SIUYA

Two different friends put me onto these recently..... CNBC Explains and for those wanting a bit of further free education - i did the simple statistics one (Very basic if you have done it before but the process seems great) https://www.udacity.com/

dont know exactly who these guys are (they do more than just a news letter and magazine) but as a friendly reminder for the UK....they have a doom and gloom report for the UK.....I dont think they are far off the mark. Worth just listening to to help cheer you up! (its a bugger you cant pause it) *The End of Britain At the end they will offer you a subscription - so let me summarise it for you - the UK has too much debt, and the government will eventually implode and confiscate your money,.

Zdo - do you deliberately miss spell government etc;? Is that so that when the UN 50 shades of grey helicopters come snooping around your internet posts will either not show up in the scans, or show up as someone who cant even spell hence is not a concern?

Feedback from the friend.... "Great question ..... and ..... you know what? I actually do not know of any" Most books are on simple technical analysis...... He said he learnt most of his stuff just by sitting on the desks and picking it up..... He did recommend from what he had seen the successful traders do (this is someone who sat on the FX desks at a large bank) Make of it what you will as I am sure you have your own style ........ stay away from scalping (it can be done but its hard work and the PL swings when it moves 30-50 ticks really quickly against you are tough) instead look for the next 100-150 points, and be willing to wait for it. (basically swing trade) CNBC have a 1 hour program each week called 'Money in motion' - info is general in nature but broad and discusses the general setups and offers some insights for those not 100% in the loop. They also have the CNBC Explains video tutorials on the web. Finally, a twitter recommendation - a guy called 'forex gump' - uses 2-4 hr charts, targeting 100 + pips. (Neither of us have any affiliation - I have no idea who he is)

knowing how to read the dashboard of a car, if you dont know how to drive is not going to help much...... you still have not explained how you think option Greeks will make you money, develop a strategy or make arbitrage profits.....all you are doing is measuring a position. there is a big difference You are just rattling off generic ideas about hedging a position, reducing risk and managing an existing position.....and if you have ever traded an option book you will know that the greeks move constantly, and just because you think your Greeks show a theoretical position you cant forget that the market might not give you the liquidity to represent that in real life (remember the mark to market issues many had in 2008?).....none of this is going to help you unless you already have a strategy.

Dont worry too much, many sayings are more sales pitches said by brokers who dont really understand what they mean either! or are just typos, or phrases that get lost in the wording.... Some of these originated from the floors and had specific meanings that had to be relayed back to the upstairs desks, some even had special meanings you had to be careful in how you phrased things. eg; when negotiating a price and volume in some pits with market makers, you never asked 'How much have you got", because then theoretically you were obliged to take everything they had.....better terminology was to say "for what quantity" - similar but different There are other sayings -- 'taking the offer',=== buying at the offer 'lifting the offer', ==== buying every thing that is ron offer 'take the offer bid' ==== buying everything that is currently on offer and then buying more and becoming the offer or 'take out the offer', 'smash the bid', and my old favorite that was basically designed to trick stops---- 'tick it till they puke' a quick search came up with this which you might find interesting Vault Career Guide to Sales & Trading - Gabriel Kim - Google Books

He has a lot of videos if you like this stuff. [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2sT9KoII_M]Yves Rossy: Fly with the Jetman - YouTube[/ame] eg.Jetman » VIDEOS

what about things like gold.....no underlying value, no yield, just the perceived store of wealth -that was a poor store between 1970-2000 what about the internet bubble.....some stocks went up because they had .com in their name and nothing else. what about any bubble, or crash.....most often this is separate from any fundamental factor. (Read Soros and his theory of reflexivity - maybe not the best or easiest read but its topical) yes - over the long term fundamentals may finally determine the price, but there is so much more in the short term....and in the short term - i dont think there is any one thing driving an instrument all the time ---- in other words short term drivers will change. Sometimes its the risk on risk off, sometimes the USD is the major influence, other times its the fed, other times its investors search for yield, or growth or value.......other times its simply the euphoria or fear of the market. The reality - who knows..... (I know of one direct example whereby i and other market makers pushed a large cap stock down about 3.5% in the last 15 mins of trading - purely because a holder of call options needed to sell a large parcel of options just prior to the ex dividend day...he did not have the cash to be able to exercise and buy the stock. All we were doing is hedging......but there was one thing for sure - every broker i knew had a different 'reason' for why the move occured - profit warning, pairs trade, rouge sell order, rights issues etc; etc;.....they were all wrong )

