Good morning!

I'm starting to get nervous about the banking system again. That's partly because I've been reading Mervyn King's outstanding book, "The End of Alchemy" - highly recommended. It's also because there are persistent press reports concerning Deutsche Bank, and it's vast derivatives exposure.

So it seems as if we could be sleep-walking into another financial crisis. This has been worsened considerably by Angela Merkel ruling out a Government bailout for Deutsche Bank - probably the worst possible thing she could have said. Counter-parties will probably now be asking whether it's worth the risk to continue doing business with Deutsche.

All major banks are too big to fail - that's the big lesson from 2008. In extreme situations, they have to be rescued by the state, however unpalatable that may seem - as the alternative is unthinkable - a complete collapse of the financial system.

I think another crisis is actually necessary, as only then will Governments properly rein in the activities of banks. There needs to be much tighter regulation, to stop them creating vast risk, and eventual losses through derivatives. This could all get rather dangerous for the markets, so I'm considering my options at the moment - it might be time to take some cash off the table perhaps? And/or put a few large cap shorts in place as insurance against a market sell-off?


Boohoo.Com (LON:BOO)

Share price: 99.25p (up 1.5% today)
No. shares: 1,123.3m
Market cap: £1,114.9m

(at the time of writing, I hold a long position in this share)

Interim results, 6m to 31 Aug 2016 - excellent reporting timeliness - publishing interim figures just 27 days after the period end is good stuff - clearly the FD and his team have good internal controls in place.

Why am I still reporting on this share, now it's over £1bn market cap? Well, partly to crow about one of my biggest successes in the last couple of years! Also because I know that a lot of readers followed me into this share after the market threw us a bargain in Jan 2015 at a quarter of the current price.

The interim figures today are excellent, and well ahead of forecasts. Brokers are upgrading full year forecasts as a result. Peel Hunt puts out the best research I've seen on BooHoo, so those are worth asking your broker to source for you. PH has raised this…

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