Recent content by WharfRat

Was it Niederhoffer?

It's a type of option, where a barrier level is set that will "activate" or "deactivate" the option, so to speak. Google it - should find plenty of info.

Foxmarks (bookmark synchronizer) is great if you use multiple computers!

In addition to being a narrow index, it is also price weighted (as opposed to market cap weighted like the S&P). So something like MCD has more pull than, say, INTC even though MCD has half the market cap...

Verbal intervention - Market News is reporting "ECB officials to express concern about Euro".

I heard it from a broker...

There's a <highly likely to be horsesh*t> rumor making the rounds that the ISM numbers were miscalculated.

Spreads between interbank rates (like LIBOR and EURIBOR) and short-term government rates (like T bills) are an indication of short-term liquidity/funding conditions in the banking system. When those spreads pop up (like they did in August 07 and then again in Dec 07) it indicates decreasing...

Quite a day here. SPX bounced off a big level (38.2% retrace of the bull move up from 2002, also a 200 week moving average).

They settle based on the average of the fed funds target rate for the month though, so the early cut will affect the monthly average. That can skew the probability indications taken from the contracts. Right now the Jan contract is trading at around a 3.91% implied rate. The overnight Fed...

Using Yahoo data for ^SPX, that index closed at 224.84 on Oct 19, 1987. The 200 day standard deviation of daily price changes is a bit over 5 points (including the 19th, or a bit over 3 points if you exclude it). The 200 day moving average of the close on that day is about 298, so the gap is...

In January 2001 they did two cuts of 50 (the first was a surprise, the second at a scheduled meeting), but no single change of more than 75 since 1990 (the 75 was actually an increase, in 1994). There's history here: http://www.federalreserve.gov/fomc/fundsrate.htm

Ah ok - that makes sense. HSI getting pummeled the last few months (down about 25% from the October 07 highs).

That does not appear correct - what index are you looking at? The largest declining index I see in China last night was the Shanghai SE 50 A share, which was down less than 4% - that's a relatively small move (2/27/07 selloff was almost 10% on that index).

...or the Nasdaq after the bubble popped (even the S&P). Overlay a chart of the Fed Funds Target rate and those indices...