Futures (Cedar Falls, IA) articles from November 2003

Futures (Cedar Falls, IA) archives from November 2003

Is hell frozen yet?(Chicago Board of Trade regulations)(Editorial)
November 1, 2003... In Chicago, our version of the saying "Nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes," is "Hell will freeze over when the Cubs go to the World Series and the Chicago exchanges merge." Well, folks, the temperature is dropping. I...

Book review blues.(Dynamic Trading Indicators: Winning with Value Charts and Price Action Profile)
November 1, 2003... When you write a book presenting technical trading concepts, you expose yourself to both positive and negative reviews. In the September 2003 Futures, our book Dynamic Trading Indicators: Winning with Value Charts and Price Action Profile was...

Correction.(Correction Notice)
November 1, 2003... CORRECTION: October's Trade Trends reported the incorrect first name for Patsystems' CEO Kevin Ashby. Futures regrets the error.

Eurex US makes it official.(On American Soil)
November 1, 2003... The Sept. 16 announcement in Chicago that Swiss/German derivatives exchange Eurex would be entering the U.S. market through a new exchange--Eurex US--was no surprise as the groundwork had been laid well in advance. But the announcement provided...

Energy crackdown hits industry behemoth.(CFTC Unplugs AEP)(Commodity Futures Trading Commission)(American Electric Power Company Ltd.)
November 1, 2003... The CFTC has not made it an easy year for energy marketers. In October, the CFTC sued American Electric Power Co. Inc. and its subsidiary, AEP Energy Services Inc., making it the largest energy lawsuit since the CFTC began cracking down on...

ISE challenges index exclusivity.(War Of The Options)(International Securities Exchange)
November 1, 2003... The International Securities Exchange (ISE) is trying to break down the final competitive barrier to becoming the number one options exchange. In its short existence, the all-electronic exchange has managed to capture the lead it; overall...

'Chicago' politics could force Eurex's hand.(Chicago Board Of Trade)(Clearing Corp.)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2003... At press time, clearing members of the Clearing Corp. (CC) had not voted on whether to approve the restructuring plan that is part of the CC's agreement with Eurex. If a majority of the 87 clearing members reject restructuring, there is a...

Forex cleanup continues.(Foreign exchange)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2003... The NFA wasn't joking when it said it would toughen up on forex regulation and it continues to work with the CFTC in keeping firms in-check. On Oct. 6, the CFTC filed an injunction asset freeze against the Newport Beach, Calif., forex FCM...

Merc branches out.(E-Trade Professional Trading)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2003... E-Trade Professional Trading has added foreign exchange futures trading capabilities on its Lightspeed equities trading platform through the CME. The company now offers trading in eight futures contracts. "Electronic futures trading is...

My floor is your floor.(Americas)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2003... After re-surfacing from the blackout that affected the Northeast this past August, Amex has allied with the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) with intentions of creating formal arrangements for backup off-site trading facilities in case of...

Life imitating art? Not here.(Europe)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2003... For a good while last year, the live version of the hit musical "Chicago" was packing them into London's Adelphi Theatre at the same time as film houses were reeling them into the film (read "electronic version"). Unfortunately, the nearby...

Educational outreach.(University of China)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2003... The CME, the University of Illinois at Chicago (U1C) and Renmin University of China (RUC) will cosponsor a new Masters of Business Administration degree program with a focus on financial risk management and investments for Chinese students....

Forex regulation redefined.(Trading Places)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2003... Michael Piracci is keeping up with forex, heading the National Futures Association's (NFA) New York office as associate director. Piracci says there is a large concentration of forex firms in New York, and forex is something he's familiar...

Euronext.Liffe.(Trading Places)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2003... Euronext.Liffe has named Andre Villeneuve its new non-executive chairman. He previously was executive chairman of Instinet.

Nachamah Jacobovits, SVP at Nymex and Joe O'Neill, senior executive VP at Nybot will be 2003 Honorees at the Field of Dreams Gala.(Trading Places)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2003... Nachamah Jacobovits, SVP at Nymex and Joe O'Neill, senior executive VP at Nybot will be 2003 Honorees at the Field of Dreams Gala, a charity auction benefiting Alzheimer's disease, taking place in New York on Nov. 19.

