Category: View from Crystal Bay

People who want to become quant investors or traders often ask for advice on how to start. I began my learning journey ten years ago and now I have some opinions on the matter. It is easy to put together a monster list of dozens of books but that kind of advice is counterproductive, more Read More

Lumber prices have soared in the last 12 months to levels never seen before. Lumber traded between $200 and $400 for 25 years, from 1990 to 2015. There was a brief spike to $600 in 2018, but the price quickly returned to $400. The last 18 months have been wild. As the pandemic kept people Read More

Not all futures contracts succeed in gaining trader adoption. Exchanges try to list many contracts. They then quietly delist those that languish in obscurity. Successful launches are rare. The creation of whole new categories of contracts is even rarer and happens about once per decade. The 1970s saw adoption of currency and interest rate futures Read More

The futures industry historically served large users: big farmers, grain traders, food processing companies, energy companies, etc. They were mostly commodity producers or buyers hedging their exposure; investors and speculators played a small role in the market. That started changing in the early 1970s with the launch of the International Monetary Market, a subsidiary of Read More

The coronavirus pandemic will leave its imprint on the world’s economy for a long time. One of its casualties is likely to be the remaining open outcry futures trading pits. Who can forget the dramatic hue and cry of trading pits? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obAoPP1bdIM) The loud shouting and frenetic hand signaling made for great entertainment. Alas, computers Read More