Reuters Investigates

Big losses for John Paulson

Today’s special report “The perils of Paulson” takes a look at hedge fund king John Paulson, who shot to fame by calling the U.S. housing market crash in 2007, and making a lot of money out of it. This year, his funds are not doing so well.

This graphic tells the story — while Paulson may have reduced his stakes in the companies concerned, the size of his holdings will have made it difficult to unload in full.

Read the story in multimedia PDF format here: http://link.reuters.com/zum23s

Dumb money on Wall Street

Jonathan Spicer’s special report on dumb money in the stock market shows how a few powerful financial institutions make money from retail investors, and why the system is coming under scrutiny.

If you’re wondering what “dumb money” is, it basically refers to most trades by amateur investors like you and me.

To read the story in multimedia PDF format, click here.

Here’s what the Columbia Journalism Review had to say about it.

Escape from Wall Street

Leah Schnurr and Edward Krudy report today on retail investors fleeing the stock market. Will the Lost Decade create a Lost Generation of investors who avoid the market in a way not seen since the Great Depression?

Here’s what one of the authors had to say about the story:

By Edward Krudy

The perception that the stock market is a place where the average person can share in the wealth of the nation has been a cornerstone of American society throughout the twentieth century. That’s why we felt it was a big deal when small investors started to abandon the market.

After two big declines in stocks prices – one during the dot-com bubble at the turn of the millennium and another barely a decade later – we felt we needed to ask if this time it was more than just the post-crash doldrums keeping investors away. This time, would they be coming back?

The report touched on the lives of individual investors around the country. It took us to Princeton’s leafy campus, into conversations with scores of analysts, professional investors, and brokerages, and even into the archives of the Museum of American Finance beneath the floors of Wall Street’s banks.

We found a range of opinions, some pessimistic, some less so. But everyone agreed on one point: this really matters – whether it’s a question of individual investors having enough to retire on, the reputation of America’s capital markets, or the profitability of the brokerage industry.

Flash crash fallout

From Europe to India, policymakers are grappling with the fallout from the harrowing, 20-minute stock market meltdown in May that was quickly dubbed the “flash crash”. Electronic markets are suddenly suspect. But will regulators try to reign in modern trading advances?

Jonathan Spicer examines the likely impact on exchanges around the world in our latest special report: “Globally, the flash crash is no flash in the pan.”