SEC calls for hedge fund registration.(Managed Money Review)(Securities and Exchange Commission)
November 1, 2003... After months of speculation, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has released a report based on a yearlong fact-finding investigation into hedge funds. To the surprise of no one, it recommended hedge fund advisors be SEC-registered....

December is the crudest month.(Hot Commodities)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2003... Since the buy-the-rumor-sell-the-news drop in crude oil following the start of the Iraqi war, prices climbed higher until a September break. That sell-off may have scared exporters into taking action. With production cuts from the...

Live cattle gone mad!(Hot Commodities)(mad cow disease influence on cattle prices)
November 1, 2003... The Oct. 6 discovery of mad cow disease in a 23-month old Japanese bull has led to a series of limit up moves to live cattle, pushing futures through their all-time highs. Cattle prices began to consolidate in the $82-$85 per hundred lb....

The return of the bull?(Hot Commodities; securities market)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2003... Apparently, by the last couple weeks of the month, traders remembered September is supposed to be bearish and sold accordingly, sending futures on the Dow into a 400-point tailspin. End of quarter weakness apparently led to earning season...

Time to fade dollar bears--again.(Market Strategy)
November 1, 2003... The last time that the dollar hears seemed to have such a clear upper hand was back in early 2000. The dollar had just bottomed vs. the yen at the time after touching 101.27. Folks were saying we had confirmed a head and shoulders pattern and...

The Fed faces a new kind of recovery.(Market Watch)(Federal Reserve)
November 1, 2003... Jobs, jobs, jobs. That old political slogan has become the common refrain of Federal Reserve officials who are anxious to avoid a petering out of the economic recovery that would leave them treacherously closer to the deflation precipice. ...

Grains, soybeans: opposing forces: U.S. soybean production suffered in the August heat while demand has remained strong, meaning another year of price rationing. But watch out for South America. Grains, meanwhile, aren't giving bulls much inspiration.(Markets)
November 1, 2003... What looked like a banner year for U.S. crop production in mid-summer turned into not exactly a bust but well below the optimistic expectations for the first soybean crop of more than 3 billion bushels. Perhaps nothing summarizes the 2003...

The million-dollar folly in forex.(Forex Trader; foreign exchange)
November 1, 2003... On Sunday evening Sept. 21. there was a major rout of the U.S. dollar. Starting in Asia, the USD/JPY collapsed mad selling followed across the board. What happened on Sept. 21 is a clear example of forex's million-dollar folly: ignoring...

Pair trading with implied volatility: traders can track deviations in the relationship between implied volatilities associated with the options of strongly correlated stocks. When the deviation becomes significant, options of the two stocks can be traded against each other.(Equity Trading Techniques)
November 1, 2003... Pair trading is a neutral trading strategy, requiring the buying and the selling of two related stocks. It offers traders two important advantages: (1) profit regardless of the direction of the stock and (2) lower risk by avoiding a positional...

No time to trade? Try selling options: by combining technical analysis and an idea about price direction with selling options you can establish profitable positions that don't require a lot of your time. Here are some strategies to consider.(Trading Techniques)(Column)
November 1, 2003... Ironically, it seems many people who love the futures markets and have the risk capital actually lack the time to trade. These include salespeople, teachers, doctors. They came from every walk of life, but what they all have in common are...

Tracking the forces behind volume patterns: U.S. soybean traders are used to seeing the most activity in nearby contracts, but the trading patterns in Japan and China are quite different. Here's a lesson on how regulations and participants affect liquidity.(Trading Techniques)
November 1, 2003... Soybeans are an important agricultural market around the world, but liquidity patterns in soybean futures markets are much different in the three largest soybean markets in the world. The most active trading periods occur at different stages of...

Precious and few: precious metals are unique in that some of them are used in industrial applications, frequently disjoin from historical relationships and often provide clues to the condition of the overall economy.(Trading Techniques)
November 1, 2003... It's like trying to find gold in a silver mine It's like trying to drink whisky from a bottle of wine --Elton John & Bernie Taupin Certain metals are associated with each other indelibly in the popular imagination and in the spread...

