Futures (Cedar Falls, IA) articles from March 2004

Futures (Cedar Falls, IA) archives from March 2004

Move over beethoven?(Eurex US launched)(Editorial)
March 1, 2004... The other day someone asked me about a picture on my office wall. It is an aerial shot of the S&P 500 trading pit taken by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) in the late 1980s. The picture has hung in our office lobby or on my office wall...

An equalizing force.(Sound off!)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2004... In [Ron McEwan's article "A simplified approach to pairs trading," December 2003], [the author] describes a trade that shorts INTC at $25.02 and buys C at $43.45. In your experience, is it necessary to equalize the dollar value of both sides of...

Back to the future.(Sound off!)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2004... Is it the 1970's once again? Oil is rocking and rolling while the beans are blowing through resistance and gold bugs even have something to cheer about.... By the time this letter might get published, all this might change, of course, but...

For your eyes only?(Sound off!)
March 1, 2004... Either they aren't that good and you don't want anyone to find them, or I just don't know how to surf a Web site, but I can't find the additional [online] performance reports you allude to in ["Reversions of profit in stocks and bonds,"...

Eurex US is approved; Chicago operation launched.(On Hallowed Ground)
March 1, 2004... The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) and the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) long have authored key moments in the history of futures trading. On Feb. 8, the world's volume king of recent years, Eurex AG, which has written a few chapters of its...

P-Tech resolution falls short for some.(Pacific Stock Exchange Technology Index)
March 1, 2004... In January, the CFTC concluded its investigation into the Pacific Stock Exchange Technology Index options when it settled an enforcement action against Norman Eisler, former New York Futures Exchange (Nyfe) chairman and the man the CFTC found...

New price match scheme.(pricing model for options trade)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... The launch of the Boston Options Exchange (BOX) on Feb. 6 marks the introduction of a new system of pricing option trades that could become the industry standard. "There were multiple PIP auctions that occurred on the first day of trading...

Out of gas.(energy firms fined for frauds)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... The CFTC settled five more administrative orders charging energy firms with false reporting and attempted market manipulation. The $50 million in civil penalties brings the total of fines brought as a result of its investigation initiated in...

Merrill bags options biz.(Americas)(ABN Amro offered for purchase )(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... Merrill Lynch beat out at least two other bidders when expressing its interest to purchase the professional brokerage business unit ABN Amro offered for purchase a few months ago. ABN Amro signed an agreement on Jan. 13 to sell its professional...

Buck stuck in limbo.(dollar value fluctuations)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... February's wishy-washy statement from the G-7 meeting in Boca Raton, Fla., and subsequent statements from European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet (that ECB interest rates are fine) and Fed Chairman Greenspan (ditto, but in the...

Fimat, ICAP go for brokerage.(Fimat Group)(Industria Confezione Abbigliamento Perugia S.p.A.)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... Two of Europe's most influential market players have sharpened their focus on providing execution services to hedge funds and other derivatives dealers, heralding what promises to be an aggressive race for dominance and survival in the global...

CME goes down under.(Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. gets aussie governmental approval for Globex trade)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... The Australian government has approved the CME's intentions to provide direct access to Globex for Australian market participants. Before, traders had to access Globex through third-party connections that often were more expensive and...

Eurex US chooses CEO.(chief executive officer)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... There's much in store for Satish Nandapurkar, new CEO of Eurex US. He has to build a management team as well as serve as ambassador to customers, partners, vendors, futures commission merchants and regulators. "It's the challenges that...

MFA goal: standardized valuation.(Managed Funds Association)
March 1, 2004... The Managed Funds Association conference in Key Biscayne, Fla., hit on the theme of educating regulators about the industry, but it also took a look within--at ways managed funds can improve its standing with investors. "Issues of...

Spinning copper into gold.(Hot Commodities)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... Base metals more than any other sector except perhaps for currencies led to profits for money managers in 2003. Analysts are mixed on whether the gravy train will continue. While supply and demand fundamentals remain strong, sizeable...

'Managed' yen can't be kept down.(Hot Commodities)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... Considering the bull run in the yen, it is hard to believe that the Japanese Ministry of Finance (MoF) has been pulling out the stops to keep the currency low. The MoF, however, has come under sharp criticism from other G7 nations for not...

Beans squeezed by tight supplies.(Hot Commodities)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... The soybean supply situation in the United States is, to put it in one word, tight--perhaps the tightest in history. While the global supply situation is not nearly as tight (due to expected record large South American crops) it is the U.S....

S&P chugs along.(Commodities market news)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... S&P bears who interpreted the Federal Reserve Board's slight change in verbiage as indicating that interest rate increases could come sooner rather than later might be disappointed as the market took another lemon of an employment report and...

Correction.
March 1, 2004... Mike Cavanaugh's affiliation was incorrectly stated in the February issue. He is an index analyst for My Futures Online. Futures regrets the error.

Opportunities in dollar weakness.(Market Strategy)
March 1, 2004... It never seems to fail. After a prolonged and deliberate currency rate adjustment, major corporations announce reduced sales or profits due to adverse currency movements. Just one recent example: Siemens AG, Germany's largest electronics...

Rallied out or ready to roll again? Bull market or bear market rally, stocks will have a hard time matching the strong 2003 pace and may drift sideways. But it is an election year, so policies favor the upside, and China's a growing factor.(Markets)
March 1, 2004... If the job of a market is to confuse traders and keep as many as possible from participating in a price move, then the stock market has done a pretty good job in the last year. A year ago, heading into the attack on Iraq, uncertainty was...

