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No problems today. Thanks!

IBj, Any updates with regard to fixing the shorting issue? I tried shorting the SPY as recently as Wednesday afternoon (June 14) and received the "We currently have 0 shares of SPY available for short sale." message. I hope IB moves this issue to the top of their list (ie., it becomes...

Not today...IB rejected my order. :( I tried to go short the SPY this afternoon and my order was rejected. "Your order is not accepted. We currently have 0 shares of SPY available for short sale." Do you have any idea why this happened today?

IBSoft, I just sent an email to help@interactivebrokers.com with the info you requested. Thanks for your help. Has anyone else had a problem like this?

Hey ETers, I am trading ETFs and I've been experiencing some large (10 second+ !) :eek: delays when using IB's Smart Routing on a rather consistent basis (not just during "fast markets"). I'm not sure why this is, but it is definitely costing me in terms of slippage (at least 5+ cents in...

ETers, Let's say my account has $25,000 in cash which means I have $100,000 in buying power (4 x 25k). I decide to buy 500 shares of an ETF at $140/share and it cost me $70k (so now my buying power is reduced to $30,000). Now that I am long this ETF, can I reverse the position (get short...

A very valid point about time decay. Maybe the trendfollower should adjust their position size to take into account the the potential payoff. In other words, I don't need to buy 200 DOTMs to have the (potentially) same payoff as buying 1000 shares. In fact, if the trader is right, the...

I agree that liquidity is a problem. And I thought about the open interest issue yesterday. I agree with you there too. Anonymity is one of the benefits of trading the underlying. The funny thing is though that even if everyone knew you were long DOTM premium, I'm not sure if the market...

All true, but I'm not sure that is relevant to this particular situation. I am not proposing that a trendfollower replicate the delta of an ATM option by using DOTMs. I'm simply saying that the majority of a trendfollower's profits come from massive moves. So, why not play simply for...

I thought that Empirica was essentially buying DOTM strangles. I thought Nassim's whole premise was that traders underestimate the frequency of catastrophic events ("black swans"). To that point, I thought he bought DOTM strangels. That way he doesn't have to be good at picking the direction...

If I'm buying DOTMs and I'm skillful in my trading I don't think slippage would be that much of an issue. If these CTAs can get huge positions on in the futures while minimizing slippage, I think they can do the same in the options. I realize it isn't exactly the same (liquidity for futures vs...

So I've been thinking (that's dangerous all by itself) about CTAs (Commodity Trading Advisors). Based on what I know of CTAs, a lot of them use some type of trend following strategy (as opposed to a mean-reverting strategy). Some of them, at least conceptually, are pretty basic strategies...

Matrix Trading, Kingstree Trading, and Jump Trading -SG

There are definitely prop firm traders that trade this kind of size in the Eminis and don't have a problem. The Eminis have a pretty thick order book so you can trade 1000 lots (250 at a clip - CME rules) with little to no slippage. Even if you needed to dump the position in a hurry by going...

So, with regard to Nassim's strategy, there are two possible scenarios (as I see it)... A) He is making many (probably small) bets on lots of different stocks because he doesn't know which one is likely to have an extreme move (i.e., I don't know which horse is going to win the race so I'll...

I wanted to start a discussion on Nassim Taleb's Empirica (his hedge fund) and, more importantly, his trading strategy. My understanding is that he has taken the opposite approach of Victor Niederhoffer. That is, instead of selling OTM premium, he is buying it. It seems that he believes that...

Let's assume that I am short a straddle, but I don't want to carry a naked position. Please correct me if I'm wrong but I could hedge this position by buying the same straddle with a different expiration (e.g., short Jan 50 straddle, long Mar 50 straddle). Is this the best way to hedge a...

Yesterday, I spoke with a guy at Trading Technologies (TT) that told me that X_Trader can be used to trade ETFs. This was a surprise to me because I was under the impression that TT only supported futures trading. He said it just depends on whether your trading firm (or broker) has a data feed...

Ha Ha Vega! :)

100k shares on the bid or ask?! At any given time (price)? Having never traded ETFs before, I was guessing that getting off 10k on the bid/ask would be about the maximum amount you could trade without incurring slippage. If you can trade 100k blocks with that kind of ease then I guess the...