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    protect intellectual property

    The value of your trading techniques is absolutely relevant. If you have a $500 car parked in a lot full of Porsches, it is worth it to put a $1000 LoJack system on it? Sure, it's your car and sure someone could steal it, but the chances of them doing so are vanishingly small given its absolute...
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    looking for HFT firms -- very experienced programmer with knowledge of hardware, networks, etc

    Just to clarify, if it was me looking to hire I'd definitely consider hiring you over the guy who just graduated top of his class at MIT. All the points you make are valid and definitely what you'd want to put forward on your job hunt. I'm just letting you know that there is a bias, in my...
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    Distressed Debt Investing

    Sounds like you're gonna need to change your screen name soon!
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    What's the deal with a bunch of Ask sizes of "1"?

    That does appear to shoot down that theory. Thanks for naming it though, I'll take a look tomorrow afternoon. Interesting stuff even if it does end up with a benign explanation.
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    looking for HFT firms -- very experienced programmer with knowledge of hardware, networks, etc

    I'd recommend you use LinkedIn. Do a search there for "High Frequency Trading Developer". It will simultaneously give you a list of people already doing this and the firms they work for, plus you can get an idea of size of the firms by the number of people who show up. Find any/all of the people...
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    What's the deal with a bunch of Ask sizes of "1"?

    It could be the market makers de-risking while still making a market. Again you didn't say what the security is, but in many markets the market makers are required to maintain a bid/ask at all times as one of the terms that allows them be a market maker. The loophole is that the spread and the...
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    Took out a loan to transition to full-time trading. 24 years old.

    I'll ask you a slightly different question. What if you succeed? Let's be generous and say you are able to consistently obtain returns of 40% per year, which puts you in the 99.99999 percentile of professional investors, by the way. You're not going to get compounding returns because you need...
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    The Koch brothers are buying oil for -$0.50 per barrel

    Got it, thanks for the example. I was thinking the driller as supplier, not the taker.
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    The Koch brothers are buying oil for -$0.50 per barrel

    Just for my own education can you paint a scenario where that happens? My understanding, which could very well be wrong, of take or pay is that the buyer agrees to take, in this case the oil, for price $X or if they decline to take it they pay price $Y. Assuming the $-.50/bbl company had a take...
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    The Koch brothers are buying oil for -$0.50 per barrel

    Sure. No indication that's the case here, not sure why anyone would sign a contract to sell for -.50 with a $5/bbl nondelivery penalty in any case. I suspect the whole thing is part of a bigger deal that makes more sense seen as a whole.
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    Natural Gas etf or company without contango

    Or to put it another way, if you found a way to avoid storage/logistics cost you'd have a risk free arbitrage situation and it would instantly be arbed away.
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    This Is Game Changing For Deal Makers

    It's been under attack for years by a number of people, including none other than the illustrious Mr. Trump. Is he a demoncrat, assorted freegan, or the current republican front runner...
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    C++ Programing : Principles and Practice (Enough ?)

    No question that you can't go wrong with C++ for the power and speed of the language. In my experience though there's a very real possibility of giving up on C++ because there's so much to learn before you can even make yourself dangerous. I ended up going with the easier language I was already...
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    Retail broker to trade new FTSE China 50 Mini Index options?

    Wow, thanks. That's the kind of detailed response that makes me think "It might be nice to have Robert as my IB"!
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    Implied Volatility surface oddity

    I can back that up with antectodatal experience trading SPX options. The deep ITM puts/calls often don't trade near the mid, while OTM and less ITM reliably hit 5 cents off the mid almost every time. If I take the deep OTM vol and imply a price for the deep ITM opposite option, I can usually...
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    Retail broker to trade new FTSE China 50 Mini Index options?

    To answer the questions, I need to trade this exact index and I need cash settled options. This product delivers both of those, and I don't know of another product that does but if anyone knows of one I'd be happy to hear more about it. Note that this is the CBOE product, not a CME product. As...
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    Fraud with Funds?

    Well I'll leave you with this; you seem to be at your best when you leave the conspiracy thoughts behind. I might suggest you channel that part of yourself into finding opportunities to profit by finding and shorting the conspiracies of the world, i.e. finding the next Enron before the rest of...
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    Retail broker to trade new FTSE China 50 Mini Index options?

    I'm looking for a retail broker to trade the new FTSE China 50 Mini Index options (http://www.cboe.com/micro/fxtm/). Interactive Brokers either doesn't have them or they're hidden and their customer service team is hopelessly unable to find them, to handle the obvious answer, and my regular...
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    Plan to Become Broker

    I'd recommend you find someone who's worked as an actual broker and offer to buy them lunch in exchange for them telling you exactly what they did as a broker and giving you a broad outline of the industry. Use LinkedIn to see if you know anyone at the 1st or second level who fits this...
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    Fraud with Funds?

    botpro, I'm baffled. It's like you're two completely different people. One person is making intelligent remarks that display a high level of understanding of the finance world, talking about Sharpe ratios and clearly knowing what you're talking about for example. Then there's questions like this...
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