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Sounds familiar. Very. As it turns out, you can also trade with Orc, even Orc Trader. But it is sooooo slow. Maybe Liquidator is better. It must be, in fact. The question is how much.

For Asia ORC must be pretty good. They provide Liquidator which is server based. Do you have experience in pitting exstream vs liquidator for some markets? I am facing the choice. Would possibly go with the old fashioned Actant setup.

Are you looking to do Europe or US or Asia? I am also considering it right now, not too sure.

Afterburner, Thanks for your thoughtful summary of the theory on government debt and interest rate pressures. It sheds some valuable light on the dark world of my thoughts. Isn't the point of accumulating a deficit to invest it in productive resources that would one at one cycle of the wave...

On a second thought, I guess it is because to finance the deficit the governemt needs to issue debt. So, supply of bonds goes up which pushes their prices down which implies a higher interest rate. But how can this be looked upon through the prism of supply and demand for money?

How does a budget deficit result in high interest rates in the context of a restrictive monetary policy (that is, the government doesn't start printing money) ? I figure that it is because the 'government needs money' so the demand for it increases, and thus its price - the interest rate. But...

Sammy and Riskarb, Thanks for your detailed feedback. Gives me some food for thought. First month is the one of choice, I hear... Not a surprise, I guess, it is also the source of a large portion of my profits - just because the interest to trade it is higher and the traps more straight...

How does the bund relate to euribor futures. What are the contract differences and is it possible or even conceivable to spread them?

Hey Riskarb, Do you limit yourself to 'mostly SMALL losses' by simply having a disciplined hacking strategy? What expiration do you trade when you want to place a directional move? And how far out-of-the money are most of the options you trade? As a market maker I stick to pure arbitrage...

I believe that: - all that good stuff calls for an interest rate belt tightening (although that should have been even more pronounced yesterday, with the new homes sales number) - everyone is happily long, which results in that there are no more buyers around to push the high levels higher

Monte Carlo simulation as a tool sounds more elaborate than what it really is. That is not to say that you cannot use it for elaborate analysis. You need to determine what you need to figure out. For instance, what is the probability of a coin flipping head or tails. Create a process that...

But look - consider there is some real bad news in the market. It doesn't quite price it in immediately. Usually it starts going down real quick and, if you are fast, you can take the boat and ride it. In short: bad news -> bad fundamentals + panic -> market valuations are too high over a short...

Daveyk, thanks for you exhaustive feedback. So it seems that the system is quite popular. Good to know good to know. Thanks for pointing to some of its flaws. I have to give it a thought. And Deltadelta - I have to look into that Torque tool. Is it some sort of add-in? Cuz I heard lately that...

Has anyone used Aqtor for futures or options quoting? If yes, what are your impressions about it?

Why did we (european futures) not move at all upon the release of the Initial Jobless Claims number which was decidedly worse than expected (330 vs 305, roughly)? Usually we react quite a bit on that kind of stuff. Or was this one ambivalent?

Koppanyi, You can check the implied volatility for a given underlying (or to be precise, of the options on the underlying) on Bloomberg. I think it is something like, for example, MSFT US Eqty OMON. Maybe there is some information available for free at ivolatility.com. It is probably...

Dantes: the reason I find market making not so challenging is that in most respects I find myself a price-taker and not a price-maker. That is, I have a generally good idea of what the vols should look like accross a skew surface (the key word is smooth, with a few explainable complications)...

You can compare with what volatility a certain underlying has been moving. But beware, when you trade an option your result is exposed to the volatility of the future and not the past. Sure, there is a great deal of autocorrelation in realized volatility. But it isn't all that stable at all and...

oil_trader: what do you mean by 'mutual fund timing strategies for the rich'? Is it the strategy applied by the fund, or that of other players who anticipate it and front run? Also, do you avoid options because of the relatively wide spread? or something else?

Dantes: i was imprecise. By volatility market I mean supply and demand for premium as well as the amounth of nervousness and fear.