Posts by dave 158 27 publicly visible posts • joined 31 Jul 2009
What alternative methods are out there ?
Not condoning or slating the bell curve but if it's down purely to managers discretion, whats stopping the cronism there ? Even if theres no curve us drones will always have an issue with why Jones in DB infra got more than me. He's a lazy basterd, that Jones....
D
Personally, I'd test the 8 inches in a pocket ( oo-err missus ). I've got the Asus fonepad, it just fits and you've got no hope if you want to put any kind of cover on it, which is a real shame.
I dont really see where the other Asus offering reviewed - tag line of article is dont/cant do a phone and a tab, then you review a phone/tab combo.
To date, the Asus fonepad is fairly good, but not a patch on the Galaxy Note 1 I came from, apart from screen real estate. software is flakey, camara facing you is fairly useless for taking pictures but on the upside only 180 quid and you can actually read what's on the screen ( old man's eyes ).
if the Note 8incher fits, I'd go with that and wear a headset with a mic/bluetooth thingie.
I'm not sure I understand how this would work as described.
Sid the seller wants to sell 100 BT for no less than 110 pence.
Bob the buyer wants to by 100 BT for no more than 90 pence.
what would EvilSuperMegaTradingEngine do that i) acts as a middle man and make money and ii) put them ahead of the ladder and take a profit they dont deserve ?
if they act as middle man in the above instance, buy from Sid for 110 and sell to Bob for 90, they've instantly lost 20 pence. Sid and Bob still get they're required result and the ESMTE wont last the day. Even if Beth they buy comes in after Bob and is happy to buy 100 at 110 and the ESMTE comes in and clears that transaction, Sid still sells for what he's happy to sell at, Beth buys at what she's happy with, Bob doesnt have his faced torn off by being forced to buy something at a price higher than he wants to. clap hands, go home.
if ESMTE jumps ahead of Sid and puts out a 'sell 100 BT @ 105 pence' then Sids' not lost anything, Bobs' not lost anything. ESMTE is sat at the top of the ladder trying to sell within the market spread ( ie, at a potential loss to the market ).
open to education, as always.
cheers
D
Mmmm, not sure I entirely agree with your view here.
are they adding anything to the functionality of the markets ? well, yes, they're providing a fast moving liquidy function - they're not forcing anyone to buy/sell at a price they dont want to, centralised counterparty exchanges dont allow that. where they go wrong ( and I think someone goes down this route lower down ) is that they induce a false feedback loop which moves the general market in an 'un-natural' direction.
So, if little Jonny Trader has a lump of BT in the market that he wants to sell at a specific price and he gets lifted, he still gets that price regardless of whether it's his mate repaying a LIBOR fix deal or SuperMegaTradingEngine jumping in before anyone else can grab it - there are no fingers in the wallet. If SuperMegaTradingEngine then gets lifted for 5 bps lower by EvilSuperMegaTradingEngine and they end in a death spiral up/down in the ladder, Jonny Trader still gets his bonus, he's not been done out of anything.
For exactly the same reasons govenors get put onto engines, market mechanisms need to be put in place ( where missing ) to halt/degrade automated electronic execution to stem the feedback. Trouble is, then you'll get into hide'n'seek games of 'my robot isn't really a robot at all'.
One of the earlier responders suggested a pre transaction tax, which might/might not be affective in slowing down the floodgate traders - trouble is you'd have to implement it everywhere and, as we saw with the UK not wanting to join in with various US/EU legislative initiatives, that's pretty hard to achieve.
Personally, I'd say let them go at it for exchanged traded centrally cleared instruments. if some one causes a flash crash, they're barred for a period of time and get fined to the amount equivent to the sum of losses incurred. one or two of them occuring and acually being implemented would move the hft chaps away from the gap scalping activities and into longer tem mean reversion models.
more than happy to be educated tho if I've got any/all of the above wrong.
cheers
D
Short team, random walk can be beaten, i saw it happpening at a major swiss bank ( check out 'The Predictors',cracking booking, cracking bunch of people ) - statistical arbitrage, mean reversion, etc. I'm no rocket scientist and i managed to get within a day of their model's positional direction change using just price tick data and came up on the right side.
