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...and lots of people (including traders) often forget the entire purpose of derivatives in the first place - farmers. The entire point was to get the farmer a fixed price for his crop later in the year so he has some stability in his life. Any attempt at negative change and you'll see those...

Wow. He steals (net) 10M and serves 5 years at Fed camp. Apparently he's a former congressman also. As bad as I often think politicians are, they're usually worse.

Most of Dodd Frank still hasn't been implemented. They also rave on about the "Wall St fat cats" and carried interest. That sounds awesome to the crowds that gather and cheer on the candidates, but every candidate knows they will never change the rule. 1. Even if everyone just paid it, the...

Here's another thing I've learned in my 3 decades of trading - and living in the Washington DC area. The politicians aren't going to change Wall Street. Bernie Sanders might, because he is legitimately void of the ability to do math or confront reality - but he's about as close as he's...

I started in 1986. My edge at that time was being one of the only guys to get the SEC filings as they were filed by the big guys. I would actually go to the SEC and you could read the stuff the day after the paper filings were accepted. This was years before the internet or email and the only...

My suggestion is to keep the job and trade at the same time. When the trading is successful enough over a long enough period of time, the decision to ditch the job will be self evident.

With individual issues, I think the "band" can become stretched and lose elasticity on the extreme ends. Bad news must become worse news or fatal news to continue the downward pressure. Oil has a floor - somewhere - but for equities it's zero. I like to think of all the longs and shorts in...

Yes. ET had a bunch of guys get wiped out in '36 and '37 writing naked puts on tulip bulbs. I had spreads myself, but it was a wild ride.

I don't define volatility by the VIX number, and I think lots of others do the same. You can get a high VIX number from just going down day after day. Simply going down is not volatility. If something is volatile it's moving sharply in either direction in a somewhat unpredictable and random...

The larger numbers you see are mostly market makers or bids/offers from computers, the "1 lots" are actual standing orders from individual traders. When the market starts to gyrate and move quickly, the market makers "back off" their quotes - leaving only the standing limit orders exposed.

The game has certainly changed and as rmorse said - it's harder, but there are still opportunities. Perhaps in different methods and environments. It's certainly not in vogue to be Gordon Gekko any more so those that are coining it are doing so more quietly.

We pushed up this AM then died again for a few hours. A lil bump on the Honeywell/UT news bit, then kinda quieting down some. I see bigger numbers on each side of the DOM for ES these days. Looks more like the markets we had last year most of the time.

There are a small number of posters here that can provide insight and background in specific areas that I find enlightening or valuable. Many other really good posters and traders have been pushed out over the years by trolls and other asshats that bated them or beat them up until they found...

Remember when everyone lost their minds about how much of our debt the Chinese owned? It seems no matter what happens, there's never a shortage of people to worry about the sky falling because of it. I remember the 80's and everyone had the same feelings about Japan ruling the world forever.

Mine is a black device with silver buttons called Safeword Platinum. After I successfully log into TWS with UserID/password, I get a challenge code. Then I turn on the device, enter my secret pin and the challenge code and get a response string...then I type the response string into TWS to be...

And now...almost shockingly...the big gyrations seem to have magically stopped in the last few days. Today is scary calm.

I've had the "credit card type" device for at least a decade and I like it. I don't have any apps on my phone - because I'm old and my phone has everything I need already. I can't compare the two since I've never used the app, but having the secondary authentication (and all the steps...

The serious volatility has really only been here for the last few months, with similar weeks in the August move down. Before that move down last August, we had a lot of mostly upward grinding weeks.

Will the public have a different viewpoint when the NEXT phone has plans for a terrorist attack that will certainly kill people and Apple refuses to break it?

If the FBI really wanted to get into that phone, they would just take it to the Chinese.