Taoyuan Nights

The UK, US, and Russian governments just banned short-selling of the shares in financial companies. Check out this picture – showing what happened in the first hour of trading. I could hardly believe what I was seeing. Once-in-a-decade (perhaps once-in-a-lifetime) events continue to take place in the world’s financial markets…(click on the image below to see what I mean!)

Note: RBS and HSBA are the UK’s two biggest banks.
RBS is up 44.2% after the first hour of trading.

Also, a quick comment about Taiwan. The US is reporting some $80 billion NTD of losses for Taiwanese investors and banks. Taiwanese newspapers this week only mentioned about $2-3 billion NTD when reporting on companies that have been hit. If you are reading the Taiwanese press and thinking ‘it’s probably nothing’, you may get badly burned. If you think you are OK because your bank hasn’t been mentioned yet – consider the possibility it is because they are still trying to add up their losses. “No news is not good news” when it comes to admitting losses, unfortunately.

Addendum: check out this beauty of a graph!