2007 Feb 26 - Mon

Trading Site of the Day -- The Option Insider: High Level News And Commentary

The Options Insider is a relatively new site and founded by an options trader by the name of Mark S. Longo.

The site has a few introductory articles to options trading. Hopefully, as time goes on, the substance will be filled out. For nitty gritty options information, I have already discussed a few sites, so nothing here is not such a bad thing.

The site's current strength is the news links. It looks as though they follow quite a number of news sources and provide links to Options related stories and other primary news sources. This is a good starting point for options related news releases.

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2007 Feb 24 - Sat

Trading Site of the Day -- Trade The News: Live News for the Ears and Eyes

Trade The News is a 24 hour Audio News Squawk service for Equities, Credit and Forex. They also provide news through a streaming service. For both visual and aural news feeds, you'll need to install a downloadable software client. They have a free 7 day trial. The subscription prices seem reasonable. It sounds as though it gets you to the heart of the markets to provide the real time feeling for the ebb and flow.

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2007 Feb 20 - Tue

Trading Site of the Day -- John Mauldin: Market Investments

Looking at the economy from the big picture perspective is John Mauldin's Weekly E-Letter. He is an investment advisor who appears to be well connected to well known economic thinkers and shakers.

His newsletter provides good analysis of current macroeconomic causes and affects. Recent articles cover such things as what the the inverted yield curve portends (the difference between the 3 month T-bill rate and the 10 year bond), the current housing slow down (and how it relates to the folding of sub-prime mortgate issuers), commodities, real-estate, ....

His articles provide useful insight into what the markets are doing, and where they might be headed.

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2007 Feb 17 - Sat

Trading Site of the Day -- StratFor: Global Intelligence Briefings

John Mauldin's regular Out Of The Box newsletter has recurring essays from George Friedman, the mind behind the informative site called StratFor, a site dedicated to 'Predictive, Insightful, Global Intelligence'.

You can get an idea of the types of things they write about forom article introductions on their main page. This is a 'pay for news' type of site, but I think it well worth it for the individual who wishes to get more information of what is happening 'behind the scenes' regarding the global economy and statistics.

Subscribers recieve multiple daily email releases as well as access to the report archives. Typically there is a morning summary of international happenings, an afternoon summary, as well as major write-up on a significant current event. Iraq figures prominently and often, but China, Russia, Europe, and other world locales do get their fair share of coverage.

This isn't necessarily a trading site per-se, but as the markets are global in nature and are affected by international news events, information releases from this site can help shape daily trading moods.

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2007 Feb 15 - Thu

Trading Site of the Day -- Commodity Trader: understanding of the Global Commodity Markets
Commodity Trader is a site specializing in looking at commodities and providing suggestions on what is active, where it is going, and possible things to do with it. News items, as they relate to commodities are also covered. Foreign Exchange coverage is included.

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Trading Site of the Day -- One Option: Option Trading Blog

Pete Stolcers has a blog called OneOption in which he discussed the theory behind option trades as well as showing real trades.

In his February 13 article, he talks about spreads. He discusses when to get in, how to get in, what happens when you are close to an expiry date, and examines some considerations on how to get out. He also discusses how he finds a suitable candidate for a trade.

As part of the analysis, he also examines the overall market situation. By thinking about the general, followed by some fundamental analsysis, he then generates a 'feeling' as to where things might go.

So, by what I just mentioned in the last paragraph, he isn't just a technical analsyst. He does examine each symbol's fundamentals and latest news to help justify his feelings as to where a trading instrument might be heading.

Initial posts to his blog were few and far between. Perhaps he may maintain more frequent posts in the here and now. Anyway, there is useful information there for a practitioner to learn from.

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2007 Feb 14 - Wed

Trading Sites of the Day -- A ThreeSome: Alea, Interfluidity, Coding the Markets

Today I ended upon Coding The Markets because of the name. Perhaps this would be a kindred soul who would offerup all sorts of pearls of wisdom. The author doesn't get quite as deep as I would like. He obliquely refers to playing with his 600kloc crafted in MS VC++/MFC. No meat there though. He does spend some time reviewing sections from Larry Harris' book Trading & Exchanges: Market Microstructure for Practitioners. That book does indeed explain a lot of what goes on behind the scenes in the operations of pricing and exchanges.

I managed to get side-tracked to Andrew Gelman's Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science. A lot of the stuff I'm developing is based upon statistics and sampling. Andrew presents the human side of statistics.

Just to match the statistics side with probability, here is the Oddhead Blog.

