Audio Length: 01:47:49 Adam Grimes has been a trader for more than 20-years, he’s traded all major asset classes, across various timeframes. He’s traded independently, with a prop firm, and he’s run other trading businesses also. The main focus of this episode is to explore some of the things which discretionary traders can adapt from quantitative traders, and vice versa—meaning, what things can quants take from those who rely on discretion. Then in the later part of this episode, Adam lays out a solid framework which can help struggling traders to move forward. As well as, the types of questions you should ask when you don’t know w...
This post on CD displayed two maps showing each US state’s largest country trading partner for exports and imports in 2016. In response to a comment on those state maps, the table below shows something that is potentially very interesting: the degree (importance) of international trade for each US state in 2015. The table shows GDP for each US state (data here), the total trade volume (exports + imports, data here),and the volume of international trade activities as a share of each state’s GDP in 2015, ranked from highest to lowest. Ignoring the District of Columbia, the average trade share for US states in 2015 was 17.7%, and rang...
Since “Surprise 16” when Donald Trump won the presidential election, he has made it clear that if he has his way, he will enact inflationary policies. These include increasing defense spending and infrastructure spending, while at the same time reducing government revenue via decreased income and corporate tax rates. To achieve this objective, money must be created, which could be referred to as “helicopter money.” This is a more direct way of increasing the money supply, using fiscal policy as opposed to monetary policy. Over the last 7-8 years, inflation has been quite substantial, yet by the public’s awareness of inflation, it ha...
First, the dollar dropped following comments from commerce secretary Wilbur Ross, who said that he expected to start renegotiating NAFTA within two weeks and that Japan will be high on the list for trade agreements. Now, in a second salvo against the strong dollar on the same day, Bloomberg reports that during his first appearance at next week’s G-20 meeting in Baden-Baden, Germany, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin plans to drive home the message that the U.S. won’t tolerate countries that engage in currency devaluation to gain an edge in trade, a statement which would clearly refute Mnuchin’s recent praise for a stronger dol...
Written by Brad McMillan, Commonwealth Financial Network Will the stock market rally continue? That’s a big question right now, and the answer will depend on two things: Whether the fundamentals (i.e., corporate earnings) continue to improve Whether investor confidence continues to rise, driving valuations higher The signs on the latter look good. So today, we’ll take a last look at earnings for the fourth quarter of 2016, to see what the results can tell us about the future. How did we do? About six weeks ago, I wrote about how I expected the earnings season to evolve. At the time, only 6 percent of companies had reported, and earning...
Shares of Ionis Pharmaceuticals (IONS) are slipping after Goldman Sachs analyst Salveen Richter downgraded the stock to Sell, saying the company’s antisense platform has yet to be fully optimized given the low rate of clinical success and ongoing toxicity across multiple drugs. GOLDMAN SAYS SELL: In a research note this morning, Goldman Sachs’ Richter downgraded Ionis to Sell from Neutral and lowered his price target on the shares to $25 from $28. The analyst told investors that while the company is an early pioneer of antisense RNA therapies and the technology has the potential to address “undruggable” targets in broa...
Today’s bland payroll report did little to suggest much of anything. All the various details were left pretty much where they were last month, and all the prior trends still standing. The headline Establishment Survey figure of 235k managed to bring the 6-month average up to 194k, almost exactly where it was in December but quite a bit less than November. In other words, despite what is mainly written as continued “strength” is still pointing down in all the key places. Employment is usually a lagging indication, coincident at best, so continued weakness isn’t necessarily surprising given that we have no idea how much of a delay there...
Chief Investment Strategist Erik Ristuben is joined by Sophie Antal-Gilbert, program director, advisor insights, as they take on the topic of the potential March rate increase by the Fed. They also discuss the latest comments from Mario Draghi and the European Central Bank and this week’s surprising drop in oil prices. Video Length: 00:07:14 ...
Many individual investors have been frustrated by the growing prominence of High Frequency Trading. Complicated algorithms can process new information and react in fractions of a second. It sounds intimidating, and in some sense, it is. Individual Investors would be poorly suited for direct competition. Instead, stick to what the market is giving you. The connections made by these programs are often spurious – totally unrelated to the fundamentals of a given business. This is intentional. After all, they’re after a quick buck rather than a long-term investment. For that reason, a stock being walloped for frivolous story in the 24-hour ne...
The MITI V is the latest acronym to emerge from the wordsmiths at Deloitte’s. Malaysia, India, Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam. All these countries have a competitive advantage over China in the manufacture of labour intensive commodity type products like apparel, toys, textiles and basic consumer electronics. According to Deloitte’s 2016 Global Manufacturing Competitiveness Index they are either among, or destined to join, the top 15 most competitive countries in the world for manufacturing, by the end of the decade. Here is the Deliotte 2016 ranking:- Source: Deliotte The difficulty with grouping disparate countries together is that the...