Principles to trade by.(Forex Trader)
March 1, 2004... Almost every field has its principles that provide a foundation for performance and prediction. One of the most famous is Isaac Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy), commonly...

Sizing up the stock market with ETFs; compartmentalizing the U.S. stock market into small-, mid- and large-cap sectors and using exchange-traded funds and their options gives traders a number of advantages.(exchange-traded funds)
March 1, 2004... The Standard & Poor's 100 stock index is a familiar index to old-timers in the options trading world. In 1983, it became the first index to have listed options linked to its performance, and from that point forward, the well-known OEX symbol...

Chopping out profits in Level 2 data: when you get below the surface into Level 2 and find the 'ax,' you may be able to pick up some 'crumbs' the big players leave behind if you watch bid and ask prices carefully.(Equity Trading Techniques)
March 1, 2004... Trading is both a mind game and an arms race. Although the patient investor can take a long-term view and drop by his portfolio periodically to see how it is performing, an active trader hangs on every twitch of data, be it news or price...

How the Fed moves the futures; the Federal Reserve is likely to raise short-term interest rates sometime this year. Here's how to use interest rate futures to calculate when and how much the market expects the Fed to change rates and the probability for doing so.(Trading Techniques)
March 1, 2004... Federal funds futures have evolved into one of the most important and reliable gauges of the bond market's expectations about future rate changes by the Federal Reserve. Indeed, over the last few years, in the week prior to the meeting of the...

It's not the economy, stupid: when you make short-term trading decisions based on long-term economic data, you may find yourself staring blindly into the lights of the proverbial market train. Here's why you should be wary.(Trading Techniques)
March 1, 2004... Every trader has a choice whether to be logical or successful. Foolishly, many choose the former course of action and seek guidance for longer-term strategies in economic data. After all, what could be more logical than the chain of causality...

Following the path to trading profits; the path prices take may be more important to a trader than the extent of a move. A Path Classification Number that classifies these patterns provides insights that may be especially useful for system traders.(Trading Techniques)
March 1, 2004... What determines a poor trading day for many short-term futures and options traders is not so much the overall daily move but the path taken by the market to achieve that move. You probably know the colorful and expressive descriptive...

Trade Navigator 2.0 Platinum.(Software Review)(Product/Service Evaluation)
March 1, 2004... Trade Navigator 2.0 Platinum Genesis Financial Technologies Inc. 425 Woodmen Rd. Colorado Springs, Colo. 80919 (719) 260-8145 www.genesisft.com OVERALL RATING: Excellent LEVEL: Intermediate to Advanced ...

How Technical Analysis Works.(Book Review)
March 1, 2004... How Technical Analysis Works By Bruce M. Kamich New York Institute of Finance New York (2002) 284 pages, $30 The book's author is a chartered market technician, journalist and educator who has taught technical analysis at...

How to Trade the New Single Stock Futures.(Book Review)
March 1, 2004... How to Trade the New Single Stock Futures By Jake Bernstein Dearborn Trade Publishing Chicago (2003) 216 pages, $40 Jake Bernstein, a prolific author (more than 35 books) with more than 30 years of experience as a trader,...

Channel surfing for profits; price channels help define the trading range of the market and if you can be flexible in re-thinking their parameters when the trend has changed, channels can reveal a plethora of opportunity.(Futures 101)
March 1, 2004... Envelopes, moving averages, bands and channels can seem to the beginner just different ways to do the same thing, or at least closely related. The truth is, they basically are the same--two or more lines that define levels where once price...

Trading arcades: do you got game?(Online Trading)
March 1, 2004... Electronic trading hasn't completely replaced the floors but some contend it's just a matter of time before that happens. One development facilitating that demise, they say, is the development of trading arcades--independent offices where...

Top trader all stars of 2003: dollar weakness was the theme for 2003 and it not only led to profitable currency trades but also aided the resurgent commodities markets, adding steam to trends across several sectors. Despite many strong trends, the key to success in 2003 was risk management, skills in the face of several sharp reversals.(Managed Money)(Cover Story)
March 1, 2004... Last year proved that commodity trading advisors don't need a bear equity market to have a strong year. The domestic economic and global uncertainties that helped make 2002 such a good year for CTAs continued in 2003, but the existence of...

Euro sector indexes still a work in progress: the Eurostoxx 50 has displaced Germany's DAX as the euro zone's equities benchmark two years after the euro nudged individual countries' currencies out of cash registers and into collectors' albums. But the individual country stock indexes have not gone the way of their respective currencies. Here's a look at the factors that could change that, and how to profit from them.(Deutscher Aktien Index (German stock index) )
March 1, 2004... When we last examined European sector futures, in August 2002, three of Europe's largest exchanges--the pan-European Euronext, Germany's Eurex and Spain's Meff--had launched products based on sectors, and the prognosis was good. "It makes...

Dateline.(securities)(Calendar)
March 1, 2004... CONTRACT DATES 1 FND: BM&F Alcohol F, Conillon coffee F, Nybot FCOJ F, Sugar #11 F. LND: Nybot Sugar #11 F. LTD: BM&F Alcohol OF. 2 FND: BM&F Arabica coffee F. 5 LTD: CME Australian dollar OF, Butter OF, Canadian dollar OF, CME $...

Salem Abraham: back on top.(Trader Profile)
March 1, 2004... A Futures Top Trader alum (1994). Salem Abraham attributes his 74.65% performance in 2003 to his program's heavy exposure (62%) to physical commodities. It is a commitment that Abraham has had since he began trading in 1988 and has continued to...