Economics at Work!
Yeah so this is the first post in ages, but what the hell a general election is enough to bring me out of retirement.
So after all the hype, we've ended up with a hung parliament. Big surprise there.
Its taken over a month of TV spots, grabbed headlines, debates we all heard about but few watched, and now we the people have spoken... and what have we to say for ourselves?
"We're not sure" 1
Now, a sensible newly elected MP would surely take one look at this result and wonder why the result wasn't more conclusive, and more importantly how can this be avoided at the next poll. Except sadly I suspect they'll all be too busy trying to iron out a coalition of parties to think of such things.
One thing that's come of this is that the markets have been smacked upside the head, again as predicted. Quite often you see stories that say the City is panicking about this or that and that the markets are affected accordingly. Interestingly this time I actually saw this in action.
I was in one of our trading areas at work, trying to fix a Blackberry (bloody things) but had to wait while the user, who is a trader and thus evil (but is actually a really nice bloke actually), finished up something.
I don't know which stocks he was actually looking at, but whatever it was, it was dropping fast. Indeed he was typing the prices into an Excel spreadsheet and by the time the thing had calculated the price had dropped sufficiently that he had to start again. This was the markets reacting, and I was watching it happen. It was almost exciting in a "oh crap this is going to push up the interest rates" way. This was especially the case when he turned to his colleague and said "we have to find a buyer, any buyer, now!" (I was tempted to offer the fiver in my pocket at this stage).
Believe me when you're trying to fix Bloomberg access on a Blackberry device you'll take whatever excitement, real or imagined, you can get.
1. Yes I know it's waaaay more complex than this and the popular vote was different, etc.
So after all the hype, we've ended up with a hung parliament. Big surprise there.
Its taken over a month of TV spots, grabbed headlines, debates we all heard about but few watched, and now we the people have spoken... and what have we to say for ourselves?
"We're not sure" 1
Now, a sensible newly elected MP would surely take one look at this result and wonder why the result wasn't more conclusive, and more importantly how can this be avoided at the next poll. Except sadly I suspect they'll all be too busy trying to iron out a coalition of parties to think of such things.
One thing that's come of this is that the markets have been smacked upside the head, again as predicted. Quite often you see stories that say the City is panicking about this or that and that the markets are affected accordingly. Interestingly this time I actually saw this in action.
I was in one of our trading areas at work, trying to fix a Blackberry (bloody things) but had to wait while the user, who is a trader and thus evil (but is actually a really nice bloke actually), finished up something.
I don't know which stocks he was actually looking at, but whatever it was, it was dropping fast. Indeed he was typing the prices into an Excel spreadsheet and by the time the thing had calculated the price had dropped sufficiently that he had to start again. This was the markets reacting, and I was watching it happen. It was almost exciting in a "oh crap this is going to push up the interest rates" way. This was especially the case when he turned to his colleague and said "we have to find a buyer, any buyer, now!" (I was tempted to offer the fiver in my pocket at this stage).
Believe me when you're trying to fix Bloomberg access on a Blackberry device you'll take whatever excitement, real or imagined, you can get.
1. Yes I know it's waaaay more complex than this and the popular vote was different, etc.