TheBramble's Random Squawk

[TheBramble]

Just looking at tomorrow’s scheduled data releases and saw the JPY job-to-applicant ratio (expected to be 0.77). Which pretty much means there’s only 0.77 of a job for everyone who wants one. And then, thinking a bit like a rights issue, if you mash up all the available man-hours employers need filled and then distribute that as equally as possible over the available workforce, you get a figure which is the number of hours per week (month or whatever) that you can give to everyone.

Taking JPY as an example, it would (I think?) roughly equate to reducing everyone’s working hours by using the job-to-applicant ratio as a multiplier on current hours. So for a ‘standard’ 40 hour week, multiply by 0.77 and you get 30.8 hours/week.

Put everybody on a new ‘standard’ of 31 hours/week and you have (OK, only arithmetically, but in principle it works) full employment, no unemployment benefits to pay – plus people suddenly busting a gut to be better than the ’other’ person sharing their job.

Obviously ridiculously under-stated in terms of management and overlap and unforeseen complications and obviously not thought through at all, but with the right incentives to business (e.g. not to increase administrative overhead and reduce taxation overall [which the government could afford as tax receipts would increase overall through 100% employment and effectively 0% unemployment benefits]) I can’t see any major flaw in this calculation. Of course, there will potentially be labour, social, legil;ative, tax et al issues. But…any thoughts? Be rough with me, I like a tussle….

 

[TheBramble]

Facebook plan to launch SmartPhone in 2013. Pity none of their shareholders will be able to afford one.

 

[the hare]

I can’t see any major flaw in this calculation…

I suppose you have to factor in the size of the infrastructure designed to cope with the unemployed. I have a couple of business associates who made hundreds of millions out of that particular growth industry.

Off the top of my head, job centre staff, social security offices etc, not to mention 1001 training providers charging 2K per head to teach the unemployable how to create a CV making the most of their NVQ in bicycle repair, and the 6 months they spent as a youth digging ditches and sniffing glue on a YTS scheme.

All those people would suddenly become unemployed, reducing the ratio. Most of those people will be public sector leeches with gold plated pensions and cast iron employment rights, unemployable in the real world, and difficult to reassign.

Its not a bad idea though.

 

[TheBramble]

Greek National Banks - National Bank, Alpha, Eurobank and Piraeus Bank get 18 Billion Euros from from ESFS.

 

[TheBramble]

Greek Tourism

Summer bookings for tourism in Greece are down over 30%. It's hard to come up with anything that makes any difference in the current situation, but knock-on for support and infrastructure for tourism is going to make a big dent in the, erm, already big dent.

Italy and Germany are (were?) the top incoming tourist nations and each, for quite separate reasons, will be staying away in droves this year it would appear.

So that last minute Summer vacation to Greece, you shouldn’t have too much trouble finding a flight (if the Greek airlines are still operating) or a hotel (if they are any still open) and restaurants should be largely empty – quite literally.

So, if Hermann and Benito are not going to Greece this year, who is the lucky recipient of the beach towels on deck-chairs at dawn? Eastern Europe has some quite stunning beach locations…

 

[counter_violent]

I suppose you have to factor in the size of the infrastructure designed to cope with the unemployed. I have a couple of business associates who made hundreds of millions out of that particular growth industry.

Off the top of my head, job centre staff, social security offices etc, not to mention 1001 training providers charging 2K per head to teach the unemployable how to create a CV making the most of their NVQ in bicycle repair, and the 6 months they spent as a youth digging ditches and sniffing glue on a YTS scheme.

All those people would suddenly become unemployed, reducing the ratio. Most of those people will be public sector leeches with gold plated pensions and cast iron employment rights, unemployable in the real world, and difficult to reassign.

Its not a bad idea though.

Gets my vote for post of the year.
Mind you..there have been a few quality posts...the surprizing thing being...all on the same day!
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Ok, this may be a really dumb question, but couldn't somebody make money by using the trading delay for his advantage?

For example, on my broker, the prices are delayed 15 minutes and I can pay for real-time prices.

Now, let's assume that I somehow have 1 account where I have 15 minutes delayed stocks and a friend of mine has an account with real-time stocks.

My fiend could tell me that the X stock was 10$ 15 minutes ago and now it's 11$(a bit of an exaggeration, but bear with me). So, I could buy the stock at my delayed price of 10$, wait 15 minutes and sell it for 1$ profit/share.

What did I missed?
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Hi all,

Although I have been a member for a while, I haven't participated much at all as I have been busy reading, learning and paper trading, so sorry about that.

I came across a weird looking candlestick the other day, weird to me anyway, this is how it looked.

