Futures (Cedar Falls, IA) articles from April 2006

Futures (Cedar Falls, IA) archives from April 2006

Globe trotting.(coverage of international market)(Editorial)
April 1, 2006... Recently, during an internal magazine planning meeting, someone brought up the idea of a separate section of "international market stories." I nixed it right away, noting that long ago we did have a special feature focused on "international"...

The truth about psychology.(Sound Off!)
April 1, 2006... I really enjoyed the "Forget the psychobabble--it's the system," March 2006. It really resonated with me having experienced some trader psychology based workshops as a paying customer. The business of trader psychology has gone astray in a...

Statue mystery solved.(Sound Off!)(Letter to the editor)
April 1, 2006... "Tops and bottoms," February 2006, mentions the mystery of two statues missing from the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) building, which were found at the former estate of CBOT trader Arthur Cutten. There is no mystery for anyone well-read in...

Where's my money? FXCM and Refco FX not a done deal.(Foreign Capital Markets LLC and Refco FX Associates LLC)(Brief article)
April 1, 2006... Customers with trading accounts at Refco FX Associates LLC still don't have their money back and the Feb. 16 auction of the nonregulated foreign exchange unit, which has filed for Chapter 11 reorganization, has been cancelled by Refco because...

Friendly partnerships: CBOE makes move.(Trendlines)
April 1, 2006... The Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) has taken what CBOE chairman Bill Brodsky called a substantial stake in Hedgestreet Inc., a privately held electronic U.S. exchange, but Brodsky would not reveal just how much. The deal marks the latest...

New day for old exchange: NYSE day for a merger.(Trendlines)
April 1, 2006... The merger between Archipelago Holdings Inc. and the New York Stock Exchange Inc. (NYSE) has been completed and stock in the the resulting company, the NYSE Group Inc., is now listed on the Big Board as NYX. The stock price of the merged...

Chartview: top 50 brokers.(Trendlines)
April 1, 2006... Our December Top 50 Brokers chart ranked futures commission merchants based on customer equity through Sept. 30. It did not include shifts in customer equity as a result of the Refco bankruptcy. We posted subsequent charts on our Web site. Here...

Does survivorship bias cut both ways?(Managed Money Review)
April 1, 2006... One of the major criticisms of the hedge fund industry is that the performance of hedge funds are overstated because many of the databases that report hedge fund performance fail to account for survivorship bias. Survivorship bias is a result...

Wills-Zapata moves to Campbell.(appointment of Tracy Wills-Zapata)(Brief article)
April 1, 2006... Tracy Wills-Zapata is now managing director of global institutional sales at Campbell & Co. Previously, Wills-Zapata was managing director of Deutsche Bank Absolute Returns Strategies, part of the DB global equities division. She was...

Chicago Board Options Exchange.(Trading Places)
April 1, 2006... Lita Frazier has joined the Chicago Board Options Exchange as the director of Congressional relations and will represent the exchange in Washington, D.C. Previously, Frazier headed the Washington office of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange where...

OptionsXpress Holdings Inc.(Trading Places)
April 1, 2006... Jay A. Risley has joined OptionsXpress Holdings Inc. as executive VP of clearing. Formerly he was VP of operations at Howe Barnes Investments Inc.

Castellan Capital Ltd.(Trading Places)
April 1, 2006... Suresh Hiremath is the new director of Castellan Capital Ltd.; former director Christopher L. Cruden has left the company and will focus on Insch Capital Management AG, a company he formed a year ago.

New York Mercantile Exchange Inc.(Trading Places)
April 1, 2006... Kenneth Shifrin has been promoted to senior VP of the New York Mercantile Exchange Inc. (Nymex) Previously, Shifrin was VP of finance at Electronic Broking Systems.

Liquid Capital.(Trading Places)
April 1, 2006... Max Butti is the new strategic development director at Liquid Capital.

Crude reversal?(Hot Commodities)
April 1, 2006... Crude oil prices have been sliding lower but not as much as the fundamentals would indicate. Supplies jumped 6.8 million barrels in the first week of March and are now above 335 million barrels, their highest levels since May 1999. Despite the...

Rising rates ruffle Russell.(securities trading)(Brief article)
April 1, 2006... After a strong five-month rally the E-mini Russell 2000 has been showing signs of weakness. Hector Galvan, senior market strategist at RJO Futures says if support is broken at 710, the Russell could easily go lower. "We've been choppy; we are...

Silver surfing to new highs.(Hot Commodities)
April 1, 2006... Dominic R. Boyle, senior market strategist at RJO Futures, says in strong bull markets metals typically overextend, but through the fall months silver traded sideways and only started to catch up with other commodities in December, climbing...

The Bernanke era--the beat goes on.(Ben Bernanke is the new successor to Alan Greenspan at the Federal Open Market Committee)
April 1, 2006... We couldn't have asked for a smoother transition to new leadership at the Federal Reserve. Within 20 minutes after Alan Greenspan ended his 18-1/2 year tenure by leading the Fed's policymaking Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) in a...

Interest rates and economy key to dollar's fate; Analysts see a stable atmosphere for the dollar early in 2006, but interest rate hikes will benefit dollar bears by year-end. To figure out this year's greenback moves, study these factors: interest rate changes in Japan and Europe, economic data, the new Fed chairman, a stagnating housing market and a possible Chinese revaluation.(MARKETS)(Industry overview)(Cover story)
April 1, 2006... Interest rates and economic data have been two main drivers for the dollar in recent years and the same appears to be holding true for 2006. Fourteen consecutive interest rate increases since June 2004 lead the dollar to rally about 14% versus...

Tech talk: inverted curves and the dollar.
April 1, 2006... Now that the U.S. yield curve has further deepened in negative territory, what are the implications for the dollar, if any? Throughout the past 30 years, the U.S. yield curve has almost always occurred during periods of rising interest rates....

