lehmann [sic] bank is scary

[zippitippitoes]

..oh dear

Savings - try Premium Bonds. VERY safe and you never know.....

Well said Coted'Azur.

Chocolatedrops - that's right, 'retail' investors cannot have direct exposure to Lehmans. I don't want to go into too many details here, but it is to do with the work DH does, having to invest in his own fund to show confidence in it. To simplify it, in effect the investments are being 'held'/ looked after by Lehmans (this will not make sense to those in the industry - as I say I have simplified this). Basically the fund we invested in has its money 'looked after' Lehmans or something.
Lehmans goes bust and the money is stuck there, and at risk.

Also he cannot now trade his fund because the money is frozen in Lehman's accounts hence high risk of fund being folded and him losing his job if it is frozen for a while.

Sazzles -thought it was 50K?

Hedge funds managers are paid based on a percentage of the profits made for their investors. Usually there is also a "high water mark", and they won't be paid a performance fee until they return a profit greater than a certain percentage. A typical structure is 1.5%-2% of the NAV for management fees, and a performance fee of 15-20% of profit.

Many hedge funds also have clauses that if they have a loss, they have to pay the investors the loss, or will have it deducted from when they actually do make a profit.

Hedge funds are also folding in this environment.

Sazzles/Chipmunk - slot on Working Lunch just now about this - saying that there are plans to raise the amount but banks will indeed be very resistant to do so in the current climate as they underwrite the scheme. Apparently there are some exceptions to the £35k per institution rule - for example, Alliance and Leicester will be licensed separately from Santander despite them being one company and so if you had savings at both you would be covered for £70k.

HBOS has just gone from 40% to 57% down in trading! Not looking good.

onceinalifetime

onceinalifetime - have you access to an undelayed feed?

I can only see them down just over 40%

yahoo finance has live data

Barey - yahoo, google, the bbc etc all have at least a 15 minute delay. Fortunately, I think onceinalifetime was having a laugh, since the price has not dropped much in the past half hour!

...but seemingly not for HBOS maybe just US stocks?

Change .com to .co.uk and then search for HBOS

Actually, given the number of people who work for Halifax or Bank of Scotland, or have their life savings there, and know they are at risk - it is pretty nasty to post that they shares have dropped nearly 60% when they haven't.

was watching the Lehman shares all last week and they were all real time and have just checked Goldman and that is live finance.yahoo.com/q?s=GS
god am I being anal?! don't mean to be!

Upwind - sorry I wasn't joking or being nasty - it was announced on BBC News24 - I was listening rather than watching and they definitely said it several times. Sorry, didn't mean to panic anyone.

They made the announcement and said we'll let you know if it rallies - I was reading an email just after so haven't heard further updates.

onceinalifetime - fair enough, I guess they must have meant 57% between today and yesterday.

barey if you want to look at charts for UK companies change .com to .co.uk. Yahoo finance is not live, you have to pay for live feeds.

Sorry Upwind, I'm really very sorry about anyone affected. I work for Merrill Lynch and whilst we've been 'saved' to some extent, it's uncertain whether I'll still have a job by the new year.

upwind thanks. Am fine with a 15 min delay now - it was just good last week to get live data on the US site for Lehman

HBOS down 27.23% at this instant
I have a live feed

Down 24.73% now.

Am i being incredibly naive here but if shares were not being sold they wouldn't drop in value. Panic selling will not help anyone.

Hmmmm. Me thinks that the short sellers are out in force today with HBOS being a prime target... for a little reassurance on HBOS, The Guardian has a (surprisingly) accurate summary here as to the more likely fortunes of HBOS.

surely the hbos shares are dropping and rising because of speculative short trading

What makes you sure most sales are not from people/institutions who actually have HBOS shares (as opposed to short selling)?