The state of system trading: want to make a million dollars with a commodity trading system? Boy, do we have some software for you! Just realize that it doesn't come shrink-wrapped with those stacks of Ben Franklins, and that the biggest variable in the trading success equation--good old hard work--must come from elsewhere.(Technology & Trading)
November 1, 2003... System trading is generally this: Using the past to forecast the future in a repetitive, or repetitively adaptive, way. For many who attempt trading, it is their &earn to program a trading system that continuously and automatically analyzes the...

Exchange-offered online education.(Online Trading)
November 1, 2003... We are in the age of technology where it is pertinent to pick up Internet jargon, and if you're really into trading, then you also need to keep up with all the latest products. Exchanges encourage all traders to visit their Web sites where many...

The roles of regulators: U.S. industry regulators spend their days keeping an eye on the market, enforcing rules, punishing rule-breakers, keeping you, the trader, informed with online educational tools and services, and giving you a voice. Are you aware of how to take advantage of all of this?(Futures 101)
November 1, 2003... It's well-know that there are several risks in trading commodities. As a trader, you have enough to worry about without having to be concerned with some shady seam artist or unregistered bucket shop running off with your money before you can...

CFTC delivers: CFTC Chairman James Newsome promised futures market intermediaries that they would receive the same kind of common sense reforms that exchanges saw as part of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. Here's how they work.(Managed Money)(Commodity Futures Trading Commission)
November 1, 2003... More than a year ago. alternative investment managers and futures industry representatives gathered in Washington to present their wish list to regulators at the roundtable on commodity pool operator and commodity trading advisor issues. The...

2003 public funds returns.(Funds Review)
November 1, 2003... 2003 public funds returns (through September) Name of fund Trading advisor(s) U.S. Closed Alternative Asset Growth LP Multiple managers Dean Witter Cornerstone Fund II Northfield Trading; J.W....

Groomed for success: the Chicago Merc has experienced a series of recent successes that would have seemed improbable a few years ago when they searched for a leader to steer them through demutualization and challenges from more agile fully electronic competitors. With a future that looks brighter--though challenges are ever present--the CME will carry on with a new man at the top.(Futures Interview)(Jim McNulty)(Interview)
November 1, 2003... While the announcement that Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) President and CEO Jim McNulty, the man the exchange brought in to take it public, would step down at the end of the year was a shock to some, the move was not a surprise to those...

Solving the common clearing puzzle: the winds of change are blowing. Common clearing arrangements once thought improbable if not impossible are happening. The FCM, exchange and clearing communities are busy preparing far this New World order that promises greater efficiencies for all involved.(Trade Trends)
November 1, 2003... Traders--and, to a greater extent, trading institutions--have been hungering for more efficient use of margin since well before the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) introduced Span margining in 1988, but the desire to cross-margin among...

Building Winning Trading Strategies with TradeStation.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... By George Pruitt and John R. Hill John Wiley & Sons Inc. Hoboken, N.J. (2003) 389 pages, $79.95 The authors focus their efforts on using TradeStation 6.0 effectively to analyze strategies for trading stocks, options and futures. Although...

The Encyclopedia of Technical Market Indicators (second edition).(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... By Robert W. Colby McGraw-Hill New York (2003) 820 pages, $70 Robert Colby and Thomas Meyers co-authored the first edition of this well-received research and reference book in 1988. This expanded, all-new, completely revised second edition,...

Dateline.
November 1, 2003... CONTRACT DATES 3 FND: BM&F Conillon coffee F, Sugar F, Alcohol F, Dec Cotton F, Nybot FCOJ F, Nymex Platinum F, Palladium F. LTD: BM&F Alcohol OF, CME Oct Weather F, Euronext-Liffe White sugar OF. 5 LTD: Euronext-P Corn F. 6 LTD:...

Mark van Stolk: trading the pain threshold.(Trader Profile)
November 1, 2003... While Mark van Stolk's family history in commodities and futures dates back to 1847 with the founding of Gebroeders van Stolk, a grain trading company in the Netherlands, he says he never really had a desire to make a living at trading futures....