Ever since the controversial AIFM directive was first made public there have been fears that hedge funds would leave Europe in their droves and head for either off-shore tax havens or the landlocked, legislative liberalism of Geneva.

The headline suggests that, although it is a week late, the SEC has finally entered into the spirit of the April Fool’s tradition - a welcome move at a time of deep economic recession because we all need to keep our sense of humour. How else to consider the news that, according to the Wall Street Journal, the foremost banking regulator is considering a move to attach electronic tags to high frequency traders.

March 30^th 2010 was billed as Bailout Tuesday here in Ireland, the day that the country mortgaged off the financial future of its next two generations. So it was fitting that such an apocalyptic day should start with a snow storm.

What is a mini prime broker? It sounds like a boutique supermarket or a miniature telescope or anything else that has something small followed by something big (but not 70’s comedy duo Little and Large).

There are not many bets that a bookmaker will refuse to take but there are some. For example, it is not possible to get odds on when the queen will die. Similarly there are few economic outcomes that cannot be traded, hedged or arbitraged in today’s market, thanks to the development of structured products such as credit default swaps (CDS).

However, perhaps the issue of sovereign debt should be off-limits to large parts of the derivatives market. This is what was suggested by James Rickards in the Financial Times this week. Rickards, currently a senior managing director at US-based market intelligence firm Omnis and previously general counsel at Long Term Capital Management, believes that the recent economic woes in Greece have highlighted the shortcomings of the CDS concept.

This concept relates to the use of CDS as an insurance against debt which is simple enough. However, when the insurance is against sovereign debt and the policy holders have no insurable interest in the underlying asset, then the concept runs into questionable ethical territory.

As Rickards says: “When the CDS market started in the 1990s the whiz-kid inventors neglected the concept of insurable interest. Anyone could bet on anything, creating a perverse wish for the failure of companies and countries by those holding side bets but having no interest in the underlying bonds or enterprises. We have given Wall Street huge incentives to burn down your house.”

Burning down a house is one thing but burning down a whole country is a quite another. As Greece’s public finances have unwound, Greek government bonds and CDS’s have experienced huge fluctuations. The price of CDS have soared and the value of government bonds have plummeted.

And it’s not just Greece that has its public finances in a mess. Ireland, it is feared, could default on its soaring national debt, evidenced by the fact that the cost of buying insurance against Irish government bonds trebled in a week. Meanwhile the Spanish government recently had to increase the interest if pays on its bonds, which cost the country €12 million.

Rickards feels that the CDS market should be confined to “buyers who an underlying interest in the risk being covered and sellers who are regulated as insurance companies with adequate reserves. Otherwise, “the market will remain a reckless enterprise bent on arson”.

It is a similar argument to those that were voiced during the concern over short-selling and there will be similar rebuffs, stating that a CDS is a valuable tool for investors to hedge their liabilities and a legitimate trading vehicle. But to have a situation where speculators can profit from a country defaulting on its debt does seem wrong and the kind of thing that would no be allowed in a betting shop. Perhaps this will become the new yardstick for regulators charged with reforming the capital markets – what would the bookies do?  

Just when I thought the SEC’s suggested changes to the equity market structure represented the most radical regulatory reforms facing the US investment industry for many a year, Barack Obama issues his own proposals. Now the SEC’s move to ban direct market access and high frequency trading is not even the most radical move of the month.

The SEC has proposed a series of measures designed to curb the growth of high frequency trading and protect the equities market structure. The proposals include a ban on unfiltered access to exchanges and other execution venues; a ban on flash trades and the intention to bring more transparency to dark liquidity in all its forms and an investigation into the tools and strategies used by high frequency traders, such as co-location

Last week I presented five popular prognostications made by commentators in the hedge fund space. This week I present five more predictions about predictions.

The start of a new year let alone a new decade always brings with it an avalanche of predictions. 2010 has been no different as commentators compete to foresee the future.