The witch-hunt against traders continues:
The U.S. Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation of possible manipulation of the $5.3 trillion-a-day foreign exchange market, a person familiar with the matter said.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is also looking into alleged rigging of interest rates associated with the London interbank offered rate, or Libor, is in the early stages of its currency market probe, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the inquiry is confidential.
The U.S. investigation comes as the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority said in June it was reviewing potential manipulation of exchange rates. That month, allegations that dealers at banks pooled information through instant messages and used client orders to move benchmark currency rates were reported by Bloomberg News. Regulators are probing the alleged abuse of financial benchmarks used in markets from oil to interest rate swaps by the firms that play a central role in setting them.
Readers will remember that the shocking allegations are that traders would position their inventories to meet known pending client orders.
You can like or dislike Obama but he’s got one thing right:
President Barack Obama knows who is the boss: the bond market.
“Ultimately, what matters is: What do the people who are buying Treasury bills think?” the president told reporters this week, when discussing measures he could take to end the threat of a historic default on the nation’s debt.
Coming up next: courses on how to cheat on personality tests:
They can drive cars, win Jeopardy and find your soon-to-be favorite song. Machines are also learning to decipher the most human qualities about you — and help businesses predict your potential to be their next star employee.
A handful of technology companies from Knack.it Corp. to Evolv Inc. are doing just that, developing video games and online questionnaires that measure personality attributes in a job applicant. Based on patterns of how a company’s best performers responded in these assessments, the software estimates a candidate’s suitability to be everything from a warehouse worker to an investment bank analyst.
Once in my twenties, when I was so desperate for work I would apply for jobs at banks and undergo the ordeal of speaking to stupid people, I was required to take a personality test. Multiple choice. Page one of the test was how you thought of yourself with respect to various attributes. Page two – cunningly designed so you couldn’t see your answsrs to page 1 when filling in page 2 – was how you thought other people perceived you with respect to those same attributes. Fortunately, I’d heard of this ridiculous piece of HR ass-covering, and knew that what you said didn’t matter much – they were interested in how closely page 1 and 2 matched. So I made the responses almost identical.
In many ways, it must be nice to be American. A constitution that actually means something, a culture that supports it and an independent judiciary that enforces it:
New York’s ban on outdoor smoking in state parks was blocked by a judge after a smokers’-rights group argued that the Office of Parks, Recreation & Historic Preservation exceeded its authority.
Supreme Court Justice George B. Ceresia Jr. in Troy, in a ruling dated Oct. 8 and made public today, permanently blocked the office from implementing or enforcing the ban and ordered it to remove any signs referring to it.
The office “extended its reach beyond interstitial rule-making and into the realm of legislating,” Ceresia wrote in his ruling, saying state law doesn’t give the parks office the right to promulgate rules “regulating conduct bearing any tenuous relationship to park patrons’ health or welfare.”
It was a mixed day for the Canadian preferred share market, with PerpetualDiscounts up 9bp, FixedResets off 3bp and DeemedRetractibles gaining 1bp. No particular patterns are observable on the moderately sized Performance Highlights table. Volume was very low.
| HIMIPref™ Preferred Indices These values reflect the December 2008 revision of the HIMIPref™ Indices Values are provisional and are finalized monthly |
|||||||
| Index | Mean Current Yield (at bid) |
Median YTW |
Median Average Trading Value |
Median Mod Dur (YTW) |
Issues | Day’s Perf. | Index Value |
| Ratchet | 0.00 % | 0.00 % | 0 | 0.00 | 0 | -0.6320 % | 2,469.9 |
