Hacker News Reader

Comment by karzeem | Hacker News Reader

If you wanted to position yourself to make a lot of money if Greece defaults, what would you do?

You're not exactly getting out in front of that one, eh?

Ok, so you find a way to bet on Greece failing... don't you think the people on the other end of that deal are also watching CNN and have priced the deal accordingly?

Not thinking about it for myself. Just trying to figure out what people might be rushing into in a mad panic.

well considering the debt now has junk status you'd just buy it at pennies on the dollar (like the people buying the bad mortgages) and hope the austerity measures pass and they get their shit together.

Lamb futures.

You buy CDS's on greek debt. But this is not available to retail investors.

FWIW, a 5 year Greek CDS currently sells for $925k/yr, and pays out $10m if the debt defaults in that time period.

Not exactly the bargain of the century at this point in time.

Edit: for context, that's roughly the same price as Venezuela and Argentina.

I've heard some suggest that one play would be to buy gold in euros.

short British banks? just repeating what I saw online ;p

German bonds

Isn't that backwards? Wouldn't a Greek default hurt German banks? Is there something I'm not seeing about how that would affect the issuers of German bonds?

Go long USD, short EUR.

JPY better, EURJPY is a gauge for markets also. Markets go down, EURJPY follows and market goes up, EURJPY goes up (like most yen crosses, but eurjpy being most prominent)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com