Continuing to be side tracked, I see an article about scalping at trade-ideas software. Sunday was the first in a series on scalping. There is to be second Wednesday.

Getting back to what was supposed to be my second submission, Alea is a blog that crosses many economic a nd market boundaries, but stays mostly with the derivatives markets. If one were to spend some time with the site, I think there are many potential meaningful tidbits.

And yes, I know, I havn't described the sites in the same order they are presented in the title. Just seeing if you were paying attention. Anyway, the third entry is interfluidity. I think he is talking about the fluidity of the markets from one place to the other and the liquidity (or lack thereof) of the flows thereof.

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2007 Feb 13 - Tue

Trading Site of the Day -- Smart Options Report: Smart Financial 'Options' For The Savvy
Investor

I don't actually subscribe to the Smart Options eReport, but I've landed on serveral of the articles of the web site through searches. The articles I've looked at have been informative and meaningful, and without marketing hyperbole.

One of the recent articles I landed on had to do with Limit Orders and Options. The information regarding Limit Orders is not only applicable to options but is also very applicable when dealing with equities. They talk about going 'inside' the spread to gain good entries and exits. Limits also prevent one from getting shafted from the market makers who attempt to gain every penny possible, so you should as a result try for every penny possible as well. Limit Orders will also offer protection during fast moving markets, they can help prevent the emotional 'gotta get in at all costs' mistake.

Another article, this one from the middle of last year, deals with Option Spread Trading. This one is a good introduction to spreads, and uses bull and bear spreads as examples. With a bear spread, you buy a put in the expectation that the price of an equity will go down. You also sell a put at a lower strike price. By selling a put, the price you get for selling the put offsets part of the premium you paid to buy the higher put. Read the article in its entirety to get a good feel for how the whole mechanics of the trade work.

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2007 Feb 12 - Mon

Trading Site of the Day -- Financial Sense: Uncommon News & Views for the Wise Investor

Ok, I just realized the irony of my selection, I have a bias towards trading rather than investing. Be that as it may, I have listed an investor's site for my Trading Site of the Day: Financial Sense.

Many other sites that I've come across are mostly rehashes of the daily news. This one is different. Figuratively speaking, this one takes one step back, two steps to the side, and three rungs up a ladder to take a completely different look at our world. Some articles are definitely left leaning in their views. But that certainly forces one to think about just what is our reality. You hear about names in the news and what they are doing. But what drives these 'names'? Financial Sense offers up another perspective.

I've only come across the site today, but it looks like it brings together a wealth of views and commentary on a daily basis. It is also an excellent starting point for searching out related commentaries on the web.

Now if they could turn some of their headlines into RSS feeds, I'd be sure to visit it regularily.

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2007 Feb 11 - Sun

Trading Site of the Day -- The Big Picture: A Macro Perspective

The Big Picture looks at the macro perspective on the captital markets, economy, geopolitics, technology, and digitial media. A little bit of everything.

This site looks to be actively maitained. There are articles covering many interesting aspects of the markets, with regular diversions to off-topics like Jazz or classified ad spam.

There is a significant BlogRoll, so if you are looking for a jumping off point to other locations, this might be a good place to start.

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2007 Feb 09 - Fri

Trading Site of the Day -- Meyers Analytics: Meat and Potatoes of Algorithmic Trading

Meyers Analytics isn't afraid to explain the algorithm behind the product. The man behind the web site is Dennis Meyers. He sells pre-packaged algorithms to those who want an out of the box solution.

For those who like to tinker, I think enough information is provided for one to independently implement the algorithms. If there isn't quite enough information on the web site, he refers to past articles he has written in magazines such as Stocks and Commodities as well as Active Trader.

This style of this site is defintely rare. Describing the algorithm in the package that you are selling is almost unheard of. But, there are many out there who are not programmers and want prepackaged solutions, such as what Mr. Meyers offers. My hat is off.

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2007 Feb 08 - Thu

Trading Site of the Day -- KQuant: Pointers to Who's Who and What's What

K|Quant is a nice, eye pleasing site introducing one to the world of Quantitative Finance. Stereotypically, it is Rocket Scientists, also known as Physicists, who are known to be comfortable in this type of work.

However, the site's maintainer, Rico Blaser, does a great job of introducing the niche field to the aspiring quant. He has a page describing some good books for getting introduced to the mathematics of the field. He also has some good links to the pages of well known researchers, authors, and personalities of the field.

The one drawback is that it doesn't appear to be updated very frequently. On the other hand, it is a good source of basic information.

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