A drive across farming states of the US has a different look than it did maybe 20 years ago, but we’re not talking about shopping malls having popped up where there used to be a farm. We’re talking about the drive from say Cleveland to Dallas seeing less and less wheat – those famous “amber […]
Category: Education
12
Sep
2018
10
Sep
2018
Looking Backward, Thinking Forward
Here’s the Chicago Board of Trade’s trading floor sometime in the 1990s. Down there in that mass of humanity and paper and colored coats were dozens of clerks. These were (mostly) young people getting a foothold in the industry. Learning the ropes from the bottom rung. Interns, if you will, who weren’t just leaning how […]
22
Aug
2018
Why there’s Trillions in Hedge Funds with Stocks at All Time Highs
Looks like CNBC wants you to know the S&P 500 just hit a new all time high. Time to break out the Dow 30,000 hats and pics of Leo playing the Wolf of Wall Street. But why is this really news anymore. We closed at a record high 62 times in 2017, and the bull […]
20
Aug
2018
Set Phasers to ‘Systematic’
We had always assumed William Shatner had made a killing being the spokesperson for Priceline (now known as Booking Holdings $BKNG) , with the stock being one of the best performers in the US market over the past 10 years, up about 1,900% (yeah, with a comma). Here’s that price action: Problem is (well, […]
14
Aug
2018
The huge world of farm subsidies:
We talked a bit ago in our piece “Are Tariffs a Black Swan” about the effect tariffs have had on Soybean prices – causing them to fall about -20% from their levels in the spring, but haven’t had a chance to get back into that debate after Mr. Trump announced a plan to make up […]
25
Jul
2018
Innovation is Changing Hedge Funds
Many have questioned what the future holds for the hedge fund industry, given its history of innovation. What kind of products will hedge fund firms offer to their new investor?
16
Jul
2018
Low Fees Doesn’t Trump Low Performance
But super low-cost stock index replication is not the same as replicating more complex hedge fund strategies, and a few recent articles are pointing out that the low fee experiment in alternative investments might not be working so well.
26
Jun
2018
Somebody’s Back to Shorting the VIX
In Fact, the net short position is about 53,000 contracts. The week before the February 5th event, the non-commercial were net short 58,000 contracts.
25
Jun
2018
Mastering MLP Madness
What are your thoughts on the correlation between MLPs and crude oil prices?
21
May
2018
LJM – The Autopsy
We put our internal quants from RCM-X on the case, and they dug into the numbers on the LJMIX SEC filing as of Jan 31, 2018 (about a week before things went south) to see just what the risk profile of this thing looked like coming into February.
