darthtrader

Countrywide... I don't know. When I worked as a loan officer you couldn't touch their rates, and the worse a person's credit was the more impossible it was to touch. It sounded like as part of this credit line they are done with sub prime, alt a and jumbo loans. When the arms start resetting they easily have the most risk on the table of anyone. The founder hasn't been able to sell his stock fast enough for the last 6 months: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/it?s=CFC I bought jan 08 $20 puts in december but then sold them once I made some because I thought I had gone too deep OTM.... I'm pissed at myself for not doing more research because them and all the junk subprime lender stocks were pretty obvious plays to buy leaps against after the bank i was working for that was private ditched the whole mortgage side and just went to car loans. From talking to people looking to refinance you could tell how it went from bragging about their property value in jan 06 to desperation in nov 06.

Nick, one more.. you like this? thats my fav Patton song ever...thats so out there, there is no genre that can hold this music. http://youtube.com/watch?v=RbBwFdKDaKw

ehh, thats what I got from the reviews of the new Tomahawk. Sellout????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? Thats impossible, I thought the reviews made it sound like it was too "Patton". Comeon, Peeping Tom rules, Patton's idea of pop music. I remember head banging to this getting on the middle school bus Patton is god.

46 & 2 by Tool live in NYC To me that should be a self help/self improvement anthem. "Stepping through my shadow, coming out the other side" lyrics at the height of the crechendo. To me thats like real modern dark jaZZ.(my keyboard is messed up on the Z key). old school jaZZ though... Dave Brubeck - Take Five http://youtube.com/watch?v=DDOgYw5-pNsa Can't believe there isnt a good version of Blue Rondo a La Turk on youtube. Have to settle for the greatest song ever made. Miles and Trane...live on video - "So What" http://youtube.com/watch?v=P4TbrgIdm0E

Oh yea, do you guys take creatine at all? I was pretty shocked to see that still talked about. I'm suspious of the entire supplement industry since anything that works seems to get banned by the fda. It was pretty new when I stopped, from what I remember I thought it only worked via water retention in your muscles to give you leverage on lifts but there must be something more to it if its still around. worth it?

I did a ketosis diet once, I didn't even feel lethargic really. The hardest part for me was just the mental carb cravings before ketosis kicked in. I was doing more an atkins deal then though so when I had a carb craving I would just go and get 3 double cheeseburgers from mcdonalds, toss the roll out of be all good. Here is the diet I was looking at. http://www.t-nation.com/readTopic.do?id=1150209 That has to be so hard mentally. I've read the new thing now is to have feeder days once/bi weekly to get glycogen back into your muscles but I would assume that starts the whole waiting for ketosis over again. I'm sure that diet is hard to top but damn... Thats basically where I want to tweak that diet with whey/oatmeal to get just enough carbs to stay out of ketosis but restricted enough calorie wise to lose. Then maybe try that diet seriously next april to get abs for next summer.

I think we are in a "Quant bubble" right now. I noticed that last year looking at the autumn gold ctas that it seemed like a dirty word to put anything other than "0% discretionary" when it came to strategy. The no name state university here now has a "financial engineering" degree. When you have billions and billions all doing the same stat arb mean reversion stuff it seems like someone is going to have to be left holding the bag. Its not like these strategies are so mysterious. I've read Rentech model how they themselves will effect the markets from using their models but I don't think you can model what will happen to your model when everyone else is using the same model.

Thanks for those links, I was wondering if GNC would have had to lower prices by now with online shops, I'm surprised they are even still in business. I think I'm going to wait to go on a ketosis diet until i lose 30lbs, not until next summer to try to get abs. I'll just go with 2 cups of oatmeal a day for carbs spread out. Something I found that I can still eat oatmeal is to just take 6 or 7 egg whites, throw in some oatmeal then cook it like a pancake. Its pretty good with hot sauce, or at least it doesn't make me want to puke . Something else I found, I learned to make an indian dish a few months ago. You just dice up a huge onion, throw in a pan with olive oil then throw in coriander, cumin, garlic, ginger powder and red chilli powder. Let it brown up, then throw a half cook chicken breast in cutup. When its almost done throw in plain yogurt, its like ghetto chicken tikka masala. If you can find an indian grocer you can get huge bags of the spices for a few bucks each. Throw any other vegetables you want in.