| FixedFloater | 4.29 % | 3.55 % | 30,410 | 18.32 | 1 | 1.0032 % | 3,913.6 |
| Floater | 2.74 % | 2.97 % | 62,086 | 19.82 | 5 | -0.6320 % | 2,666.8 |
| OpRet | 4.61 % | 1.70 % | 64,511 | 0.46 | 3 | 0.1154 % | 2,647.0 |
| SplitShare | 4.77 % | 5.04 % | 64,312 | 4.01 | 6 | 0.0745 % | 2,942.5 |
| Interest-Bearing | 0.00 % | 0.00 % | 0 | 0.00 | 0 | 0.1154 % | 2,420.4 |
| Perpetual-Premium | 5.80 % | 0.65 % | 105,015 | 0.10 | 8 | 0.0924 % | 2,278.1 |
| Perpetual-Discount | 5.59 % | 5.58 % | 165,538 | 14.47 | 30 | 0.0948 % | 2,331.6 |
| FixedReset | 4.97 % | 3.73 % | 229,984 | 3.42 | 85 | -0.0311 % | 2,445.6 |
| Deemed-Retractible | 5.15 % | 4.41 % | 184,660 | 6.86 | 43 | 0.0115 % | 2,373.0 |
| Performance Highlights | |||
| Issue | Index | Change | Notes |
| TRI.PR.B | Floater | -2.34 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2043-10-11 Maturity Price : 20.41 Evaluated at bid price : 20.41 Bid-YTW : 2.58 % |
| HSB.PR.D | Deemed-Retractible | -1.43 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Hard Maturity Maturity Date : 2022-01-31 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 24.76 Bid-YTW : 5.20 % |
| PWF.PR.A | Floater | -1.19 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2043-10-11 Maturity Price : 22.21 Evaluated at bid price : 22.48 Bid-YTW : 2.32 % |
| MFC.PR.K | FixedReset | -1.04 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Hard Maturity Maturity Date : 2025-01-31 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 23.75 Bid-YTW : 4.58 % |
| BAM.PR.G | FixedFloater | 1.00 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2043-10-11 Maturity Price : 22.52 Evaluated at bid price : 22.15 Bid-YTW : 3.55 % |
| SLF.PR.H | FixedReset | 1.17 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Call Maturity Date : 2016-09-30 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 24.99 Bid-YTW : 3.98 % |
| BAM.PF.D | Perpetual-Discount | 1.52 % | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2043-10-11 Maturity Price : 20.10 Evaluated at bid price : 20.10 Bid-YTW : 6.15 % |
| Volume Highlights | |||
| Issue | Index | Shares Traded |
Notes |
| CU.PR.D | Perpetual-Discount | 229,500 | Nesbitt crossed blocks of 150,000 and 75,000, both at 23.45. YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2043-10-11 Maturity Price : 23.14 Evaluated at bid price : 23.45 Bid-YTW : 5.28 % |
| SLF.PR.A | Deemed-Retractible | 70,782 | Scotia crossed 25,000 at 21.85; Nesbitt crossed two blocks of 20,000 each, both at the same price. YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Hard Maturity Maturity Date : 2025-01-31 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 21.84 Bid-YTW : 6.39 % |
| PWF.PR.R | Perpetual-Discount | 68,910 | Nesbitt crossed blocks of 20,000 and 40,000, both at 24.70. YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2043-10-11 Maturity Price : 24.28 Evaluated at bid price : 24.69 Bid-YTW : 5.56 % |
| MFC.PR.E | FixedReset | 60,344 | Nesbitt crossed 35,000 at 25.61; TD crossed 17,500 at the same price. YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Call Maturity Date : 2014-09-19 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 25.65 Bid-YTW : 3.17 % |
| CU.PR.E | Perpetual-Discount | 54,955 | TD crossed 51,600 at 23.45. YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Limit Maturity Maturity Date : 2043-10-11 Maturity Price : 23.09 Evaluated at bid price : 23.40 Bid-YTW : 5.29 % |
| TD.PR.Y | FixedReset | 41,300 | Will reset at 3.5595%. YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Hard Maturity Maturity Date : 2022-01-31 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 24.53 Bid-YTW : 3.86 % |
| There were 17 other index-included issues trading in excess of 10,000 shares. | |||
| Wide Spread Highlights | ||
| Issue | Index | Quote Data and Yield Notes |
| MFC.PR.F | FixedReset | Quote: 22.47 – 23.06 Spot Rate : 0.5900 Average : 0.4159 YTW SCENARIO |
| GWO.PR.P | Deemed-Retractible | Quote: 24.31 – 24.67 Spot Rate : 0.3600 Average : 0.2505 YTW SCENARIO |
| IAG.PR.A | Deemed-Retractible | Quote: 22.39 – 22.79 Spot Rate : 0.4000 Average : 0.2912 YTW SCENARIO |
| TRP.PR.B | FixedReset | Quote: 20.18 – 20.47 Spot Rate : 0.2900 Average : 0.1824 YTW SCENARIO |
| PWF.PR.K | Perpetual-Discount | Quote: 22.17 – 22.49 Spot Rate : 0.3200 Average : 0.2177 YTW SCENARIO |
| ELF.PR.G | Perpetual-Discount | Quote: 21.10 – 21.45 Spot Rate : 0.3500 Average : 0.2503 YTW SCENARIO |