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Britain thrashes out EU referendum plans
January 11, 2011--British lawmakers were to thrash out Tuesday the terms of a new law that could trigger a referendum on any EU treaty changes, with some eurosceptics insisting the plans do not go far enough.
A significant number of Prime Minister David Cameron's own Conservative MPs are prepared to rebel and vote against the European Union Bill, causing a headache for the coalition government.
They have submitted amendments which they hope will toughen up the bill and give the government no room to wriggle out of the referendum pledge.
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Source: EUbusiness
iShares' Europe ETFs hit $100bn
January 10, 2011--Assets for iShares’ exchange traded funds business in Europe have passed $100bn for the first time, reaching $101.8bn at the end of December.
avid Gardner, head of sales for iShares EMEA, said passing the $100bn mark was an “important milestone” that demonstrated the success of BlackRock’s takeover of Barclays Global Investors in 2009.
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Source: FT.com
EEX Transparency Platform expanded with Austria
January 10, 2011--In the
framework of a transparency initiative by the Association of Austrian Electricity Companies the Austrian transmission system operator Austrian Power Grid (APG) is joining the EEX
transparency platform(www.transparency.eex.com) and will, thus, become the sixth equal
co-operation partner in addition to the platform’s operator EEX and the four German transmission system operators 50Hertz Transmission GmbH, Amprion GmbH, EnBW Transportnetze AG and TenneT TSO GmbH.
In this context, APG is also responsible for the publications by the second Austrian transmission system operator – VKW Netz AG. As a result of this, fundamental data regarding Austria will also be published on the central and neutral platform from mid-2011 in the framework of the mandatory publications. These will
supplement the existing voluntary messages by Austrian power plant operators. This step, hence, successfully implements the aim of gradually including other countries and expanding the transparency platform towards a European basis.
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Source: EEX
EEX Trading Results For Natural Gas And CO2 Emission Rights In December
January 10, 2011--In December, the trading volume on the EEX Spot Market
for Natural Gas amounted to 1,567,364 MWh (GASPOOL and NCG market areas)
compared to 442,800 MWh in December 2009.
The volume included 219,116 MWh
traded in the Within-Day Gas product which was launched in March 2010. The Spot Market price for the day-ahead delivery of Natural Gas ranged between EUR 20.00 per MWh and EUR 30.00 per MWh.
The volumes on the Derivatives Market for Natural Gas (GASPOOL and NCG market areas) amounted to 1,349,464 MWh (December 2009: 930,160 MWh). On 30 December 2010, the open interest was 20,040,423 MWh. On 28 December 2010 Natural Gas prices for delivery in 2011 were fixed at EUR 22.65 per MWh (GASPOOL) and EUR 22.69 per MWh (NCG), respectively.
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Source: EEX
EPEX Spot/EEX Power Derivatives: Power Trading Results in December 2010
January 10, 2011--Leipzig, Paris 10 January 2011. In December 2010, a total volume of 110.6 TWh was traded on the Power Spot and Derivatives Market operated by EPEX Spot SE and EEX Power Derivatives (same month of the previous year: 85.7 TWh).
Power trading on the day-ahead auctions on EPEX Spot accounted for a total of 24,970,420 MWh (December 2009: 17,984,051 MWh) and can be broken down as follows:
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Source: EPEXSPOT
New EDHEC-Risk Institute research provides a suggestion for remedying the overstated performance of non-investable hedge fund indices
January 10, 2011--The biases that inflate the performance of hedge funds have been well documented in the financial literature. Survivorship bias, which results from the ex-post exclusion of unsuccessful funds from databases, and backfill or instant history bias, which occurs when the historical performance of a successful fund is retroactively added (backfilled) into the database, distort the performance of the hedge fund industry.
These biases tend to inflate the returns posted by non-investable hedge fund indices. Investable hedge fund indices can help investors mitigate the effects of these biases, but investable indices cannot include all existing funds. The number of underlying funds is often twenty times less than that of non-investable indices. In these conditions, investable indices are naturally less representative than non-investable indices. Consequently, it is hardly surprising that investable indices tend to underperform their non-investable versions.
In a new study entitled “A Suggestion for Remedying the Overstated Performance of Non-Investable Hedge Fund Indices,” EDHEC-Risk Institute examines whether the liquidity crisis that followed the Lehman collapse and significantly impacted the performance of hedge fund strategies (especially the strategies exposed to credit risk) has increased this excess return or not. The study compares the excess returns of non-investable indices and those of their investable counterparts before and after 2008.
