Notwithstanding my annoyance at last week’s “technical glitch” that probably made a few people over a billion dollars, the problems it caused for my programs because of extremely large tails in many stocks is a bigger hindrance. The lows set on Thursday’s sudden cascade 1000 point sell-off, although we’re being told was caused by a [...]
Although behavioral targeting has thrived by allowing marketers to offer ads that are customized based on the web surfer’s age, gender, location and online activities, in the immediate future not only will those variables be considered, but also the items the user may have been shopping for recently. For example, imagine you have searched for a specific bottle of wine from a shopping web site in the past couple of weeks, and were now on your favorite news site reading an article about foreign affairs. At the end of your article, you might see an ad from a wine merchant suggesting you take a look at their inventory and pricing. To go one step further in our example, the merchant that is serving you the ad has agreed to pay the advertising network a generous fee if that user clicks through and ends up purchasing a product. So the advertising network will be incentivized to track every single web user going through their network in a way that continually allows them to “guide” users to products that meet their real time interests. The convenience factor lies in that last term, “real time interests”.
The desk I run is an Institutional Long/Short Equity desk which tries to maintain a “market neutral” book. This doesn’t mean “buy 1000 shares of IBM and 10 puts”. What market neutrality means is that one need not be concerned about the overall direction of the market, as momentum traders are, but rather have long [...]
With all of the clutter and insanity due to groups turning into recruiting grounds and advertising forums for esoteric and mindless products, I was compelled to launch my own LinkedIn Group which is being emphatically embraced by the systematic and discretionary proprietary trading universe, to my delight. I know many of you are Prop. Traders, [...]
“Cuz I’m free fallin, now I’m free fallin, free falling…..” General market theory suggests sharp sell-off’s need to be on high volume in order to culminate into a tradable bottom, ala the 10/10 and 11/20 lows. However, should the market make new lows on very little volume, as we have seen this past week, the [...]
By Edith Honan Reuters NEW YORK (Reuters) – Bernard Madoff, a longtime fixture on Wall Street, was arrested and charged on Thursday with allegedly running a $50 billion Ponzi scheme, U.S. authorities said. The former chairman of the Nasdaq Stock Market who remains a member of Nasdaq OMX Group Inc’s nominating committee, is best known [...]
Week of Nov. 24 FRI: Is it a coincidence Oil & Gas bottomed on election day? DFG- Trgt’s 13.50, 14.50, 20 DIG- $50 Tech leading this charge. Tier 2 Stocks: BRCM- 2x bottom near completion. Bullish volume. TD buy signal, d-SAR Long. Breakout >18. EBAY- Recovered secondary trendline. Mulitple buy signals. Above 13.70. Trend channel [...]
Week of November 10 Still bullish on the market but defensive in nature. Not putting myself out there for anything, in either direction. Take trades for the time being and generate cash flow. When the rally comes, it’ll be obvious. TRIN behaving very bullish all week, spending Wed & Thur around 3.00 and as high [...]
Week of November 3 THUR- Heavy volume on the sell-off. Market’s spooked by the lopsided gov’t. As expected, but didn’t exploit. Monitor airlines for entry levels (see below). Many charts look like gaps from Tuesday were closed. Only problem is volume expanding across the board. So many charts look terrible, I feel like we’re going [...]
Week of October 27th: Wed p.m.- Yesterday, markets rallied 880 points. Today, a 300 point rally reversed to close almost flat. This is a very bullish sign. The euphoria became excessive because we had rallied almost 20% in 2 days. So the late day reversal was a definite shakeout of the fast money, weak hands. [...]
“We’re going to see five hedge funds fail for every bank, maybe more,” A moment of reckoning for many hedge funds may come at the end of this month, when their exposure to credit default swaps must be “marked to market” to reflect the increased obligations at the end of the third quarter. Olivant, the [...]
The entire universe of “Tiger Cub’s and Seeds” (offshoot funds of Julian Robertson) are sitting on huge long positions in the following high beta stocks: GOOG, RIMM, QCOM, BIDU, AAPL I doubt there is intentional coercion, but there is certainly dialogue. What are the short-term implications for fast money traders? These stocks will have support [...]
