Some "Bright" strategies...

Originally posted by Don Bright
I have been "online" since 1979 (using the "Source" via a 300 baud modem)
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heh.. makes me think of my early beginnings. i'm only 23 but my first computer was a ibm pc jr with no hard drive. lol and of course it had no internet connection. after that my first "real" computer was a 386/33 with 2 megs of ram. i remember that i later added 2 more mb for like $50 per mb. :eek: my first modem was 2400 baud. it used to take me like 1 hour to download 1 porn picture. lol (i was like 14) :) this was back when aol didn't exist yet and bulletin board systems were popular. then there was prodigy and later aol for dos. i was one of the first aol members. i wish i had been smart enough to buy the stock back then..but i was too young and didn't know anything about the stock market at the time. :(
 
Imagine waking up at 3AM, plugging your phone into a TI Printer with handset rubber cups, dialing into a mainframe, inputing 200 option stocks, waiting for the darn thing to print reports, line by line at 300 baud....dot.dot.dot.dot...all this before going to the trading floor at 6AM to begin the day of trading. Ahhh...the "good ol' days" (actually very thankful we did that, or we wouldn't be in the position we are now).

My first Apple II+ was a dynamo, I was able to program in speech technlogy, design with "applesoft" - and actually play some cool games (for the time). And, after all of this, we finally got a color monitor that worked.

Blair Hull (see "Market Wizards"), my brother and I would spend hours analyzing option spread strategies in the late 70's and early 80's...and all this led us to the fun in the 80's and 90's.

Anyway, enough "memory lane" - You have a lifetime of new opportunities to grab a hold of...good luck!

**""The ramblings of a madman are seldom without merit"
 
don,

are you the guy that has some interviews in stocks & commodities magazine? i used to have a subscription and your name sounds familiar. if i'm correct, the interviews are accompanied by a sketch of a guy with a beard (?). i assume you are him?
 
That would be me...I have a new picture in the magazine now :-) Still have the beard, though!

So, renew your subscription, keep me employed :-)
 
Originally posted by Don Bright
And, as a matter of fact, I have researched the answer to a much repeated question (the idea of Echo using T-1 lines vs. satellite feeds for First Alert, as we do in some locations). As my friends who are trading at Echo tell me, they are only using T-1 lines to get to the Internet, and do not have "point to point" T-1's in use. Sometimes when I do not have an immediate answer, I prefer to research it rather than give out erroneous information.
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Just had to clarify this point as you must not have researched this point very hard, ECHO is so popular because they use all T1's, and yes they DO use point-to-point T1's and redundant. The office I am in, so you know, has 2 redundant Point-to-Point T1's, and an additional internet T1 as a third backup. So yes, they technically have internet T1's also, but to say that they do not use Point-to-Point T1's is false.

Just so you also know, NONE of their offices rely on the very inexpensive and slow Satellite feeds for quotes.

I don't want to have to post any information that seems pro-Echo, but I feel it necessary to respond to misinformation about any firm that I can clear up.

Robert Tharp
(no alias here either)
 
Don:

I have looked at chart after chart of AOL/VIA and a few other pairs I have, my biggest question is how exactly do you trade a spread intraday. Can you give one, JUST ONE example on why you took a trade, that will be incredibly helpful.

I really spend a lot of time looking at how I can possibly make use of a pair relationship and I really really need just one example to link together the pieces.
 
Good, that is the kind of responsible dialogue that I respect. This may be of use to the readers on the board: Since we are opting to use our direct "siac" connections with our "point to point" T-1's provided by our clearing firm, we too, will probably only use the satellites as a backup when phone or Internet connections are stalled. The way I understand it, we combine the execution with the data feed that way, and don't have to "hop" elsewhere...anyway, I leave the technology to the experts at Goldman Sachs and Spear, Leeds who know a heck of a lot more than I do about it. Which "point" are you connecting to, PAX?, or straight to the NYSE or ECN? Just curious....it seems that some people are putting a lot of emphasis on connectivity, when I am told it is all pretty much the same when you are out of NY or Chicago anyway. As long as the quotes are right from the exchange, and the orders go right in, we're pretty happy. Since the NYSE only allows a 2400 baud "pipeline" into their system anyway, it shouldn't make any difference.

BTW, I liked your report on Professional Trading posted on DTUSA,and printed out a copy...good information!

Be well!
 
I remember an article in Stocks & Commodities magazine a few months ago that had an article on pairs trading. I've got to dig it out and review it, but basically it said to take your data, input it into a spreadsheet, then use that to find a moving average of the mean price and different levels of deviation from the mean. You could then calculate probabilities of how far prices would deviate to different levels before retracing.

I think that's right, but the article spelled it out much better and had examples to use in Excel. It used Royal Dutch/Shell as the example. I'll have to look it up.

Are there any books or other articles on pairs trading someone could recommend?
 
I remember an article in Stocks & Commodities magazine a few months ago that had an article on pairs trading

The article you are referring to was in the March 2001 issue.
 
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