These are nervous markets, so when Morgan Stanley came out with a negative note on Michael Spencer’s Icap, and a price target of 195p, as reported by Reuters, Icap shares collapsed. A pity, therefore, that the broker had made a mistake. The figure applied to Tullett Prebon, Icap’s rival in the arcane world of interdealer broking. The target for Icap should have been 245p.

Morgan Stanley puts its hand up. The mistake was not by the analyst involved, Chris Manners, but by whoever compiled the daily summary of broking notes. This was picked up by Reuters. Spencer’s reaction is described to me as “unprintable”, because the company has interims next week and hardly needs the share price destabilised ahead of this.

But there is more to this than a simple error. Icap’s share price, on publication of the wrong figure, immediately plunged to that level. When the right figure came out, it immediately rose to that level. It all suggests that there is no one in the market who is either thinking coherently or doing any business. Except the person who bought 300,000 Icap shares on the way down, who is clearly wide awake.

Scamming is hard work but, boy, it’s worth it

An answer arrives to one of those questions that has been puzzling me for some time. Those idiotic spam messages offering implausible financial windfalls, requiring access to your bank account or whatever, seem to be proliferating. Somewhere in the depths of the Amazon basin, there may be a tribe whose members still believe that they are genuine. The rest of us know they are scams. So why do the scammers bother?

A study by a team of computer scientists at the universities of Berkeley and San Diego, California, has been asking that. They hacked into one of the most prolific spam networks, which uses home PCs to send the stuff out, and conducted their own fake spam campaign, concentrating on fake drugs and herbal Viagra-style remedies.

They discovered that 350 million spam e-mails garnered just 28 “sales”, a response of one in 12.5 million. But the team estimates that the network was still bringing in about $7,000 a day, or $3.5 million a year.

Credit seminar turns out to be a no-minister zone

The broker BGC Partners decided ten months ago to hold a seminar on credit. They rounded up Kenneth Clarke, as well as Thomas Huertas, of the FSA, and Ralph Silva, banking analyst. They needed someone from the Government. Alistair Darling took three months to say no, BGC’s David Buik tells me. A no from Yvette Cooper, but a yes from Kitty Ussher, City minister. Then she went in the reshuffle. Her replacement, Ian Pearson, agreed, but then pulled out at midday on the day of the seminar earlier this week. He blamed an unforeseen Commons vote. Buik asked Clarke, who was aware of no pressing vote. Buik is not impressed.

— A contributor to the Guido Fawkes political blogsite has been trying to work out, using Barclays Capital data, which prime ministers since 1902 have been best and worst for the stock market, looking at the annual growth rate for stocks, assuming that dividends were reinvested. I cannot vouch for his figures, but the best returns are claimed to be under Tories Macmillan, Major and Churchill. The worst, at number 20 with a 26 per cent annualised fall since he took office, is Gordon Brown. Probably unfair, but it takes no account of his earlier raid on pensions when Chancellor.

— Beware. There is an urban myth going around that one chain of estate agents is so strapped for cash that senior staff are being required to put in £1 million each to keep it going. The rumour has been attached to various firms and at least one is threatening legal action. Things aren’t that bad. Yet.

‘How did you enjoy the show?’
In the blue corner: Ian Luder

The new Lord Mayor, Ian Luder, has been fielding various responses to his Show at the weekend. One wrote in saying he knew Luder in 1962, and congratulations on achieving his life’s ambition. “I must have told this person in the 1960s that I wanted to be Lord Mayor, but I can’t remember,” says Luder.

Another, a City solicitor, was at Haberdashers’ Aske’s with Luder. He was at the Show, and threw a chocolate gold coin towards the Lord Mayor’s coach. Luder failed to catch it. “I recall that when you were at school, you were the cricket scorer, not the first slip,” his former schoolmate wrote.

And something that has puzzled me. Luder is, in fact, no relation to the only other man of that name anyone has heard of, Owen Luder, who used to head the Royal Institute of British Architects, though the two know each other. The Lord Mayor is used to being asked whether they are in some way related. Not so long ago, though, Owen told Ian that he had for the first time been asked whether he was any relation to the new Lord Mayor.

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