Friday, August 24, 2007

NSFG: Down and Out

I'm personally speechless here.

Sounds like a whole load of crap to me. It only goes to show that these clowns had no idea what they were doing. Or perhaps something even more sinister, since their last update held even more crap.

The only silverlining I can take out of this is that I was seriously really close to opening a managed account about a year ago. If that had happened and the news is true, I would've been wiped out, or at least close to it, according to the update.

Here's the update in the Gold-Horizon forum:
Yesterday evening our broker in London, BGC, made a margin call on all our accounts after a drop in equity made it impossible for us to maintain the large open negative positions we have been holding for a while. It forced us to liquidate all open market positions, including both arbitrary trades and the hedged position for an all out loss. The large negative P&L had been built up as the global equity markets plummeted following the serious credit concerns and it caused a major unwound of the carry trades, not only in the Yen pairs but also in the Swiss Franc crosses. Attempts to trade around these arbitrary positions failed and we are forced to close down the company following this margin call since we have no liquidity left. Hundreds if not thousands of hedge funds and investment firms around the world have severely suffered from this global incident and we regret not to have been able to pull ourselves through the credit crisis unharmed.

This liquidation has serious consequenses for everyone involved. Personally, I have lost my own private trading account and are now forced to sell my house and liquidate my personal assets to be able to cover expenses until I can move and I will most likely end up with a serious amount of debt to banks and credit institutes. Along the way NSFG has been confronted with obstacle after obstacle and although we have tried our very best to stear clear of these obstacles, this last financial crisis killed our dream. There is no way we can regain what has been lost and the sensible thing to do is pull the plug now and get things closed down for good.

Ken, on behalf of NSFG Ltd

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