had a chance of straddling the differences. In reality, as last week dramatised, it is one of the weakest links. No EU member’s euro-denominated government debt faced the same aggressive sell-off as Britain’s; nowhere were yields driven so high. Brexiters have damned our country.

Nominal yields in a different currency simply are not comparable.

French media giant’s shares slump after London float in embarrassment for Reeves
Canal+ falls £4bn short of its expected £6.7bn valuation as 2024’s biggest listing starts trading

I wouldn’t suggest that I’m wholly a fan of Rachel from Accounts. But blaming the Chancellor for a disappointing float in the stock market really is stretching blame a little too far.

Together, SMART and the TGR Group operate in about 30 countries across the globe. The Russian state uses the networks to fund espionage operations, while they also help sanctioned individuals get cash into other countries.
….
The networks operated by collecting funds in one jurisdiction and realising their value without using the global banking system. This often involves swapping cryptocurrency for cash.

Akin to hawala then. When are they going after that system?

How to start trading forex as a beginner
Telegraph Money explains the lucrative investment technique akin to gambling

For the individual this is not an investment technique. It is gambling and at bad, bad odds. Not becuase the odds are fixed but because the gambling is being done against the rest of the FX market. Which is staffed by some of the finest gambling brains in the universe.

It’s playing poker against all past winners of the world poker championship at the same time. Not a game the individual investor is likely to win.

Will get a number of clicks to the webpage, obviously. High search ranking and all that. But…..

Coinbase Global’s chief legal officer has called for Donald Trump to sack the head of the US Securities and Exchange Commission as Republicans start drawing up a new policy agenda for cryptocurrencies.

Paul Grewal, the legal chief at Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States, said: “The current chair of the SEC, Gary Gensler, has led a regulation-by-enforcement campaign against the industry that has been destructive of investor protections and destructive of innovation in ways that we think need to be addressed immediately.”

His specific actions about crypto I’ve no beef with. But firing Gary Gensler is always a good idea. His basic worldview is simply wrong. It’s one where the bureaucratic state simply just must have ever more control. Always. Fire him for that – and never hire him, obviously.

A High Court judge has ruled for the first time that London Capital & Finance, the collapsed mini-bond investment firm that raised £237 million from 11,600 members of the public, was a fraud and a Ponzi scheme.

OK.

And thanks to a commission rate Careless himself declared “huge” and his accountant “insane”, Surge was getting 25 per cent of all the money the public invested.

A 25% commission rate on a financial product cannot, not really, be anything other than a Ponzi.

Not that this is what the efficient markets hypothesis means but financial markets aren’t inefficient enough for there to be that sort of legitimate profit margin in just raising money.

The Department of Justice is investigating Polymarket for allegedly allowing US-based users to bet on the site, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday evening.

And that’s one of thoise things that I think is near certain to have happened. Polymarket doesn;t have the right licences to accept US bets. It’s right on hte verge of getting them but activity in hte past few months would breach those rules. Sure, you can check IPs, addresses, all saorts of stuff. Know your customer rules and all that. But those will never work perfectly. Spoofing not being in the US is easy enough.

So, if they want to say “You allowed a USian to bet, you’re knicked” they almost certainly – to my mind – can. If they want to say “Well, how hard did you try to stop them?” that would be fair and something possible to defend against.

As to why they’re shoutiing now, sure, could be politics. But there’s also that fact that bureaucracies can be and often are hugely vindictive.

Varied lefties – especially MMT types – get very shriekie when you use the household analogy for government finances. Yet, at a certain level, it’s a perfectly good analogy:

Budget 2024: Borrowing costs surge after Reeves plots debt-fuelled spending spree

Sure and anyone can get a bit of freebie credit out of suppliers. Overdrafts cost a bit more, mortgages less than that but you’ve got to have security. And so on – but it is true that as you borrow more then perceived risks rises and you’re paying more for all your borrowing. At some point you’re juggling credit card balances and then comes the prospect of Fred and his lead pipe collection methods.

The yield on 10-year gilts – the return the government promises to pay buyers of its debt – spiked by nine basis points to 4.41pc in the wake of Ms Reeves’s speech, an 11-month high.

Early stages yet but the analogy does hold.

Except, sometimes, they’re not:

Lilium, This Is Perhaps One That Won’t Fly
Mar. 21, 2022

And:

Lilium Didn’t Raise Enough Capital To Take Off
Mar. 09, 2023

And:

A German flying taxi pioneer that was once valued at more than €3bn (£2.5bn) is preparing to file for bankruptcy after officials in Olaf Scholz’s government blocked a cash infusion.

Lilium, which made its first successful flight in 2017, said the bulk of its businesses were unable to pay their debts and that the divisions would file for self-administration, a form of insolvency, as it looks to sell its assets or secure rescue funding.

Many City insiders increasingly believe that the push to regulate banks better after 2008 has gone too far in stamping out healthy risk-taking.

