Guest Post: China Panic

Looks like Marla made her way to the Paper Street stamina bar last night... Must have been quite a show. For those who never went to bed, here are some early morning observations compliments of Black Swan Capital.

Whitney Tilson: "Why There Is More Pain To Come"

An Overview Of The Housing Crisis And Why There Is More Pain To Come

Rogue Algorithms And Other Mutually Assured Destruction Program Trading Alternatives

It is now generally understood that high frequency traders (HFTs) are dominating the equity market, generating as much as 70% of the volume.

HFTs are computerized trading programs that make money two ways, in general. They offer bids in such a way so as to make tiny amounts of money from per share liquidity rebates provided by the exchanges. Or they make tiny per share long or short profits. While this might sound like small change, HFTs collectively execute billions of shares a day, making it an extremely profitable business.

Why should institutional or retail investors care? After all, aren’t HFTs adding liquidity? That’s what they and the exchanges, who court their business, say.

There’s a lot to worry about.

Goldman Sachs Principal Transactions Update: 60% Decline

The most recent, presumably correct, data has been released by the NYSE: Goldman total principal program trading has declined by 60% from 1,336 million shares in the prior week to 571 million in the current.

Marathon And SIFMA All Over Heads I Win, Tails You Lose

SIFMA's Tim Ryan runs like the plague from answering the question of whether he would invest in PPIP's garbage assets without the government's backstop. However, both he and Marathon's Bruce Richards are dying to use 14x riskless leverage in a wishful effort to restart securitization. David Faber: "Win win for you, no real downside, but you are ultimately going to be paying inflated prices for assets instead of true price discovery, what do you say to that." To which Bruce has a meandering explanation which concludes with: "Taxpayers do benefit, because we believe the returns on these assets are incredibly attractive."

Denninger Goes On Air, One Minute Twenty Seconds Of Airtime Ensues

Tonight Karl Denninger tried to have a sensible argument with CNBC, even dressed up for it. Unfortunately, it didn't work as expected (by Karl). The only topic covered was bloggers anonymity, on which issue Karl was surprisingly goaded into agreeing with the amusing and lovable host. Karl, and host, we have pointed out before why certain entities prefer to remain anonymous: I would refer both of you to one version of the explanation here. As for Karl trying to debunk what passes for analysis at CNBC, that did not quite work out either. Maybe finally bloggers will realize that a sensible conversation can not occur within the confines of GE's subsidiary. Ever. Probably would be more realistic to discuss exchange server latency at a Goldman sponsored program trading conference with Sergey Aleynikov as keynote speaker and Misha Malyshev and Kevin Mitnick as moderators.

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