Hedge Fund Live's  Instablog

I’m feeling a little under the weather today and it is really cold in the office this morning yet I am still endeavoring to write a blog this am… what a trooper!

Looks like Ireland made a deal on a bailout package.  $113 billion with about 40% of it going to the banks and the rest to the country’s coffers.  And they were able to do it without hitting bondholders on future bailouts.  Given that the Euro is down another 90 ticks as I write this, it doesn’t look like traders believe that the contagion risk has been eliminated.

Thankfully, because I am about $3.7mln net long, our market is taking the continued selloff in the Euro in stride as SPOOZ are up about 1.75 handles as of 7:15am.  They were up about 4.50 handles about 20 minutes ago and they have been selling off ever since.  This sucks because I was on the offered side for 3,000 SPYs but wasn’t lifted.  If the Euro continues to selloff then I will likely get more short as it will impact European bourses which, in turn will negatively impact our market.  However, I am hoping that the positive economic data that has been coming out of the US over the last couple of months will help our market decouple from Europe’s at least for the rest of the year.

Sarah Palin was in West Des Moines, Iowa, at a Borders over the weekend signing autographs for her new book, American by Heart.  She said that the book signing in Iowa had no political motives.  Yeah, right.  Iowa is a major political state as the Iowa Caucuses are held there which is very important as they are the first major electoral event and they receive a lot of media attention.  So, Sarah decides to sign books in Iowa a little over a year before the Iowa caucuses and she said she had no political motives.  Not only do I call bullshit but I call on everyone to do whatever they can to keep this woman from winning the republican nomination in 2012.

North Korea continues its bellicose ways as it has moved SAMs to launch pads on the Yellow Sea.  Looks like nobody knows what to do about North Korea and thus the country will continue to create uncertainty for US markets.