Archive for the 'Technology' Category

Lightspeed, Anvil and Terra Nova

*IMPORTANT Point of Clarification: Lightspeed has not purchased Assent, but rather has licensed The Anvil platform, which will continue to be available to customers. The press release actually crossed the wire this morning and can be found on multiple news outlets, or you can read it below: Lightspeed Financial Acquires Exclusive License to Operate Anvil [...]

An Epic Battle for Individual Eyeballs Starring: Google, Yahoo, Apple, MSN and Facebook

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”.

Invitation to Join New LinkedIn Group

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, [...]

Colbert on Trading Algorithms

Great piece by Colbert discussing last hour sell programs triggered by algorithms:

Journal Entries of a Professional Stock Operator

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. [...]

Understanding the Big Picture Behind the Financial Meltdown of 2008

“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 [...]

Monster Bear Market Rally in Nasdaq 4:20

This is one of those instances where “noise” becomes primary mover and lets the crowd get emotionally involved. If there is a 300 point rally in the Nasdaq from here, the 80 point gap in Google is just the beginning. I talked about the financials when the market was almost 800 points lower than where [...]