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Sunday, May 20

20th May - Weekender: Trading & Markets

Weekend's linkfest on trading and markets. The article on Dalio is a must-read. Follow ‘MoreLiver’ on Twitter or Facebook.  



Previously posted:

 
TECHNICAL ANALYSIS
Attention Frustrated Chartists: It ain’t HFT – it’s the Macro!Mercenary Trader
The Occam’s Razor explanation for why charts have gone Daffy Duck is not because of robots, but simply because the macro environment has been bizarre… like “unprecedented in history” bizarre. And it’s been this way for a while now.

How You’ll Know When A Tradable Bottom Is In Placebclund
The only way you can recognize a market bottom when it’s happening in real-time is to feel it… Feel is something that can’t be taught, it has to be learned, and not everybody learns it the same way.

REGULATION
Sell-side research isn’t inside informationFelix Salmon / Reuters
Now it’s true that the SEC does consider the news that an investment bank is going to change its rating on a stock to be material nonpublic information, and therefore subject to insider-trading rules. But it’s a very weird, grey-area sort of inside information.

The undercollateralisation riskalphaville / FT
Central counterparty clearing and settlement was always intended to make the financial system safer… But there may be unintended consequences.

A Brief History Lesson: How We Ended Glass SteagallThe Big Picture
It is an informative lesson in tenacity of gradual erosion, how bank lobbyists can slowly sand away rules, with a healthy does of regulatory capture thrown in.

HEDGE FUNDS
Dalio's WorldBarron’s
Ray Dalio, fabled hedge-fund manager, says the U.S. has done a "beautiful" job delevering, but sees a 30% chance Europe will stumble badly.

Barron’s Top 100 Hedge FundsThe Big Picture

RESEARCH PAPERS
Asymptotically Optimal Algorithm for Short-Term Trading Based on the Method of CalibrationarXiv
A trading strategy based on a natural learning process, which asymptotically outperforms any trading strategy from RKHS (Reproduced Kernel Hilbert Space), is presented. In this process, the trader rationally chooses his gambles using predictions made by a randomized well calibrated algorithm.

Top 10 Financial Research Papers of the YearMebane Faber

STOCK MARKETS & PORTFOLIOS
S&P OverlaysMacro and Cheese
This weekend I thought we'd look at a series of charts of the S&P overlaid with various assets or indices in order to step back and think about what comes next.

Chart of Equal-Weight S&P500 Index vs Market Capitalization-Weight IndexGreenbackd

Why Does an Equal-Weighted Portfolio Outperform Market Capitalization- and Price-Weighted Portfolios?greenbackd

Passive Asset Allocation Strategies Are Still Tough To BeatThe Capital Spectator
There's no reason to rely on a basic equity/fixed income mix in a world where a wider array of asset classes are available through low-cost ETFs.

Value-Weighted Indexing: The Problem with Active ManagementGreenbackd
…buying an index fund is better than messing it up yourself or getting an active manager to mess it up for you. If you’re going to buy an index, you might as well buy the best one.

MODELING
How to Visualize and Compare DistributionsFlowing Data
Single data points from a large dataset can make it more relatable, but those individual numbers don't mean much without something to compare to. That's where distributions come in.

Exponential decay modelsPortfolio Probe
When it is dark and you’ve lost your keys, where do you look?  Under the streetlight.  You look there not because you think that’s the most likely spot for the keys to be; you look there because that is the only place you’ll find them if they are there.

OTHER
Don’t Become the MarketThe Aleph Blog
Anytime you get a large fraction of the market’s volume, you should stop, and re-evaluate.  You’re probably doing something wrong.

Eduardo Saverin joins the stateless billionairesFelix Salmon / Reuters
The United States is the only country in the world which applies the same tax regime to all its citizens, regardless of where they live: nowhere else are nonresidents charged the same federal tax rate as residents.

Funnily enough, operational risk is more prevalent in Germany than Greecealphaville / FT
Simple calculations suggest the total cost of settlement failure ranges between USD$976 million and USD$2.9 billion in 39 major equity markets annually. Similar calculations for fixed income markets suggest the total cost of settlement failure ranges between USD$308 million and USD$925 million across 35 major fixed income exchanges annually

Another day, another SNB rumouralphaville / FT
Someone out there is buying as many euros against the franc as traders care to offload. Naturally, everyone is assuming this buyer is the SNB — in disguise. And the rumoured identity of the mystery intermediary is something of a surprise: Rabobank.

Inside the Education of a QuantAdvanced Trading
Wall Street firms may be shedding jobs, but they still need quants. Baruch College's Jim Gatheral and Dan Stefanica discuss what's in store for the Quant Class of 2012.