Commodity Trader Guest Speaker on the 17th of November
The Vesalius Finance Club is proudly hosting a former commodity trader, Richard Reinert. Mr Reinert will share his experience from the world of finance and commodities. We are honored and excited to bring such speaker to Vesalius College and would like to extend this invitation and opportunity to the students and staff here at VECO.
Richard Reinert will be speaking on Tuesday the 17th of November in Room 053 at Vesalius College.
Richard as well as being a Partner of Citation Capital Management Ltd an FSA authorized company since 1999, is a Board Member of OTEKO the largest independent transporter of oil in the Former Soviet Union since 2002. He began his career in 1978 at Compagnie des Metaux Precieux (CMP), and moved to Gerald Metals Ltd. in 1979. In 1980, he became Account Executive at Drexel Burnham Lambert SA.1983 saw him move to Refco SA Paris as a Founding Director. In 1989 he moved to London to become Managing Director of Refco Overseas Ltd until September1999. During his time at Refco Overseas Ltd he was appointed Chairman of the International Petroleum Exchange and the Futures Industry Association and a director of the board of the London Metal Exchange Ltd and the London Commodity Exchange.
Week Three
On the Week three session we spoke about what mainly happened in the week of Monday the 12th of October to Friday the 16th as many multinationals posted their quarter results which affected the way the financial markets performed that week. We also discussed how the US government debt was affecting commodity prices and the dollar itself. We also discussed about our virtual portfolios on the “KaChing” application on Facebook.
Here is the power point presentation
The text report:
Last week, the indices continued their upward trend in the pace of many publications of U.S. firms that have helped reinvigorate the stock market to record annual speed. The Dow Jones won 2% to 10,040 points and finding the psychological barrier of 10 000 points and the Nikkei 2.4% to 10,257 points. Are we seeing a pure speculative move in the markets or an economic recovery ?
On Monday, investors have confirmed their confidence in the markets started last week and were reassured by the first digit of business results in the image of Philips. The Dutch group has posted a net profit of 176 million euros. Dow increased by +0.80% on monday.
Tuesday was a disappointing session due to the results of Johnson & Johnson that came up at -2.13%. The German center for eu economic research index has been published to 56.0 while analysts had forecast on a forecast to 58.6. This indicates that activity in the banking sector in Germany is always under pressure and the economic recovery will be slow.
Wednesday was the day to remember this week with the release of very good results from Intel and JP Morgan. Intel has offered a very positive signal to the market by revealing the results to 1.66%. In the afternoon, JP Morgan has pleasantly surprised the markets by posting + 3.3% for a net profit of 3.588 billion dollars in the third quarter, seven times the prediction of 527 million.
The British economy destroyed fewer jobs in September compared to forecasts, 20 800 against 25 100 scheduled but the unemployment rate in the country was maintained at 7.9%. Finally, retail sales in the United States have also showed somewhat positive results at -1.5% against a consensus of -2.0%.
Due to the positive news, the major indexes broke annual records. The CAC 40 has reached 3880 points and the Dow Jones was treated for cables of 10 000 points to 9995.
Thursday was the turn of Goldman Sachs and Citigroup to release their quarterly results. Goldman Sachs announced earnings multiplied by four and Citigroup posted a profit of $ 101 million for the third quarter. Among other values, Google and IBM grew their earnings, but Nokia has been the great disappointment by posting a loss of 15 cents per share.
On Friday indices where on the negative due to the negative results from General Electric, which fell from 16,79 to 16.07 dollars.
This amount of quarterly results helped to give new direction to markets, and at the same time, to clarify a little more out of the crisis in the global economy. We know we’re in a slow recovery of world economic activity, slowed by a high unemployment rate, passing first by the return of corporate profits.
On the commodity market, the week was particularly rough for the gold that went to record after record. Opening Monday at $ 1048, gold went to touch the $ 1070 mark Wednesday before returning to its level at the beginning of the week. However, this increase is mainly due to the slide of the greenback has lost 1.15% this week.
The barrel of oil was awarded for its more than 7% for the week ending the week at over 77 dollars.
Finally, gold and oil markets remained under pressure this week following concerns about the dollar fell to the lowest in 14 months against the euro, which pushes investors to adopt a strategy to protect against fluctuations currencies by placing their assets in commodities.
The dollar also got hit due to rumors about OPEC moving away from to dollar to a basket of currencies.
