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Occupy Wall Street
Oct. 7th, 2011 11:29 amA comment I left on a debate on facebook appears to have caused a fair amount of comment and also been picked up and reposted in several places, so I thought I'd repost it here.
"Okay, here's the deal. There's a movement to bring the occupy Wall Street idea to London and to disrupt trading at the stock exchange. They've even posted the date they plan to do so online.
If they do, I'll be opening a short on the FTSE that morning, and so will every other leveraged, sharp-suited fast buck merchant this group hate so much. They disrupt the opening of trading, the FTSE loses a hundred points in disarray, and I close my short and pocket a wad of cash.
The people who the protesters hate will make money from their actions, and they'll do it just like that. The people who will suffer are the savers and investors: The people who believe the 80's ideal of a shareholding population and have put their savings into stocks to get a long-term dividend return. The pension funds, who by their very rules MUST have a percentage of their holdings in the FTSE 100 and 250. As the FTSE drops, it's them losing money to the short-term traders. If you want to hurt savers and pensioners, disrrupt the stock market in it's normal operations.
Why would you do that then? Because you don't have the first clue where the money is going, or why you're losing it. All you see is people in smart suits going to work in the stock market and OMG THEY MUST BE TO BLAME. They're not. If you want to hurt the traders and leveraged speculators - who are actually the people you dislike - campaign to ban black-box trading, naked shorting and leveraged ETFS and CFDs. If you want to really hurt the financial institutions, campaign to end QE - another £75bn today - which you won't see a penny of but will cost you in inflation and reduced value of your savings and wages. Where will QE go? Straight out of the door and into fixed asset hedges which will hold value against the inflation QE will cause.
But you don't understand all that - and what's more, you don't want to. They're just greedy bankers in the stock market, right?"
"Okay, here's the deal. There's a movement to bring the occupy Wall Street idea to London and to disrupt trading at the stock exchange. They've even posted the date they plan to do so online.
If they do, I'll be opening a short on the FTSE that morning, and so will every other leveraged, sharp-suited fast buck merchant this group hate so much. They disrupt the opening of trading, the FTSE loses a hundred points in disarray, and I close my short and pocket a wad of cash.
The people who the protesters hate will make money from their actions, and they'll do it just like that. The people who will suffer are the savers and investors: The people who believe the 80's ideal of a shareholding population and have put their savings into stocks to get a long-term dividend return. The pension funds, who by their very rules MUST have a percentage of their holdings in the FTSE 100 and 250. As the FTSE drops, it's them losing money to the short-term traders. If you want to hurt savers and pensioners, disrrupt the stock market in it's normal operations.
Why would you do that then? Because you don't have the first clue where the money is going, or why you're losing it. All you see is people in smart suits going to work in the stock market and OMG THEY MUST BE TO BLAME. They're not. If you want to hurt the traders and leveraged speculators - who are actually the people you dislike - campaign to ban black-box trading, naked shorting and leveraged ETFS and CFDs. If you want to really hurt the financial institutions, campaign to end QE - another £75bn today - which you won't see a penny of but will cost you in inflation and reduced value of your savings and wages. Where will QE go? Straight out of the door and into fixed asset hedges which will hold value against the inflation QE will cause.
But you don't understand all that - and what's more, you don't want to. They're just greedy bankers in the stock market, right?"
