As an exercise in self-promotion, the BBC interview with self-styled City trader Alessio Rastani yesterday morning seems to have been successful.
The press and Social Media were ablaze with analysis of his radical comments and several conspiracy theories about his true identity.
In case you missed the interview, which went out on the BBC News channel yesterday morning, Rastani made several bold claims including “Governments don’t rule the world, Goldman Sachs rules the world [and] Goldman Sachs does not care about the rescue package.”
He went on to predict that “the market is toast” before confessing that he goes to bed every night dreaming of another recession.
The televised outburst resulted in BBC Business Editor Robert Peston tweeting to his 82,000 followers “A must watch if you want to understand the euro crisis and how markets work,”.
It also resulted in much speculation that the interview was a hoax, perhaps set up by the Yes Men group of imposters who specialise in fooling the media. The BBC were quick to deny this claim.
The Telegraph have done a good job of getting to the bottom of the true identity of Alessio Rastani. Their article explains that he is an ‘independent trader’ operating from his partner’s modest house in Bexleyheath.
His public speaking business, Santoro Projects, has cash in the bank of £985 and net liabilities of £10,048, according to his latest accounts.
He certainly isn’t authorised or regulated by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) and has no history of working for any City institution.
Everyone is entitled to their views on where global economies and stock markets are heading next. There are probably thousands of independent traders like Rastani out there, trading with their own money and trying to profit from short-term market volatility.
In our experience, these traders tend to hold the most extreme views. They are in the business of making extreme predictions, as it suits their ambitions to exploit market volatility.
There is also a worrying trend of unregulated traders spending more time ‘educating’ others on trading strategies than actually succeeding as investment traders in their own right.
Because this form of investment education is entirely unregulated, anyone can teach others their preferred investment strategies, encouraging inexperienced investors to risk their wealth with complex investment instruments.
With the markets remaining so nervous due to the European sovereign debt crisis, we would like to see media outlets including the BBC behave a little more responsibly with their choice of guests.
As Ian Barnett said on Twitter this morning; “Investment predictions from an attention seeker then. Up next healthy living tips from a 4yr old having a tantrum.”
Photo credit: Flickr/Lars Plougmann