you could do worse than simply only buying when stocks go up in such a manner and applying a very simple strategy............even if this simply keeps you out of the bear markets and away from more complicated, less profitable ideas. DbP - warrants? Did he simply use leverage in a bull market?

well, given most fund managers who benchmark dont outperform their own benchmark after fees - they probably dont know either - but I am sure they have their ideas. There is supposedly an interesting market phenomena (I only know this through discussions but have not seen papers on it, but figure they exist) based on what happens to stocks when they move from being in the universe of small mid cap stock managers into the domain of and the benchmarks of the larger cap managers. Usually the stocks become less volatile, more liquid - but was this because of the nature of the stock itself and its underlying value, or that it suddenly came onto the radar of a whole new set of managers and benchmarks? Years ago I had a simple theory that it was not so much that there are more/new buyers for something - sometimes it was simply the lack of real sellers, and then the resulting 'panic' by those wanting to buy it (reverse it for sells) - basically it was a vacuum effect more than a price driver......just an idea that works for the short term. The long term really should be driven by fundamentals - think about the internet bubble as a great example - the price drivers there was sheer greed and panic of the next big thing, the new economy - the mass hysteria was driving the price, until over the long term, value became the ultimate price driver......but i guess in keeping with short term trading then the focus should be on that for this discussion.

really.... how? You might be able to use the Greeks to compare options available to implement a strategy, but how are you using the Greeks to formulate strategies. Its a bit like a cars dashboard - you need to be driving for them to be worth anything....otherwise its all theoretical. For the discussion - how do you easily propose to use the Greeks to make arbitrage profits?

you might be best to start at the basics checking out videos and other such info from the brokers webinars. eg; http://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/?f=%2Fen%2Fgeneral%2Feducation%2FpriorWebinars.php Most books I have seen are simply trading styles and are not going to give you much real info as to how it works. I will ask a friend who worked at one of the banks for a while on their FX desk if he knows any more technical process as opposed to technical analysis books. (bump me if I forget about it)

one of the key decisions stock portfolio managers have to contend with is regards sector rotation. This is a major price driver of individual stocks - regardless of other ideas of value people might have over them. When and which stocks to rotate into and out of when reweighing and rebalancing. They often tie this in with their views on the cycles of the economy, or their 'risk on' risk off' views () It relates to different sectors AS WELL AS the individual stocks in each sector. Their rationale is very different to ours as a trader in that they usually have to be fully invested, and hence if may hold many stocks in a sector, even if they dont like it. How you profit from this is something I would suggest ColB has the right idea - monitor the correlations between the macro trading instruments. As for individual stocks - well you could do the same thing, or simply trade them on an individual basis - remember these managers track against a bench mark - they might not be too interested in much else.

stocks are generally not thought of as a zero sum game. The main reasons being that stocks have a limited number of shares issued at any one time, they usually represent a claim over some assets or cash flow (eg; supermarket, banks profits). They can actually generate wealth. Futures and options on the other hand merely require a buyer for every seller and these are viewed as a zero sum game......much like insurance. see Zero-Sum Game Definition | Investopedia see wikipedia for more info.... eg"Many economic situations are not zero-sum, since valuable goods and services can be created, destroyed, or badly allocated in a number of ways, and any of these will create a net gain or loss of utility to numerous stakeholders. Specifically, all trade is by definition positive sum, because when two parties agree to an exchange each party must consider the goods it is receiving to be more valuable than the goods it is delivering. In fact, all economic exchanges must benefit both parties to the point that each party can overcome its transaction costs, (or the transaction would simply not take place). "