Check out that paul van eeden video i posted below here. From what I get it is a loss of confidence but I haven't really read what started it. The best I can put togather is the problem is that collateralized debt obligations have been valued mark to model, you have had billions dumping in to this stuff with probly highly correlated models being used to value what was even being bought instead of in an auction market. I would tend to think someone must have wanted to dump some but the price at auction was much lower than what the models said it should be. Now no one knows what the value is of what they are holding at auction and no one wants to be the one to light the fuse.

Haha, the cliffs of moher image. Those guys look like they are out in full force to try to win a darwin award. keep it coming. Great examples for the Shaprio Effect. I didn't get your text explanation but those videos made total sense. Seems like a great way to have a little system to make sure to get in on a retrace.

That bas workout is all plyometrics/pushups/situps...Basically 2 minute rounds of that, then a minute shadow boxing for a break. I can't believe how incredibly hard that is. Maybe i'll have to look into a heavy bag, I bet rounds on the heay bag is alot of fun too.

40/45/15 sounds interesting. I went on a low carb diet 2 years ago and had got back down to 180 in the fastest time I ever had, my body seems to respond great to that type of diet but its so hard mentally. I was going to try to get rid of carbs and just add olive oil for calories but this is not working. I'm not too worried about losing muscle, I started lifting when i was 14 and having a decent amount of muscle just seems to be a statis point for my body. The thing that sucks is I use to go to this dungeon style gym, i think there was one woman in the whole place but it closed down. I've checked out gyms here now and its like a social hour, 3x more expensive and most stuff i dont want. also it was cool because no one lifted stupid like that, it was all powerlifters and roided up bodybuilders, you would have been laughed out of the place. No suprise its gone, hehe. Do you buy whey online? is gnc competative at all? Something cool i notice is that whey is even cheaper than chicken or eggs now, maybe i'll even go to 3 whey servings a day, i always liked the taste of protein shakes.

cool stuff, I'm a big Mike Patton fan, haven't got the new Tomahawk yet though. Pattons version of hip hop http://youtube.com/watch?v=fsS0O0zQqUk Having trouble embedding. Tool is my fav rock band by far, this guy on youtube did these sick piano arrangements of Tool songs. I'm mostly waiting for the next Radiohead album, this new song is fantastic.

ok dog, i soppose pick this up from my PM. My biggest problem with BBs is they are a std dev measure from a moving average. I'm actually trying to get rid of all thought of ma's from my thinking. I just dont see how they matter. I just think BBs could be done better. Like std dev bands around X atrs. The first "system" i started trading was a linear regression/BB cross that i stumbled on. I can't even tell you what the regression vars were there though. That was an interesting video with the volume stuff, I would love though as I said though if you could go through some Dalton stuff on a video. I kind of get this stuff, Dalton beyond value pivs make no sense to me. Have you ever explored Marc Fishers ideas? I have Crabel's ORB book as a pdf, just say the word and i'll find a way to get it to you.

hey Nick1984, reading that fires me up, heh. I use to be obsessed with bb/powerlifting in highschool. When I was 18 I was 5'8" 190 and cut. I won the state highschool powerlifting competition with 500/330/550. That was with a cycle of testosterone suspension though, my foolish youth...heh. I actually had wanted to break the state jr records but gave up when this guy ripped me off on roids twice. Now i'm 30, same height, 215 with a gut. I tried to deadlift a month ago and gave up after how hard 2 plates a side was. I just want to get cut and have the girly man beach muscles now. What kind of cutting diet do you use? I've been reading stuff on tnation, been trying a 1800 cal a day diet, egg whites, fiberous veg, tuna, chicken, ehh thats it but this sucks mentally. You ever try a whey shake with a half a cup of raw oats? I think i'm going to change up to 2 of those a day, then an egg white meal and chicken meal. One thing with being away from BB/powerlifting for 10 years is the only advancements that seem to have been made are on the drug side. I remember hearing about that stuff Mark McGwire was using but now its illegal, typical. I guess I'm glad I'm not 20 now though, I would be jacked on dbols and clen.

