LOL at this thread. "I value this woman's investment advice because I agree with what she wrote about the Koran." Looks even more like she is the poster-child for confirmation bias.
Posted on 11/17/2011 12:06:57 PM PST by Attention Surplus Disorder
BCM Has Ceased Operations (Part 1)
Posted by Ann Barnhardt - November 17, AD 2011 10:27 AM MST
Dear Clients, Industry Colleagues and Friends of Barnhardt Capital Management,
It is with regret and unflinching moral certainty that I announce that Barnhardt Capital Management has ceased operations. After six years of operating as an independent introducing brokerage, and eight years of employment as a broker before that, I found myself, this morning, for the first time since I was 20 years old, watching the futures and options markets open not as a participant, but as a mere spectator.
The reason for my decision to pull the plug was excruciatingly simple: I could no longer tell my clients that their monies and positions were safe in the futures and options markets – because they are not. And this goes not just for my clients, but for every futures and options account in the United States. The entire system has been utterly destroyed by the MF Global collapse. Given this sad reality, I could not in good conscience take one more step as a commodity broker, soliciting trades that I knew were unsafe or holding funds that I knew to be in jeopardy.
The futures markets are very highly-leveraged and thus require an exceptionally firm base upon which to function. That base was the sacrosanct segregation of customer funds from clearing firm capital, with additional emergency financial backing provided by the exchanges themselves. Up until a few weeks ago, that base existed, and had worked flawlessly. Firms came and went, with some imploding in spectacular fashion. Whenever a firm failure happened, the customer funds were intact and the exchanges would step in to backstop everything and keep customers 100% liquid – even as their clearing firm collapsed and was quickly replaced by another firm within the system.
Everything changed just a few short weeks ago. A firm, led by a crony of the Obama regime, stole all of the non-margined cash held by customers of his firm. Let’s not sugar-coat this or make this crime seem “complex” and “abstract” by drowning ourselves in six-dollar words and uber-technical jargon. Jon Corzine STOLE the customer cash at MF Global. Knowing Jon Corzine, and knowing the abject lawlessness and contempt for humanity of the Marxist Obama regime and its cronies, this is not really a surprise. What was a surprise was the reaction of the exchanges and regulators. Their reaction has been to take a bad situation and make it orders of magnitude worse. Specifically, they froze customers out of their accounts WHILE THE MARKETS CONTINUED TO TRADE, refusing to even allow them to liquidate. This is unfathomable. The risk exposure precedent that has been set is completely intolerable and has destroyed the entire industry paradigm. No informed person can continue to engage these markets, and no moral person can continue to broker or facilitate customer engagement in what is now a massive game of Russian Roulette.
I have learned over the last week that MF Global is almost certainly the mere tip of the iceberg. There is massive industry-wide exposure to European sovereign junk debt. While other firms may not be as heavily leveraged as Corzine had MFG leveraged, and it is now thought that MFG’s leverage may have been in excess of 100:1, they are still suicidally leveraged and will likely stand massive, unmeetable collateral calls in the coming days and weeks as Europe inevitably collapses. I now suspect that the reason the Chicago Mercantile Exchange did not immediately step in to backstop the MFG implosion was because they knew and know that if they backstopped MFG, they would then be expected to backstop all of the other firms in the system when the failures began to cascade – and there simply isn’t that much money in the entire system. In short, the problem is a SYSTEMIC problem, not merely isolated to one firm.
There aren't a lot of people in the world I would be terribly interested in meeting, but she would be on my short list.
LOL at this thread. "I value this woman's investment advice because I agree with what she wrote about the Koran." Looks even more like she is the poster-child for confirmation bias.
The two of you are acting as if you got clowned on a Ron Paul thread. In any case, you should at least consider the possibilty that this is a publicity stunt before you become so emotionally invested (pun intended).
Unethical firms stole customer funds many times over the last 100 years and the markets are still here. This had nothing to do with the CME, this was crooks at MF Global.
She was an IB, not a hedge fund.
I’ve got better things to waste my time on than Ron Paul threads.
I’m having a hard time envisioning a scenario in which “I’m shutting-down until The Won is out of office” is a practical publicity stunt.
Maybe you could enlighten me.
Hey, shut up moron.
sorry I left off troll..
Here, you have an egghead elitist (their terms, not mine) getting a pass because people agree with her politics. If that is not "self-selecting," nothing is.
The larger question is--if you agree with her folding the tent in the financial field, based on her political/cultural observations regarding matters unrelated to finance or economics, then you have a serious problem.
Yup, you are acting like you got schooled on some other thread.
In her own words: “I am an old-school commercial hedge broker specializing in CATTLE and GRAIN. Farmers, ranchers, etc. Actual hedging of actual cattle and grain using futures and options. Very old-school original. “
Not quite sure what that means, but it sounds to me like commodities-broker of some sort.
Yes, an IB, introducing broker, is involved with commodities.
I am an old-school commercial hedge broker
She helps farmers and ranchers hedge (reduce) their risk. Very different than running a hedge fund.
No, I agree with her folding the tent in the financial field because I concur with her observation that the financial markets have become totally fraudulent rigged casinos.
The fact that she bookmarked a Koran with bacon is just a bonus.
Fair enough. You, for one, appear to have thought it through . . . .
I was correct you are just here in an attempt to piss people off so they leave.
Troll
You wouldn’t be that great of a loss, seeing that you are not reading the thread in the first place.
Whoa. I LIKE her.
Bfl.
She had me when she minced Lindsey Graham on one of her earlier videos...and they call Sarah Palin a grizzly..? Wonder which one is better at the range?
[ Whoa. I LIKE her.
She had me when she minced Lindsey Graham on one of her earlier videos...and they call Sarah Palin a grizzly..? Wonder which one is better at the range? ]
Sarah is a Grizzly, Ann is a Tsunami or a Fire Breathing Dragon.
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