Search results

My broker tells me the CME is still having sporadic problems this morning (Tuesday morning), although everything looks okay at the moment. Just be prepared in case they go down again.

Let me tell you, it is odd running into your bio by chance! I worked for Trout Trading prior to the Centre Group back in the early '90s. I think Darkhorse got that information from the IASG.com website. You must be in the business to know about Trout retiring and Tewksbury taking over...

SEC Prohibits Short-Selling of ETF's *laugh*

If you flip a coin and get tails four times in a row are you more likely to get a head the next flip? Of course not, each flip of the coin is independent of all others and has a 50% chance of getting heads. Your trade by trade results are also probably independent and there is no reason to...

tickdata.com is where I got mine.

You don't have to be accredited to have a CTA manage an account for you. And you don't necessarily have to be accredited to invest in a hedge fund, managed futures fund, private equity, venture fund, real estate partnership, or any other type of unregistered security -- but sometimes the...

When orders are pulled before they are filled it usually isn't big players playing games. It is usually a computer program deciding that it wants to change the price it is bidding or that an arbitrage possibility isn't available anymore. I venture to guess most orders on the electronic...

Yes. Most futures orders are never executed. If you can see the market depth for the e-mini's, for example, watch the levels away from the market. You'll see the size available at these levels going up and down and up and down. None of these orders are getting executed, just entered and pulled.

I can tell you one of our investors is also an investor in a Quadriga fund. He recently reinvested with them after having been out for about a year. He has been very happy with Quadriga.

Ah, yes, thank you. That's a category I forgot... Some CTA's print newsletters or have websites with futures trading recommendations and don't do any actual trading for clients.

Good post, Darkhorse. Some people calculate the standard deviation of only the down months (the "semi-deviation") and use it in the Sharpe ratio and call it the semi-Sharpe.

A CTA trades futures and futures options for others. A CPO oversees a commodity pool (also called a managed futures fund). Sometimes the CPO and CTA are the same company. Sometimes the CPO does no trading itself and selects an independent CTA or CTAs. Some CTAs only trade individual...

I've heard estimates of 5000 or more hedge funds in existence, so the 350 or so at Iasg.com are just a fraction of them. And the managers at Iasg tend to be 1) CTA's, 2) open to new investors, 3) targetting individuals instead of institutions, and 4) US managers. Soros and his restructured...

Nice post, Inandlong.

Every annual return can be modeled as a draw from a distribution that has a positive expectancy and long negative and positive tails. Even if all goes well and the strategies perform as expected, eventually we're going to have a losing year -- just because trading returns are stochastic. Our...

Very educational. I've seen other posts on Elite Trader where new traders are recommended to work for a hedge fund or money management firm to learn the ropes -- it's good advice. The most important thing I learned at Trout Trading was how to methodically and rigorously backtest and...

Every trade, every monthly return, and every yearly return can be modeled as independent draws from distributions of possible outcomes. The distributions have positive means or "expectations", but they have sizable tails falling off in both the negative and positive directions. Because we use...

I can tell you from experience that the management fees are dwarfed by the performance fees if you can make money. The Schindler Fund charges 2% of assets and 20% of profits (with a highwater mark). On a minimal $20k account, the management fees have been about $500 over the past year (with...

Nice risk management, Nitro! Yes, I've got backups in all cases -- even a backup in case I become incapacitated (my wife is trained how to close out any open positions). In no technical glitch has it taken more than a half hour to get a trade done.

Only at funerals. Or if their dog dies.