I realized something................

[limitdown]

Quote from gotta_trade:

Well, let's be happy that we have the opportunity to do either one. All in all, they're both good.

The opportunity is what's it's all about.

And that's what we need, an opportunity.

well said,

we live in a land of opportunity, naturally there's more opportunity to those who have more and less, but still opportunity...

cheers

 

[G_Morgan]

I spoke with a trader with a phd in physics from princeton a couple weeks back.

"Unimpressed" doesn't begin to explain.

 

[sle]

Quote from JWKirkland:



Trading convertible and high yield markets, conventional equity, and fixed-income arbitrage. Finding mis-valued securities that are in play. Identifying and trading convertible or debt securities with an asymmetric return profile...those that provide an equity level return in the positive case, but with limited expected risk of loss in the negative case.

What do you define it as?

Buying/selling securities of different nature from the same issuer, the most natural being straight bond vs. equity (a kind-of degenerate CB arbitrage). These kinds of arbitrage require good estimates of recovery rates and liquidity premia, both of which are notoriously difficult to model. Unfortunately, since these are usually distressed investment strategies, a private investor not backed up by a large team of lawyers (or mobsters) to enforce the recovery rates would not do too well.

I was not trying to suggest that non-institutional trades are dumber then their institutional colleagues, I was just simply pointing out that the tools available to them are different.

 

[RAMOUTAR]

Quote from Tea:

Institutional trading floors are designed to be impressive. So, its no surprise that you were impressed. Fancy furnishings, the Ivy League diplomas, business suits etc.

They are designed to impress customers and potential customers they bring in - insurance companies from Indiana, Japanese exporters. If they didn't have customers to impress, their trading floors would probably look just like a prop trading floor.

Its a matter of do you want to pay for all that. In a prop org you are the customer - do you want to pay?

Couldn't have said it better myself, Tea. Smoke and mirrors, most of the retail chop shop bolier rooms had offices that should have been in "Architectural Digest".