West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net) – Hedge funds, private equity firms are using “political intelligence” to monitor tax reform, SEC registration, TARP, TALF and PPIPs, according to the OSINT Group, a boutique advisory firm based in Washington specializing in “open source intelligence” (OSINT).

The US Federal Reserve, the Treasury Department, the SEC and Congress are all playing a major role in rapidly evolving monetary policy and regulatory change across the international financial marketplace, OINST said. Those institutions, along with the IMF and World Bank, make Washington DC the financial centre for policy decisions and breaking financial news.

“To understand what financial and political leaders are doing today and planning for tomorrow, institutional investors need to do more than monitor news and data services. They need to know more. They need answers to questions from a consistently reliable source of insight into the world of politics and policy,” said Michael Bagley, a principal with the OSINT Group.

“When you need to understand policy and politics accurately and consistently, we take the guesswork out of the analysis. Top corporations and foreign governments set a very high standard for the outside counsel they retain for managing risk and unearthing new opportunities,” Bagley said. “We consult with a group of experts from the ranks of lobbying, academia, industry, journalism and law who are skilled in every major area of policy and politics. Our ‘political intelligence’ unit is built on a single powerful idea: to provide institutional investors with accurate, actionable and timely information created by the currents of political forces and regulatory decisions.”

The group was established to assist government and commercial sector clients in the energy and financial industries with unique “open source” intelligence collection and delivery. In addition to technology used by the US Intelligence Community, the firm uses its network of relationships and personal connections in Washington to gather “political intelligence” for clients who need to better understand how the US Government will influence the international markets with new financial-sector regulation and legislation.

Tags: academia industry, breaking financial news, commercial sector, institutional-investors, intelligence collection, intelligence unit, international financial marketplace, managing-risk, monitor news, open source intelligence, policy-decisions, political intelligence, private equity firms, regulatory decisions, regulatory-change, sec registration, sector clients, treasury-department, us intelligence community, west palm beach

Reuters UK – Recent sharp moves in global currencies are the start of longer trends set to produce strong money-making opportunities for trend-following hedge strategies, according to Insch Capital Chief Executive Chris Cruden.

Cruden, whose Insch Interbank Currency Program is up 7.96 percent over the year to end-September before fees compared with a 27.6 percent fall in the MSCI World index, points to the rise of the Australian dollar versus the U.S. dollar between 2001 and 2008 as an example of previous long-term currency moves.

"I imagine the nature of the shakeout will produce sustained moves lasting many months if not years," said Cruden, a former director of Adam, Harding and Lueck Asset Management AHL.L, now the flagship hedge strategy of Man Group.

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Tags: bad-news, crunches, fixed-income-investing, global-stock-markets, home-loans, investment-arm, percent-stake, policy-decisions, unforeseen-events, when-retirees

Reuters Tokyo – The yen dipped against higher-yielding currencies on Monday while the Australian dollar surged as leaders from Europe to the United States rushed out plans to shore up banks and stem the panic gripping investors.

After many stock markets suffered their worst weekly losses ever last week, leaders from Group of Seven industrialised nations set out a plan of action.

European officials offered to guarantee some bank debt and inject public funds into individual banks if necessary.

The United States said it would take stakes in banks in a first such move since the Great Depression, Australia guaranteed bank deposits and Britain was set to pump more than 40 billion pounds into its four biggest banks.

The flurry of initiatives to contain the worst financial crisis since the 1930s increased investor appetite for risk, though analysts were uncertain whether the improving mood would last very long.

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Tags: asia, benchmarks, beta, bond-market, contagion, first-avenue, global-economy, investment-arm, john-taylor, medallion, mentality, new-additions, plunge, policy-decisions, singapore, trillion, u-s-treasury