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I have read a few detailed analysis on the payday loans (by serious economists), it's a very complex issue. Regardless, there is a variety of predatory or semi-predatory business practices. I think that there is no black and white, it's the proverbial 50 shades of brown. HLF might a shade...

You can't deny that the US has a lengthy history of "active" foreign policy (just look at the number of countries that have been destroyed in the name of democracy). You also can't deny that the US has dealt rather brutally with its enemies when it was permissible. I would not go as far as to...

Well, would you say that pay-day loans or life settlements are ok too then? They certainly are in the spirit of free market and all that stuff.

It's a different trade, dude. Delta hedged fixed strike has a very different return profile then a butterfly. It's especially true in the world where wings are generally trading at a premium to the ATM.

Really? That sounds wrong - I just took a cursory look at Schiller's S&P data and I get a price return of approximately 5% (Jan 1900 S&P 500 was at 6.10 and I took 2275.12 as my Jan 2017 point). A better indicator of "goodness" for equity investors is the median S&P return since 1871 which was...

It becomes a question of infrastructure fairly quick - if you are trading a few thousands of names, simulating everything at tick level becomes a pain. Plus, if your holding time is days or longer, it's a waste of an effort that can be applied elsewhere.

Actually, I am in your camp regarding HLF being an immoral and barely legal scam. Unfortunately, just like many other schemes preying on the regular folks, it could persist for many years before it bursts. Personally, I'd not bet a billion dollars on it.

Smart thing would be to short the shares of all companies since one of them ought to go to zero.

Send me a PM, we'll talk.

The equivalent exchange-traded products like Eurodollars over Fed Funds (an analogue of LIBOR/OIS) or TED spread (Two Year futures over Eurodollars, equivalent to short dated swap spreads).

This is right off 5th avenue on 66th street. Location, location, location - everything else can be modified. PS. I live on 86th x 3rd and kinda hate it to be honest

He means credit as in "credit derivatives", i.e. you are long protection.

The general actuarial approach is to take your desired income times X and that would be your target number. Historically, X is anywhere between 20 (aggressive) to 30 (conservative) - the idea is that with some confidence you would never run out of money, even if you have to dip into the...

Thank you, at least someone... Suicide is one of leading causes of death in the US, so it's not a laughing matter by any means. People in finance are especially at risk by virtue of being mostly white and having a high risk job. Nobody seem to be making fun of someone dying from cancer or in a...

Taking the last few painful years, If you've had invested with him in 2013, you'd still be whole at the end of 2016 (even made some money). Since the 2005, the guy has outperformed S&P by a factor of 3, even if his Sharpe ratio is not stellar. Activist fund business model certainly works and...

That's not true - if your execution assumptions are conservative (e.g. you assume that you wait for the whole bar period to cross the spread) you will be OK. The key is to be making a conscious effort not to fit into the HFT noise to begin with and play for longer time frames and bigger...

Manhattan condos are probably the highest in terms of fixed costs. For instance, my place has an effective scrape of 3.5%. And yet there is no shortage of eager buyers and the prices go up every year. In the end, housing does not exist in a vacuum - the desire of people to live somewhere is...

I think majority of health care costs in this country are a function of rent-seeking by the health care industry. Many other countries spend significantly less per capita and seem to have similar quality medical care if you judge by survival/death rates for all major health issues. Taxing...

You think that would work in the modern world? There are a few similar relationships (far less known) like that in the equity markets, but you always wonder if this particular crisis will be the one when it does not work.

It was more of a Grey Goose event. I have long maintained that volatility around any peg out there is a good buy. To answer the OP - it's very hard. The only real way to do it cheaply is to identify some sort of "crisis alpha" - i.e. some form of relative value that will blow out in a crisis...