From a Western financial professional’s perspective, South Korea has traditionally been overlooked. The most familiar big three finance hubs in the East were forged in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Tokyo. However, Korea is redefining itself as a major marketplace for a specific breed of financial product, broadly labeled as “derivatives”. Here we’ll give a crash course on derivatives and their place in financial markets, inspect their recent appearance in emerging markets, and theorize as to the effect they will have on Korea’s global financial presence and the economy as a whole.

Most will probably tell you that ABACUS was a fancy deceptive ploy by Goldmand Sachs (GS) to cheat other banks out of their money and make bets against the U.S. housing market, which would ultimately lead to the recession.

Call us what you will, but we’re going to take a different stance on the issue, first explaining what ABACUS really is and then placing it in the context of financial markets.

The last week has seen 100 day moving averages torn apart, surprises from economic data reports, and one of the most notable sell-offs for stocks in some time. Recently, many home gamers and pros alike, have put financials out of their purview. The erratic and effectively risky nature of these names are less than inviting, but
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Supporting our highest conviction trade yet, we now see fundamentals, sentiment, and technicals aligned for a significant correction in Crude Oil prices. While DS partners already hold a position in DTO, we are moving to formally call a short term WTI Crude Continuous Spot price target at $70. Below we explain in detail our thesis
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The January 18 – 22 business week will begin one day late, due to Martin Luther King Jr holiday, leaving only Tuesday to Friday for market action to be staged. The most notable economic data releases will be the Housing Market Index (HMI) and Housing Starts numbers; while Treasury International Capital data, the Producer's Price
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Crude Oil The oil issue has been speculative to this point. It's hard to argue against 90 dollar oil when we saw 145 in July 2008, but the fundamentals aren't congruent with the price growth we've seen and this trader finds it easier to argue FOR $60/ barrel oil. Crude supply in the U.S. remains
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Earnings season officially began, as the first member of the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average to grab Q4 2009 earnings headlines, Alcoa (AA), reported a net profit of $0.01 EPS on Monday, January 11. The shortfall to the $0.06 EPS market consensus was explained by CEO Klaus Kleinfield by the unexpected weakness in the dollar,
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The Institute for Supply Chain Management surprised the world on Monday morning, as they announced the results of their manufacturing managers survey. The report is essentially a survey where every manager is asked to respond to his own experience. Each manager states whether they see conditions improving, deteriorating or remaining constant, with respect to thirteen main criteria. The December survey’s
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On October 23, 2009 we endorsed a position in the Peruvian gold mining firm Beunaventura Mines (BVN) in the article titled Profiting From Volatile Crude Oil Prices and Safe Guarding Your Dollars. Since October 23, BVN has moved from $36.97 to the Friday December 4, 2009 closing price of $39.84, capturing a 7.8% gain. Continuous spot
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Inevitably even the grizzlies have been watching economic indicators gaging the housing market “recovery”, as talk of a 2009 rebound in the United States has now been confirmed by 3.5% growth in the third quarter. Existing home sales bottoming, construction spending pulsing and extreme incentives for new buyers have sweetened the potential for a repeat of the 2004 housing recovery we all loved so well. Yet there remains the issue of magnitude, regarding a potential housing recovery, which may contrast that of 2004 a great deal, and could kill the lasting effects of a bottomed housing market on the broader economy. We will attempt to review and assess the American economy by result of the Housing Market from a historical and quantitative standpoint.