Austerity – a Recipe for Disaster? Austerity is a policy decision made by deficit running governments to reduce public sector spending....

China has been all the rage for a while now, for brokers and traders as well as for a whole raft of other western enterprises desperate...

Should we be seriously concerned about the recent gyrations in the Chinese equity markets? A huge (150% plus) rally, followed by a...

Recently, a rather strange rumour has begun to emerge – I’m not sure where from, originally – that the LME may need to think about...

I worked for a while at a very, very blue-blooded investment bank. One of the highlights(?) was a regular attendance of the credit...

The threat of Greek default hangs over the Euro like Damocles’ sword, the Shanghai equity market has discovered gravity and the metals...

Last week, I wrote (in the ‘Metal Bulletin’) that I am always rather nervous of traders who tell that they have discovered a new – and...

It is a widely held view that metal trading is impossible to teach. After all, there is to my knowledge no school in it, nor university...

Greek Literature was sitting staring out of a classroom window, while a middle-aged classics master wittered on to a bunch of schoolboys...

I’m quite an admirer of Glencore. Regular readers will recall that a while ago, my colleague, Anthony Lipmann, wrote an article...

There’s an ongoing argument in financial theory about whether or not investors want the companies they invest in to pay dividends. One...

“Do you expect me to talk, Goldfinger?” “Talk, Mr Bond? No, I expect you to die.” Ever since I first discovered them in my early teens,...

LME Week, 2013, the CME announces it will launch an aluminium futures contract, aiming to take advantage of the LME’s troubles in...

Spare a thought for the analysts and forecasters. I know I’m often critical, particularly when the modus operandi seems to involve...

Tomorrow, in the UK, there is a general election; I wrote something about it a couple of weeks ago, and I’d intended to leave it at that....

Quantitative easing, in central banking terminology, is the creation of currency by the repurchase of existing debt from the balance...

There’s a general election coming up in the UK in a couple of weeks’ time, so I hope non-UK readers will forgive me writing a bit about...

Lee Kuan Yew, who died recently, was a pretty remarkable politician. He led Singapore first into and then out of the Malaysian Federation...

“Wooooo!!!” said Alice, “there’s going to be an election in Wonderland. What fun that’ll be! All those clever politicians setting out...

My old boss in the 1990s was fond of telling us that regulation and transparency were a good thing for our business. It was slightly...