Mr Bresler added: “We’ve seen a lot in consumer duty. I certainly think that maybe outside the US we are held to the highest standard from a regulatory perspective. That is a great thing but also very challenging for businesses like us because the burden is significant.”

The increase in red tape “creates an issue for small businesses because your entry barrier is so high,” Mr Bresler said.

Because the cost of setting up a new bank is so high. Which is weird. Because in all other respects the setting up of a new bank is getting ever cheaper. The internet, there’s off the shelf banking software and all that. We should be seeing an explosion in new banking licences. We’re not….

The FTX bankruptcy. Looks like the Chapter 11 will in fact make a profit. That is, there will be something for shareholders as well as creditors.

No, this doesn’t mean Sam did nothing wrong. It does mean that crypto is well up since the bankruptcy. So they’ve been able to sell the rubble and collect cash to pay people back at the crypto prices of Nov 22.

As, in fact, happened at Mt Gox as well.

Rachel Reeves’s plan to significantly increase borrowing in the Budget risks pushing up mortgage rates, Treasury analysis suggests.

An official modelling exercise indicates that the Chancellor’s plans to rewrite Britain’s fiscal rules could increase the cost of debt for consumers and businesses.

The Treasury research paper warns that a “fiscal loosening” of just one per cent of GDP could lead to a “peak increase in interest rates” of up to 1.25 percentage points.

The document goes on to warn that every increase in annual borrowing of £25 billion could increase interest rates by between 0.5 and 1.25 percentage points.

The actual numbers there, well, mebbe. But the general idea is obviously true. In order to attract mre money – as Spud would say, in order to gain more who wish to save with the government – the rates on offer will have to rise. For the standard supply and demand reasons. If there were more who wanted to lend more at current rates then they’d be doing so and so bidding up prices/down yields. Thus to gain more we need to change the price on offer to move along that demand curve.

Volume on offer and price are not independent of each others…..D’Oh.

What’s actually going to be interesting here is watching who tries to deny this.

The SEIS allows investors to claim reinvestment relief of 50pc when investing the proceeds of a capital gains-liable disposal, in effect cutting the tax bill in half. Gains from the scheme are also exempt from capital gains taxes.

The SEIS was established in 2012 to help stimulate Britain’s start-up economy. Companies that are less than three years old and have fewer than 25 employees can raise up to £250,000 from the SEIS.

Ed Prior, head of investor services at SFC Capital, which runs the UK’s biggest SEIS fund, said investments since the start of July were up 90pc,

And thus the story of vast numbers dodging future CGT rises etc.

at £3.1m compared to £1.6m in the same period a year ago.

Ah.

SFC accounts for around 10pc of all SEIS investments. In total, the scheme invested £157m in 1,815 companies in the 2022-23 tax year.

Fairly trivial in the scheme of things then…but got an article about in the Tele so well done there….

Tech bubble fears grow as Nvidia shares slump

The time to fear a tech bubble is when it’s inflation, not when it pops….

A leading London wine merchant is embroiled in a spat with a US celebrity chef over claims it is refusing to repay cash he ploughed into its investment scheme.

Eddie Gallagher, who hosts a food show on Amazon Prime, claims that the UK merchant Oeno was failing to sell $7,500 (£5,700) worth of wine he owned through the company despite repeated requests to liquidate his account and sell the produce.

The row comes amid a crisis for fine wines after a supply glut sent prices plunging, leaving merchants struggling to offload bottles for their investment clients.

Boom and bust in alternative investments. Ho Hum.

Early in, early out, can work. Late in pretty much never does.

There was a lovely calculation by The Economist some time back. If, on Jan 1 each year, you put your money into the best performing investment of the previous 12 months – then did that again next year etc – then pretty quickly you ended up with 0.01% of the starting sum. If, on Jan 1, you put it into the worst performing of the previous year then soon enough you were richer than the entire world.

Just how booms and busts work.

Global stock markets have plunged amid fears that the US Federal Reserve has left it too late to begin cutting interest rates and risks damaging the world’s largest economy.

Shares tumbled in Asia, with Japan’s Nikkei 225 index closing down 2,216.63 points – its second-largest points drop in history – after weaker than expected US factory data showed output dropped to an eight-month low in July amid a slump in new orders.

So, did they keep rates high enough to causes a proper, deep recession? Or not? And the bet isn’t about that, it’s about what people believe about that. Good luck.

Ashley Reading, left, whose daughter is dating the footballer Scott McTominay, right. There are allegations that some investors’ funds were “used for the purpose of the Reading family”

Undoubtedly such allegations will prove to be wholly and entirely unfounded.

It was an unregulated investment scheme that promoted returns of up to 18 per cent a year

Entirely and wholly.

Fortress’s borrowers included the former agent of Gareth Southgate, the England football team manager, and Kevin Maxwell, son of the late media baron Robert Maxwell.

Absolutely.