Finance travels at the speed of bits. Like every other dimension of modern life: if we don't get response from Google or Whatsapp in a few blinks of an eye, we go anxious. And a Cynar is not enough to calm us down.
A bank transfer is done with one click and in real time you can transfer money from one account to another. Also abroad. Remember when you had to go to the counter and it took at least three working days, all currency forfeited by the credit institution?
Stocks and bonds trade immediately and liquidate in a couple of days. Some bonds even in one day. THE mutual funds normally take a few days. For a hedge fund you get 35 days notice and the position is that of the following month-end. In short, since there was the big bang of electronic trading (it was the year of grace 1986), everything has accelerated and, pressed by the competition, everyone has adapted.
Everyone? No, not all. The supplementary fund of journalists, like the irreducible Gauls besieged by the legions of Julius Caesar, it is a stronghold that resists new technologies and lives immersed in the timing of carrier pigeons and horse-drawn mail carriages. Indeed, even more slowly: in the Middle Ages a check was honored on sight.
On the other hand, from the moment of receipt and examination of the liquidation request, the Fund gives the manager one month to sell stock for a few tens of thousands of euros. As if it were a millionaire position in a hedge fund, in fact.
Then the Fund takes another 60 days to transfer the proceeds to the rightful owner. Pinocchio's snail speed. A true monument to slow life. Greta Thunberg, who travels only on a sailing boat, if she knew it she would run (so to speak) to kiss President Raffaele Serrau moved.
While awaiting liquidation, anything can happen: market crashes, earthquakes, floods, locust invasions. But the beneficiaries (as the legitimate owners of the shares are called by the Fund: sic!) they must arm themselves with holy patience and cross their fingers. Maybe it's time to remove some dust and some cobwebs from the Roman rooms of Corso Vittorio Emanuele II?