Sources: Saxo Banque , Reuters, Bloomberg, Yahoo Finance, ZEW indicator.
Week Two
Last week we quickly went over Japanese candlesticks, the concept of the foreign exchange market (forex) and also did a quick introduction to the MT4 (Metatrader) trading platform. For people interested in this platform, you can have a free trial at www.metaquotes.net, but there are plenty of other brokers that offer this platform as it is widely used for its flexibility. We also discussed in what direction we wanted the club to go during this short semester. Many of you seemed interested in socks and the commodity market, we could take the idea of making teams and present such financial instruments to the class.
Following on the idea of a stock market game, I checked out Jorge’s idea of entering the Merrill Lynch Challenge ( http://careers.ml.com/index.asp?id=76716_79985_81452_16417_16420). I believe that prepare ourselves for this “game” during this semester would be very beneficiary for all and would keep the finance club alive for next semester. There are no limits the number of teams per college so we could create multiple teams for veco. The only problem is that the challenge starts on Monday the 5th of January and finishes on Friday the 6th of February. The veco semester starts on the 18th of January hence we will be at a great disadvantage on the overall position, so its your call: we either prepare for the Merrill Lynch Challenge or we just learn about simple day trading and how to interpret graphs with indicators on different types of markets.
The Veco Finance Club
The Vesalius College Finance club’s goal is to gather Vesalians interested in Finance. We hold a weekly meeting and discuss the latest market trends. If you have any tips, recommendations or ideas; please share them, we like fresh input for the development of the club ! First meeting this week on Tuesday at 4h30, Room 053 !
Disclaimer: The Vesalius College Finance Club is not responsible for any individuals buying or selling stocks,bonds,currencies,commodities, CFD’s or any other kind of financial instrument based on recommendations. We do not encourage any individual trading based on group research; our recommendations are only for use in stock market simulators.
Topics in line for the semester
To make the club fun, interactive and somewhat competitive we will start with a fictitious $ 100 000 account and virtually trade stocks and options. There is even a possibility to short stocks so the game is a bit more “real life”. The game is hosted at http://simulator.investopedia.com and you can register for free.
If desired, we can also have a look at the Metatrader 4 platform, a semi-pro platform capable of performing from simple indicators to running complex trading scripts and money managers.
Here are the following topics; please comment on the ones you would be interested in :
Choosing your broker:
- Platforms
- Spreads and Commissions
- Market Maker Vs No dealing desk
- Leverage
Market game:
- Start with a fictitious $100K and trade for fun!
- http://simulator.investopedia.com
Money management:
- Calculating risk
- How safe is leverage?
- Lot size allocation
- How much can I afford to loose?
FOREX:
- Liquidity
- Pips and Spreads
- Crosses
- Bollinger Bands
- Support and resistance levels
Intro to CFD’s:
- What is the derivative market?
- What is a CFD?
- What are the risks compared to “regular” stocks?
Trading psychology & Pricing:
- The do’s and don’ts of buying and selling
- Support and resistance levels
The MT 4 trading Platform:
- Look and feel of it
- Play with $10K Demo account with “real” market data (5Min delay period)
MQL 4 Language
- Expert Advisors
- Money Managers
The peculiarity of the Belgian Law
- Trading and taxation
What’s The credit Crisis ?
This is by far the most easy to understand presentation describing the Credit Crisis of 2008-2009. No funny formulas, no crazy math…enjoy ! The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis.
The Crisis of Credit Visualized – Part 1
The Crisis of Credit Visualized – Part 2
Mortgage-Backed Securities
Here is a great link to understand how Mortgage-Backed Securities work. This Youtube user has tons of videos that are easy to understand. These securities, are the basis of the CDO’s, the colletarised Debpt Obligations that started the 2008 Credit crisis.
Mortage-Backed Securities On Youtube
The Khan Academy is a not-for-profit organization with the mission of providing a high quality education to anyone, anywhere. Salman Khan (Sal) is currently the portfolio manager of a fund based in Menlo Park. Sal received his MBA from Harvard Business School where he was president of the student body. He also holds a Masters in electrical engineering and computer science, a BS in electrical engineering and computer science, and a BS in mathematics from MIT.
Bond Valuation
Here is a great video that will help you understand how to do Bond Valuation; the person goes a bit fast but if you watch it a couple of times it will get extremely logical ! This video is one of the many videos available from www.teachmefinance.com.