Reaver, certainly check out Bas training stuff. There is a torrent of it if you want to preview it, I just ordered the dvd the other day. Its nuts. I just got up to 11 minutes today and felt like I was going to puke. I was already dead then he calls off "30 seconds, jumping knees to chest". The nice thing about it is you can do it anywhere. James, your family should totally do the cabin thing. My grandparents bought cottages on lake erie in the 50s and I've gone up to one every weekend for every summer of my life. We don't even have showers up there, just the lake but its the nicest thing in the world. I haven't even bothered to travel much or take many vacations in my life. I go on vacation every weekend. Then when you take groups of friends up and no one is around, can't top that.

I think this would be an interesting idea. Does anyone know of a free correlation matrix for major asset classes? I know I have checked one out before but I don't recall if it was online or if it was in Murphy's Intermarket book.

comeon guys, save this stuff for last....so over the head of who is following this so far. HUPS and market rotation theory next??

niiiiiice...i have to watch that a few more times before i get it in order to comment much. one thing though is don't you think std dev bands on vwap make more sense as far as market volatility than BBs? I've always been fascinated by BBs, I have Bollinger's book right in from of me. Maybe its just philosphical but it would seem to me the dev bands make more sense when you add volume over just what Bollinger tried to do. some serious MP Dalton idea videos would rule

I don't know much about stats beyond trying to read "statistics without tears" but i assume PVP means something because its the mode of the volume distribution?

I think it would also make sense to make a TS thread for the easylang stuff that is needed to get Jerry's tools into TS. It doesn't make sense for everyone to be doing their own version. Surely, I'm a bit biased here though since I have no clue how to program this stuff, heh.

First Dogpile, I'm a total newb. Please don't take anything I say on here as rhetorical. That first part was ment to be funny because it was pretty true as a newb. Does that second part of my response make any sense? I think what you said make sense but would like to know how you would back test such an idea. honestly, since I'm newbie enough to not have a paradigm to shift your stuff just makes sense. Thats why I asked in another thread about finding 4 uncorrelated markets and then just take trades at the vwap(with one contract). Surely, that wouldn't be the most bold strategy but it would at the least keep me from over trading and have the best probability. The biggest thing I have to ask though is should i start out with a really small account, play only 1 car at vwap over 4 markets or wait until i have more capital to be able to scale over a single instrument? or even wait to scale over 4 instruments? Basically, if you were to start over trading, what would you do??

I started out as a gold bug and ran across this guy, I think the whole gold bug thing is nuts but this guy is still my fav macro guy by far. He always makes interesting points. Video from late july: http://www.howestreet.com/audiovideo/index.php?pl=/fbn/index.php/mediaplayer/244

that LTCM doc was fantastic. I expected at the start for Merton and Scholes to not want any part of it like I guess Meriwether did not, heh. james_gsx, there are two LTCM books, When Genious Failed and Inventing Money. I read then both awhile back as the local library here had them. I think When Genious Failed is more popular. I don't remember much difference between them but its such a great story that I bothered to read the second book just incase. I dont remember what I read first. Just search Amazon for LTCM. There is also a Fischer Black bio that looks really interesting but I've never read it, just browsed it at Borders. Here is also an hour long interview with Richard Bookstaber who wrote Demon of Our Own Design: http://www.netcastdaily.com/broadcast/fsn2007-0721-2.mp3

Dogpile, I think I burned out a few neurons reading this over and over trying to wrap my head around it. :cry: I think you do have a point there though. The first part has to be correct. Then if price is between the vwap and +1.0/-1.0 std dev, price never goes back to vwap so you wait for price to get back to +1.0/-1.0 std dev and then put on the trade in that same direction you obviously have not got in at the best point all else the same. In your example what would you actually backtest X for though? Would that be the number of atrs away from std dev/vwap that have occured the most over Y time? That would then be an entry point to also watch for all else the same?