Crude back to a two-way market.(Market Strategy)
April 1, 2006... After an impressive four year rally the crude oil market started off 2006 unable to break through record prices posted during the devastating hurricane season of 2005. With resistance at $70 a barrel the market is hard pressed for reasons to...

Balancing fears.(Forex Trader)
April 1, 2006... One of the enduring characteristics of the forex market is that it is embedded within the global economy. The exchange of one currency for another reflects at the same time economic transactions between nations, companies and individuals. With...

Trading with fair value: by studying the relationship between the near-month equity futures contract and the market in cash equities, quick-draw traders can uncover some profitable setups.(EQUITY TRADING TECHNIQUES)
April 1, 2006... Terms such as "premium," "discount," "fair value" and "the cash spread" are often used in the markets. Most often they refer to the relationship between the cash equities market and their relevant near-month equity futures contract. Most...

Performance expectancy: crystal ball for success; The ability to forecast near-term performance of a trading system is a useful and acquirable skill for all traders. The process is called performance expectancy, and the value of being able to read the trading record is in predicting when a winning rally in equity is about to fade.
April 1, 2006... Traders trade price and keep score by the bottom line. Account equity is their measure of success. Still, there is much more to be learned from the equity curve. As the well known trader Larry Williams has opined, "Traders have two tasks: first...

Riding the Eurodollar price wave: a significant pattern has emerged in the Eurodollar market. While it's unclear if this formation will persist throughout 2006, the rarity of it demands that traders give it some serious attention.(TRADING TECHNIQUES)
April 1, 2006... Eurodollar futures prices are listed for 40 quarterly contracts. The largest trading volume exists for the first two dozen futures contracts, after which both volume and open interest diminish significantly for the remaining 16. Despite...

Best practices for statistical trading: when applied properly, statistical analysis can offer some powerful insights to market moves. When applied carelessly, it can waste a lot of your time. Here is how you can analyze readily available fundamental reports to assess the pricing prospects of the soybean market.(TRADING TECHNIQUES)
April 1, 2006... Valid statistical analysis requires considerable care at every stage of the process. You can't take shortcuts and you can't make assumptions. Thankfully, you can reasonably achieve this. Our goal is to develop a standard model to forecast...

Neural networks: where are they now? Yes, Virginia, neural networks are still useful trading tools, but they must be applied correctly. In this first of three parts, we will discuss some of the critical issues facing neural network analysts today.(TECHNOLOGY & TRADING)
April 1, 2006... Neural networks have been a hot topic for traders for more than a dozen years. Indeed, this author has written many articles about neural networks and how they can be used in trading strategies. The subject received a lot of attention...

Forex hype and the harsh light of reality: the retail foreign exchange market has been growing rapidly and to some extent unsupervised. Here's a quick look at the issues driving growth and steps you can take to protect yourself from platform providers who overpromise and underdeliver.(FUTURES 101)
April 1, 2006... The foreign exchange, or forex, market is gigantic and continues to grow. It offers electronic access to a decentralized $1.9 trillion per day market with 24-hour per day liquidity, six-days per week. Combine that kind of liquidity and ease of...

Keeping watch on FX data.(Online Trading)
April 1, 2006... Market data message rates are increasing an average of 120% a year and show no signs of abating. Internet access opened the door for more retail trader participation in the markets and all markets are being affected as traders look for new...

Hedge funds: structure vs. strategy; How can something that has become a household word still be a mystery to most people? If you know the definition of a hedge fund, you know more than most.(MANAGED MONEY)
April 1, 2006... There is perhaps no term as misunderstood in the financial world as "hedge fund," which is usually accompanied by some boiler plate definition referring to loose regulation, high risk and secrecy. In reality many hedge fund strategies are less...

A consolidating world: derivatives trading continues to set records globally and the need for greater efficiency may turn consolidation into a global sport creating bigger, better and more efficient markets for customers.(TRADE TRENDS)
April 1, 2006... Record trading volume and the move towards for-profit status continue to dominate the trading landscape. Trends continuing into 2006 include one-stop-shop exchanges, global consolidation and the morphing of exchange and OTC markets. The...

The many faces of Asia: China and India have captured the global investor's imagination, but for futures traders, the current focus is on smaller, hungrier and increasingly more open Asian markets off the mainland and down under.(SPECIAL REPORT: ASIAN MARKETS)(Report)(Market overview)
April 1, 2006... Foo-shiung Ho used to be in charge of getting Asians to trade on the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT). Now, as head of the Taiwan Futures Exchange (Taifex), he's one of a dozen or so Asian exchange bosses trying to bring American trading volume to...

Contract dates.(Dateline)(Calendar)
April 1, 2006... 3 LTD: BM & F Alcohol OF, CME Mar Weather F,OF, Euronext-Liffe May White sugar OF. [TABLE OMITTED] 7 LTD: CME CME $ Index OF, Currencies OF. Rand OF, Pound OF, Euro OF, Live cattle OF, Mexican Peso OF, Nybot Currencies OF, Dollar index...

Events coming up.(Calendar)
April 1, 2006... Call the numbers listed for more information. For other seminars, see the classifieds on pages 85-89. Foreign Exchange & Commodity Summit. APRIL 2-4. Marriott Beach & Gold Resort. Hilton Head, S.C. www.opalgroup.net. (212) 532-9898. ...

Haar leverages lifetime in markets.(Haar Capital Management's Stanley Haar)
April 1, 2006... It took Stanley Haar, president of Haar Capital Management, only two years to receive his undergraduate degree from American University in Brazil. He was awarded a National Science Foundation Fellowship and remained in Brazil as a Fulbright...