Recent content by TheStudent

OK - how about a contrarian location. After new tax regs, Libya has 1) EU time zones 2) 10% personal income tax 3) 5 year tax holidays for business profits (does trading qualify?) 4) govt interest in developing finance sector 5) external debt of $7b vs GDP of $100b 6) govt revenue =...

I've just started using the accumlate/distribute algos in IB to handle some of my execution in the TF & ES contract and have noted that they give me a rebate of some sort for that - it shows up as a deposit in my daily statements. Does anyone know where that rebate is coming from? I must be...

As you know, many political entrepreneurs have successfully won free elections that they then proceeded to convert into dictatorships, so democracy per se is no talisman. Most people can be very successfully manipulated in the short run (and some people can be successfully manipulated in the...

I think you are asking one central question, which is why so many human beings embrace certain beliefs without subjecting them to a logical test or an evidence test. I think the answer is efficiency. The human race is wired for most people to just accept what is popular without rigourous...

The main application of fractals to markets that I'm aware of is the claim that markets are scale invariant - which is to say you can't tell a weekly chart from a monthly chart or a 10 minute chart. This claim is useful because it gives an intellectual justification as to why you can try to...

I think naked short selling of equities could lead to some problems - it's got to do with the value of the business versus the outstanding short interest. If we allow the latter to be unbounded, it's clear at some point it's in someone's interest to hurt the business. But this is mostly a...

I am a self-identified libertarian, but I am wary about the limits of implementing a libertarian state. I haven't thought through this entirely, but I guess one reason why a libertarian state won't be coming to us in the near future is because of defence. Assume you get the land, forget...

It's probably an emini fat finger. A bad print on a stock is unlikely to drag the S&P 500, EURUSD, 10yr into a spike no matter how big. This kind of financial space-time distortion is the work of macro instruments gone wild. I added up all the "excess over normal" volume in the minutes...

Somewhat surprised this hasn't hit ET yet. Goes to show how looney tunes some people can get. http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?178510-Liberal-Activist-Goes-to-Haiti-Gets-Raped-Blames-White-Men ... with commentary

If you assume that you want to fund a standard of living that you've cost out at $50,000 a year in present value terms for the next 30 years, how much do you need? There are many ways to approach this calculation, and I am curious as to what people think. One popular way is to take the...

Being a major world financial centre has nothing to do with 1) the language spoken 2) the coolness of the people 3) the freedom of the govt 4) the way they treat their handicapped 5) the number of cable tv channels 6) the hotness of their women 7) the quality of their plumbing and mass...