The open value was between the open and close value of the previous day. It was on "light sweet crude oil index". On April 19th 2012 it opened at 103.21, closed at 103.08, but the previous day it opened at 104.22 and closed at 102.78, which makes the 19th April stick start somewhere in the middle of the previous stick, and not at the close of the previous stick.

After having observed this, I realised that a lot of days show the same pattern, so my questions are as follow:

- How does it happen?
- Why does it happen?

Sorry if this is basic knowledge, but I never observed this before, maybe because I usually look at hourly or lower charts.

 

[TheBramble]

Gets my vote for post of the year.
Mind you..there have been a few quality posts...the surprizing thing being...all on the same day!

Perhaps you should ban the Bunny more often then?

 

[TheBramble]

CV - interesting couple of posts (and posters!). Mmmm...If the less than well intentioned vendors (boooo....hissssss......) catch drift of this ‘newbie edge’ there's no telling what offerings we could expect shortly.

But this 15 min (or longer) delay has been a bankable feature since the birth of the exchanges. Less than 2 weeks ago for instance, a social-tech start-up floated at a price institutional investors and underwriters had been given the future price on, but for which the punters the institutions were selling the shares to, had not. Happens all the time.

Yes it’s true, there is always one set of market participants working on data that is variously delayed with respect to the underlying reality.

 

[counter_violent]

Perhaps you should ban the Bunny more often then?

I ain't banned him for yonks Quality poster in my book! Common sense in short supply, he has it in spades.

 

[TheBramble]

Gets my vote for post of the year.
Mind you..there have been a few quality posts...the surprizing thing being...all on the same day!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ok, this may be a really dumb question, but couldn't somebody make money by using the trading delay for his advantage?

For example, on my broker, the prices are delayed 15 minutes and I can pay for real-time prices.

Now, let's assume that I somehow have 1 account where I have 15 minutes delayed stocks and a friend of mine has an account with real-time stocks.

My fiend could tell me that the X stock was 10$ 15 minutes ago and now it's 11$(a bit of an exaggeration, but bear with me). So, I could buy the stock at my delayed price of 10$, wait 15 minutes and sell it for 1$ profit/share.

What did I missed?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My first guess would be: education.

 

[TheBramble]

I ain't banned him for yonks Quality poster in my book! Common sense in short supply, he has it in spades.

Nothing worse than a bought mod...

 

[counter_violent]

My first guess would be: education.

Yes but can you recommend a course?

 

[TheBramble]

Yes but can you recommend a course?

Oh yes.

 

[the hare]

I ain't banned him for yonks

Then you'd better take the chance to get in a quick ban while you still can... there's a queue of t2w'ers just waiting to terminate me permanently

 

[counter_violent]

Then you'd better take the chance to get in a quick ban while you still can... there's a queue of t2w'ers just waiting to terminate me permanently

It's not a badge of honour you know !

 

[TheBramble]

Bankia

Almost 4% of Bankia stock is out on loan as of last Friday for short selling. More significantly this is just under 90% of all the stock that can be borrowed for shorting. You’ll be lucky to get your hands on any of the residual as it is for the most part allocated.

But don’t be glum, Rajoy said today it would be 2-3 months before they sway sovereign debt for worthless shares; so it’ll be tomorrow then. And that will be seen as ‘a good thing’ and the stock will rise trapping those greedy Bears. Before falling again as reality takes hold, again.

 

[TheBramble]

It's not a badge of honour you know !

'Tis where I come from....

 

[Mr. Charts]

Not sure that will be sufficient Richard, He has several wives and many children. And he needs a room for the bomb-making equipment. Any chance you and Mrs. Charts could move into the annexe?

What ! And displace the staff ? !

 

[TheBramble]

Bankruptcy Tourism

Bankrupts in UK face 12 months of financial purgatory, In Ireland, it's 12 years.

An advisory (harrumph…) service exists which boasts of clearing €1.2bn by using UK courts to wipe out loans taken out in the Republic. One property speculator wrote off €150m during a 35-second court appearance.

The service is UK based and claims it is legally available to all EU citizens. It apparently requires temporarily moving to the UK. For how long and if for a domiciled status only rather than a continuous physical presence is presumably information for which you pay your fee.

Can't help thinking though as with all these things it won't be long before it's common knowledge.





Not sure if it's appropriate to post the link. Mods: please advise.





edit: no url needed. It's UK based and uses the standard commercial suffix; co.uk
Any search using the words bankruptcy and Irish or even a trial & error use of these two words in juxtaposition together with the suffix should yield a result to the intelligent researcher.

 

[TheBramble]

Pasty Tax

Huzzah!!! The UK Governement is to reverse it's budget ruling on applying tax to warm pasties.

BUY GREGGS.