This chart shows the relative change in market capitalizations of four of the largest publicly trading tech companies. It was published on Daring Fireball back in March.
Click here to see an updated version of this chart.
The unrelenting strength of Amazon provides stark contrast to the relative weakness of Microsoft.
Perhaps more surprising, though, is the recent performance of Netflix and Yahoo.
Last year it was AOL.
What happens in a half-second of high frequency trading activity? The answer is a lot more than you'd guess or notice.
This video illustrates an actual half-second of trading in in Johnson & Johnson stock, slowed down so it takes five minutes to watch. Don't worry, you don't have to watch more than a few (slowed down) seconds to get the point. The size and scope of what is happening changes the game and the playing field.
via Nanex.
The question isn't whether high frequency trading is about efficient allocation of capital or attempts at short-term market manipulation … it is what you decide to do after you know it is happening and becoming the norm (rather than simply an understood but infrequent risk).
Don't believe everything you think!
Here are some of the posts that caught my eye. Hope you find something interesting.
Things are changing here in the United States. Whites’ deaths outnumbered births for first time.
Here are some of the posts that caught my eye. Hope you find something interesting.
A lot of smart traders are putting greater emphasis and focus on Asia.
More Than Half Of The World's Population Lives Inside This Circle.
Take a look at this simple, but eye-opening, take on global population distribution.
There are more Muslims in the circle than outside of it. There are more Hindus in the circle than outside of it. There are more Buddhists in the circle than outside of it. Moreover, the circle pulls all of this off while being mostly water and including the most sparsely populated country on earth (Mongolia).
via valeriepieris on Reddit
OK, the 'circle' in this image is not
actually a circle (it is a Winkel Tripel
projection, to be precise), but that's besides the point.
By 2050, the U.N. predicts that 3.3 billion people will live just in Asia’s cities.
Clearly, a lot of people in the circle … Yet, the chart below highlights why traders expect and believe that more smart money will move there.
by Aberdeen.
A Father's Day Gift Idea: When words aren't enough … Say it with bacon.
Here are some of the posts that caught my eye. Hope you find something interesting.
Europe's job market is a historic disaster.
The EU unemployment rate set a new all-time high of 12.2 percent. But it's the youth unemployment crisis that's truly terrifying. In Spain, unemployment surged past 56 percent, and Greece now leads the rich world with an astonishing 62.5 percent.
According to the Atlantic, youth unemployment is bad for all the obvious reasons ,
including the big loss to future productivity and earnings. But Europe's
youth unemployment is strange, because we've never seen a generation
*this educated* also be this unemployed. For example, nearly 40 percent of Spain's
20-and early-30-somethings are college educated.
When did playing 'smart' start to mean that you were a cheater?
Recently, Apple got grilled for its low-tax strategy. While not every business can, or does, copy that approach … many do.
Here is a look at what S.&P. 500 companies paid in corporate income taxes — federal, state, local and foreign — from 2007 to 2012, according to S&P Capital IQ.
Click here to read the NYTimes article this infographic came from.
At its core, our democratic process and legal system were designed to take care of issues like these over time.
Likewise, our free market system will adjust to level the playing field. There is game theory in government. If you make things too difficult, the smart players find a different game to play.
Meanwhile, other countries certainly are incented to find a way to make to entice big players to play on their turf … and creating a tax haven is one way to do it.
Going back to Apple, on one hand I'm sure the government wishes they had paid more taxes, but on the other hand I'm sure they are glad that Apple didn't move away and take their tax dollars with them.
As you have probably surmised, this happens on many levels and in many places.
In trading, for example, statistical arbitrage was once an easy way to make money (if you knew how to do it). The reason was that relatively few people knew how to do it, so there was limited competition (and fairly easy winnings). Then, as the success of the early winners signaled others into the game, it got harder to win. People started programming computers to find mis-priced assets and the discrepancies filled themselves in moments. As you might guess, many traders who have tried statistical arbitrage have moved on to other things.
Identifying inefficiencies (or loopholes) in a system is potentially good for everyone involved. It benefits the person who identifies the inefficiency, because they get paid. Yet, it is also good for the system because it identifies weaknesses or areas that need additional attention, oversight, or regulation. And it provides a feedback loop allowing the parties to course-correct and play smarter. Over time, this often results in real progress.
Tracking the Hindenburg Omen: How Much Danger Is There?
Warnings were heard from
many corners of the financial blogosphere that the Hindenburg Omen triggered.
What is it? It is a fairly obscure technical analysis pattern, which supposedly gives an early warning of unstable market conditions (and even potentially stock market crashes).
While the calculation is based on five factors, the primary conditions indicate that there is a big disagreement about market conditions.
For example, two of the conditions are that a substantial number of
stocks have to be at yearly highs, while a substantial number of stocks
have to be at new annual lows. Ultimately, it is hard for those two
conditions to be met in a short period of time, unless there's
uncertainty in the market. Moreover, after a rally, uncertainty is
often a precursor to a decline.
In addition, technically (in order for the pattern to be complete), a
second sighting of the five elements must occur within 36 days.
Logically, lingering uncertainty is a momentum killer. Well, in this case we have it; the pattern flashed in mid-April and it happend again on the last day of May.
While this pattern has correctly predicted every big stock market
swoon of the past two decades, including the October 2008 decline (that
set the global economic recession into motion), not every Hindenburg
Omen has been followed by a crash. Resorting to a geometry analogy: All
rectangles are squares, but not all squares are rectangles.
Personally, I don't make trade decisions based solely on indicators
like this. Nonetheless, it has a pretty good track record, seems to be
based on reasonable theories, and might be useful as just another data point urging caution.
You probably heard that Apple avoided $9.2 Billion in U.S. Taxes with its recent debt deal. Here is one way to try and fix that …
Here are some of the posts that caught my eye. Hope you find something interesting.