The coronavirus pandemic finished off floor trading at venerable institutions like the CME, CBOE, and the LME. I wrote about this topic recently. There was another venue that quietly shut down last year. OneChicago, the US platform for trading single stock futures, closed its doors on September 18, 2020. Single stock futures are a wonderful Read More
From the Trading Desk: Commodities’ Inflationary Outlook
Uncertainty and fear of higher-than-expected inflation have been on investors’ minds for the past few weeks. Last week it was announced that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose more than 5% year over year, amounting to its biggest increase since 2008. Stocks in the U.S. did not respond in line with CPI figures however, considering Read More
View From Crystal Bay: Too Late or Just in Time
After a heady nine months in the commodities space, investors are starting to ask whether the boom is over. Have we missed it? Is there still time to jump on the bandwagon? Fear not, we haven’t even started yet. A quick look at the chart of the Bloomberg Commodity Index puts the recent past into Read More
Recommended Reading for Aspiring Traders
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
Beware the Noise
Behavioral economics has taken on greater importance by investors in recent years but has been an edge exploited by systematic investors for decades. The founders of behavioral economic theory, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, identified biases we all possess as part of the human condition. We are often asked for examples of such biases. One Read More