Yes - some traders sell options that have low amounts of theta - these are usually the cheap out of the money puts (or calls) They usually do this until they blow up - but its not usually determnied by the theta - but by the amount OTM they are. Some traders make markets in options around a theoretical fair value depending on what the historical and implied volatility relationship is. Some traders sell options over a portfolio of stocks looking for the best call away yield at the time Some traders buy or sell volatility thinking they want a directional move Some traders will do spreads allowing them to take a view on interest rates, or dividiend amounts some traders might always use spread strategies across months or strikes to implement a view... IMHO - all of these are not reliant on the greeks, they are more reliant on the over all strategy and THEN the Greeks will show you your position/exposure. Or the Greeks might show you the best relative way to implement your strategy. (Its a bit of a chicken and egg argument really )

yep - there might be more to the story, maybe she was leaving with more than the TV - she was shot 4 times according to one report.

hence my exclamation mark in the original - wondering if that would be picked up In all fairness most fund managers think they can outperform and will show you how they do and how they beet their peers. I have plenty of friends who are fund managers who keep reminding me - and then i ask the crucial question - 'so if i invested with you how much money do i have now' - the answer is often less than i started with - BUT i had out performance! As for zulu trade and rapa capital - they just seem to be an amalgamation of various small traders from what i can tell - I dont know enough to comment - interesting models - I wonder where they really make their money? spreads, commissions somewhere else?

topical - and who knows the full story yet..... Oscar Pistorius has supposedly shot his girlfriend while mistaking her for a burglar. BBC News - Oscar Pistorius 'shoots girlfriend' - local media

Given the amount of money real HFT spend on speed I think they will be hard pressed to actually compete against the real HFT.....I would imagine trying to send multiple different strategies from many different clients would have to be slower than a single strategy from one firm. L ooks like another service provider - thats all. Filling a void that some may require but most think they might require but really dont ....and still once again, having all the speed in the world wont help if you dont have a profitable system, and most retail traders might be better spending more time thinking and waiting than trying to speed things up. Good luck to them, I doubt that its really HFT, but more a speeded up version of any good algo trading that can already be done

Not so much a Darwin award, but depending on where you stand on such things maybe it is - a special one for Valentines day :spam: Lesya and Rouslan | BME: Tattoo, Piercing and Body Modification News

Correction....they used excessive amounts of leverage, and so it was certainly predictable - if you could look inside their 'black box' or prime brokerage accounts and see how much leverage and exposure they really had on. They were dealing in marginal trades and using leverage to extract extra returns - this has always caused people to blow up. (Corzine as an anger management example) If you think you have a perfect hedge, then you think you have the holy grail and it does not exist. As an aside - anyone ever stop to think that most fund managers do share their systems at a price. (fees) You can participate along side them without the work, share in their system for outperforming the markets! Their marketing material and due diligence documents reveal their systems openly.......All they are doing is the operational work for you.

what do you want to discuss? All they are is a measure of what characteristics (sensitivities) an option has at any particular time. The best use of them is in combining multiple options and underlyings in order to get to a single measure OR combined portfolio sensitivities via the Greeks. Of course they play a vital role in understanding the options, but not sure exactly what you want to discuss about them that cant be easily found in any text book.....or better yet in an option simulator that has moveable variables in order to see how the options might move over time, price etc.....There is not much to discuss really unless you have specific questions. Do you want to talk about them and their applicability to trading? If so how so.....

Global macro is pretty much a fund descriptive term. It directs asset allocations to help determine the type of fund they might invest in. Relevant if you are trading a portfolio maybe - to offset positions in. Or take purely directional or uncorrelated spread trades in things that are not limited by regional or specific sector boundaries - usually set as a mandate on the fund managers. Otherwise - we are all micro global macro managers these days.

money, or sex usually

Thanks Blue - i think you were almost there.... Stick with the Goldman theme. Man with the golden gun and the vampire sucking squid......Goldman sachs. (goldman sucks)