I wonder if DB sold Pershing the options. The most interesting part of Ackman's presentation was his line that central banks may not be able to defend the upside to their currency any more than they can defend the downside. It's quite a concept if you believe it. Yes, we all know they can print money, but at some point the consequences become too great, just as the consequences of hiking rates to defend the downside also become too great. What Ackman is then saying is that HK will not be able to defend a sustained attack on the currency's upside any more than the BoE was able to defend an attack on sterling's downside in the early 90s. If he gets enough people buying HK dollars and buying volatility, he believes he can crack the HKMA. Soros' reflexivity at work in which the market can create its own reality.
I am thinking of buying my countries semi state owned telecom operator for my grandma. It's called Belgacom. They offer a 10% dividend yield (!) and have some of the safest risk profiles compared to its european peers. They made no big debt serviced aquisitions in the last decade... As I said the state ownes about half of it and they need the dividends badly so I don't expect a big cut there. It's down 20% year to year. Normally I tend to buy stocks based on market action and liquidity sensitivity, certainly not on the sustainability of the dividend! I know for most here buying Eurozone stocks today seems like suicide given the reports out but in all honesty the sky hasn't fallen here yet so should markets drop much more i will be certainly looking into this for myself as well.
Greek stocks might be a buy soon. I probably need to start to research them more. 2009 XLF moment http://www.tradingeconomics.com/greece/stock-market
A tell, or maybe not, but the AUD is sinking to its low of the day as the euro rallies 100 pips based on some maybe positive leaks out of the troika/greek conf. call. I'm not buying the euro move and shorted some EURUSD at 136.80.
Don't have the time nor the inclination to have to research dozens of companies. If not the main index I might just buy the bank index but I think they need to default hard first
You don't mention the total amount of savings she has. If she needs that $1.4K not matter what every month you wont be able to take lots of risk of course. I would put the minimum amount on risk assets to generate $X a month, where X is $1.4K minus the risk free yield she can earn without taking currency risk ex: If she can earn $500 risk free every month, I would put the rest on something that is expected to earn the rest. But even this might be overkill because even if you under earn eating the capital is not a big deal since she is late in life. So I would probably take even less risk than that
Also I would totally discourage her from wanting to know the fluctuations since this can have a big impact on her health
In order to make sure the capital won't be spent away you just need to calculate a 'burn rate' that is low enough that will make the capital very likely to outlive her, based on average life expectancy plus some kind of safety premium. My own parents have become millionaries(in reals) as a result of the brazil real estate boom, but they are extremely risk averse and thus don't 'burn' their networth and instead try to be cashflow and networth positive every year. To me that is insane, I don't want to the richest person in the cemetery but rather enjoy everything while I'm living