MF Global...

With all that Nick Drew has lectured us about dominoes and counterparty risk over the years, I've decided to close the Xstrata position this afternoon. This was only a notional £942 position, ad I'm stil bullish on the stock medium term. The wishful thinking idea based on careful anaysis was that it would recover to about 1250p by Xmas and I'd bag £300 towards my holiday. These first trades have left me about 5% down so far.

So gone is Xstrata, gone is Xcite (to free up margin, I don't think they will have much expsure to derivtives at their stage of life) and now we're short the Aussie dollar against the greenback at 50p per hundreth and a stoploss at 1.0800. Hoprefully any major loss of confidence (or even panic) will show up in this pairing as people close their trades, run for USD and bet on deterioration in China and the other BRICS.

Something tells me this trade could be a bit horse, stable door, bolted etc. This is the price of not paying attention, I reckon it's a bit like tossing a coin. It's going to be an eventful week I reckon, and probably one that will end with me wishing I'd stuck to my guns. Yet MF Global was a bit of a black swan.