However, to steal the tagline of arch tinfoil wearers ZeroHedge, on a long enough timeline the survival rate for everyone drops to zero. Market irrationality will go against you, you'll introduce a bug, data will be corrupted, planes will fly into large immovable buildings, etc,etc
Have fun, play nice
D
Maybe a touch pedantic, but it's generally not banks doing this, it'll be hedge funds.
The 'too big to fail' banks are pretty much out of prop trading ( gambling their own money, and by own money i mean your money ) and are largely client facilitation services.
Hedgies, being privately funded, get what ever they can scrape together themselves. If they go down the shitter, we dont bail them out.
I think kinda more scary is the move from hft microcrashes to low touch automated trading on the fixed income instruments,which trade in million dollar sized lumps. Game one of those correctly and you could do some real damage to a large investment bank.
Standard disclaimers apply, 2nd std dev, etc
Cheers
I dont neeeeeed a smartphone, but my work want to be able to get ahold of me at stupid o'clock so I need a phone.
I dont neeeeeeed a tablet, but it saves taking a book on the train, and an audio device, and possibly a pager.
If I can get away with have one piece of non-essential hardware on me instead of two, three, more then I'm all in.
and just think of the environmental impact you'll be avoiding !!! ;-)
Have fun, play nice
D
Have a Galaxy Note - had all the Dom Joly jokes when I got that. Is obviously so shite and unloved that they've released a second one and pretty much all top end phones now are about that size.
Have just bought the Asus, and am going thru the same - as previously put, it's really surprising that this hasn't been done in a more mainstream manner before.
For me, using a set of headphones with a microphone appears to work ( despite the handbook saying that the audio jack is one way only, so could just be a really good pickup on the inbuilt mic ).
Am tempted with the 'break the bluetooth' idea, build it into a stylus maybe.
Am I bothered about looking a twat on the train ? Nah, I work for a bank, so any early morning/late evening calls make me look like a twat any way.
Have fun, play nice.
D
You know when you read the original site referenced and it says ...
"On the night of 28.10.11, I had my MacBook Pro, debit card and PIN robbed from me in Central London. "
then dont go on to say that the PIN was used to access anything, but point out that being mugged in a heavily policed area of your expensive laptop, debit card **AND PIN** is highly highly unlikely, let alone a really stupid couple of items to have all in the same place at the same time ?
No, you obvious dont
I'll give you the bene of maybe being at work - but I never said he'd had his PIN stolen, HE DID
"On the night of 28.10.11, I had my MacBook Pro, debit card and PIN robbed from me in Central London. "
so he's walking around with an expensive laptop, debit card and the PIN ? my arse
FAIL for not reading the OP.
"The value of such convictions is not in getting some sort of revenge against those traders, it is to discourage others from following in their footsteps."
mmmm, dunno about that, it only seems to discourage people until a new cycle of grads get to the required position to execute their "brand new scheme" to fleece someone. Drexel, Leeson, etc - still get insider trading, still have boiler rooms.
short term-ism and greed is the killer - if party a can screw party b for 1mm, get a bonus and be gone before the contracts up, party a's already got their pen out. Merrill and Melvin would be spinning.
Cheers
D
not so much the application of controverstial <sic> technology, more like Ug the Caveman didn't have 20,000 head feed lots back in the 'Good Ole Days'
big trailer of soon to be Maccies + RFID = easy off load at the Happy Hills Slaughter House
BToSTBM - RFID = counting them all out and countering them all back in again, tag number inspections of somewhat stressed animals weighing ton and a bit upwards
Now do as you're told and get tagging your kids.
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