Recent content by marine

Lets see first hand how many people here have actually been to China. The media and news articles do not always get things accurate or they embellish the stories to make it more interesting. I have been there several times. I had a software development team in Chengdu. We paid them a fraction...

TickData is good for futures. But I think it's to expenisve for equities. I have spotted differences between TickData and Bloomberg. I then compared it to Reuters and all three were different but close enough. It would be better if they had an API as well. $.02

What are you on about, JFK is still alive. I saw him last week hanging with Elvis and Michael Jackson. :)

If you are an exchange member and hold the security for less than 28 days. There are different types of membership and I believe LSE has recently made it easier to become a member for competitive reasons. Or if you qualify for "Intermediary Relief" then there is no holding period. See...

This is not correct. You can get around the stamp duty by trading CFDs or by holding a security for less than a month.

Can you post a picture of your wife? :)

You didn't say what city you were in? Why don't you setup on your own? It seems that you have a pretty good deal and you are just being greedy, which isn't necessarily a bad thing :)

Bloomberg, Reuters and TickData all provide a way to roll futures so that you can look at them over a long time horizion. For example you can tell Bloomberg how to roll / adjust your futures contracts. Then you ask for the '1' contract which is always the front month contract. Yes when the...

I few years ago I had a job which took me to China a few times a year. I read somewhere that alot of fraud was happening in China. So typically when I traveled there I only used one of my credit cards and would always try to have more than enough cash so that I didn't have to use an ATM...

I don't know about this ... I think eventually you might be right but nobody knows when it's going to turn. You could be like LTCM just a year to early.

It could have been luck ... and your luck might be ready to run out. Can you make money in this environment? What is your Sharpe over the last 3 years and what is your return on margin as well? Maybe your strategy is okay and you can make you 20 - 30 K a year part-time but if you try to...

This is something I have been thinking about for a long time. There are guys who trade MR in the option world via volatility. It's not exactly the same thing as pairs trading but they are trading MR. One advantage is that you can increase your leverage via using options. Another one is...

It all depends on the software you are using. From what you say you are doing; it's nothing special, so a normal PC should be fine. It's always good to have 3-4 Gb of memory and a nice video card as well. But ultimately your problem is going to be the sotfware you are running on that machine.

The cheapest way is to do it yourself. Learn a programming language and implement what you want. Since you are using IB they usually limit the number of securities you can receive quotes for at any one time to 100 unless the commisions you pay are over a certain level. Assuming you can...

I use a proprietary BT platform which I built myself. It follows a distributed architecture which consists of Matlab, Excel, Bloomberg, SQL Server and C++. I had a CS background before I became a trader. I have thousands of different trading ideas. Before I will ever consider to trade any of...