The Wall Street Journal (in an op-ed piece) accused parties unknown of manipulating the nickel market to help reduce the outstanding margin call (from $15B to $8B) of the Chinese tycoon known as "Big Shot".
In particular, as it became clear that Big Shot was in trouble, traders took advantage by buying nickel to drive up the price, increasing his margin calls. The accusation is that the Hong Kong based owners of the exchange retroactively cancelled profitable trades.
I'm not sure what to make of all of this macroeconomically, but the $8B he did come up with, apparently with the backing of the government in Beijing, is a large some for a financial system to come up with quickly. Keep in mind that this is 70 times as big as the payment that Russia almost defaulted on last week.
And ... not a good thing for China when China seems to have a whole lot of other macro-financial problems.
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