The results show a striking contrast between liquid and illiquid strategies. For the latter, the significant increase in the excess returns of the non-investable indices during the second period perfectly coincided with the global credit crunch. By contrast, the most liquid strategies saw the excess returns of the non-investable indices decrease over the second period. By comparison with the upward trend characterising illiquid strategies, however, this downward trend is negligible
view report-EDHEC-Risk Publication Suggestion for Remedying the Overstated Performance of Non-Investable Hedge Fund Indices
Source: EDHEC
ISE puts in place a new mechanism for effective market surveillance: “ISE Automatic Circuit Breaker System”
January 7, 2011--Well aware of the importance of surveillance in assuring the transparent, orderly and fair functioning of the markets, and in consideration of the recent developments and technological innovations in the national and international markets, Istanbul Stock Exchange (ISE) regularly reviews its surveillance strategy in close cooperation and coordination with the Capital Markets Board (CMB) of Turkey, the regulatory authority of the Turkish capital markets. Within this framework, the Istanbul Stock Exchange has introduced the “ISE Automatic Circuit Breaker System”, enabling the fully automated suspension on a stock basis.
“ISE Automatic Circuit Breaker System”, aimed at drawing investors’ attention to the possible abnormal price or quantity movements in the ISE Stock Market and ensuring that they apply the necessary prudence with such movements, is designed as a two-tier system and will be in place on January 10, 2011.
Preliminary Stage: First Circuit Breaker
ISE Stock Market will be monitored on a real-time basis by the system and in the event of an abnormal price or quantity movement in a certain stock in consideration of its past data; the system will automatically suspend the trading of that specific stock for a pre-defined period of time. The suspension period is parametrical, and is initially defined as 15 minutes for the stocks traded with continuous auction trading method, or for the rest of the session, if there is less than fifteen minutes to the end of the session.
Furthermore, in the event that a circuit breaker is applied, such information, including the time the stock will re-start trading, will be announced automatically and simultaneously through the Public Disclosure Platform. When the circuit breaker is off, the relevant stock will automatically re-start trading.
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Source: Istanbul Stock Exchange (ISE)
BlackRock announces amendments to two iShares fund names
January 7, 2011--iShares, the Exchange Traded Funds (ETF) platform of BlackRock, Inc. (NYSE: BLK) today confirmed that it has amended the names of two of its funds, effective from today, 7 January.
The changes affect the name of the funds only, and will not impact any other aspect of the funds’ structure or investment approach.
The funds affected are:
1. iShares FTSE/Xinhua China 25 fund becomes the iShares FTSE China 25 fund following the complete acquisition of the Xinhua Indices by FTSE on the 16th December 2010. This change of ownership is also reflected in the index name, which will become FTSE China 25 Index
2. iShares Markit iBoxx Euro High Yield fund becomes the iShares Markit iBoxx Euro High Yield Bond fund, bringing its name in line with the rest of the iShares bond fund range.
The iShares FTSE China 25 and iShares Markit iBoxx Euro High Yield Bond funds have assets under management of $1.18bn and €352.10m respectively. iShares, the global product leader in exchange traded funds, has over 480 funds and assets under management of over $500 billion.
Further information on these funds is available at www.ishares.com
Source: Blackrock
Landesbanken poised to sell DekaBank stake
January 7, 2011--Germany’s state-owned banking sector is set to be partially restructured with the expected sale by the country’s troubled Landesbanken of a 50 per cent stake in DekaBank, the fund manager, for about €2.3bn ($2.97bn).
Under the deal Deka would become wholly owned by Germany’s public sector savings banks, which already own the other 50 per cent. Savings banks are by far the largest customers of Deka, whose investment products are used by savings banks and sold to their clients.
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Source: FT.com
db X-trackers launches Europe’s first short emerging markets ETF
January 6 2011--: Deutsche Bank’s exchange-traded fund (ETF) platform, db X-trackers, has launched Europe’s first ETF that gives investors systematic daily short exposure to emerging markets.
The db x-trackers MSCI Emerging Market Short Daily Index ETF, designed for active, short-term traders, provides investors with the daily inverse performance of the MSCI Emerging Markets Index, an index that reflects the performance of large and mid capitalisation companies in emerging markets across the world. It has been listed on the London Stock Exchange and represents the latest addition to db X-trackers’ suite of daily short ETFs. db X-trackers is the largest provider in Europe of ETFs that give exposure to daily short indices.
“Our new emerging markets daily short ETF provides investors with a positive return when the underlying market experiences negative performance. Active investors can, therefore, via a liquid and easily traded product, potentially profit when the underlying market experiences negative performance,” said Manooj Mistry, head of db X-trackers, UK.
The db x-trackers MSCI Emerging Market Short Daily Index ETF resets on a daily basis, which means its compounded performance across a number of days differs from the total return of the underlying index (see editor’s notes). The product is, therefore, particularly suited to active traders managing short-term positions. For tactical investors, the ETF provides a straightforward route to taking short exposure. ETFs do not require the management of margin positions, for example, as a futures contract would. The short ETF can therefore act as an effective substitute for a derivatives contract. The ETF can also be used as a hedging tool.
“Trading in emerging markets was extremely active in 2010. The db x-trackers MSCI Emerging Market Short Daily Index ETF gives investors the opportunity to actively hedge their long emerging markets positions on a short term basis should they wish to maintain that exposure but fear a downturn,” said Mistry.
Source: Deutsche Bank
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