Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
gm trader cats...
morning stock doc cat...
ga cats...whats purrrrin?
yes zoron...
shorts ain't lastin on USAU this morning...
cola cat...what rails you ridin today?
USAU...4's up...
wow...what a peon...
best of luck briboy...hope everything goes well for you...
markets purrrin green so far catsss...
RINO...coming up on 15 bucks p/m...
USAU...RINO...feline power....
gm cash cow players...
morning breakout cats...USAU set to go at 0.0034 x 0.004
gm cola cat...what's happening?
morning ga cats....Before the bell: Futures higher amid more earnings, ahead of jobless data
Posted Jul 30th 2009 7:45AM by Melly Alazraki
Filed under: Before the bell, International markets, Earnings reports, Motorola (MOT), Exxon Mobil (XOM), Market matters, Walt Disney (DIS), Dow Chemical (DOW), Economic data, Oil
More
U.S. stock futures climbed higher Thursday morning, indicating stocks may reverse Wednesday's declining trend, as yet another wave of corporate earnings is scheduled for today. Jobless data is also on the docket ahead of the opening bell.
Earnings from some serious heavy weights are scheduled before the market opens, including Exxon Mobil (XOM), Walt Disney Co. (DIS) Motorola (MOT), which reported an unexpected profit, and Dow Chemical (DOW), whose adjusted earnings came in below analyst estimates.
The U.S. Labor Department will release initial weekly jobless claims at 8:30 a.m. Eastern, and as has been the case the past few months, the data will be closely watched and may move the market. Claims are expected to rise from last week.
Oil prices paused above $63 a barrel Thursday, after signs of weak U.S. crude demand triggered a sharp sell-off this week from $69 to the current level.
Overseas, Asian shares rose on upbeat earnings, mostly ending higher. European markets continued the positive move from Wednesday.
thanks spidy cat...super cool felines love USAU...lol
sweet USAU...roarin RINO...purrrr on
peep that USAU cats....0.0036 x 0.004....+21.21%
have you got anything relevant to say zoron?
USAU...subby runnin cats...+15.15...
good luck with the CICS T cat...
crude is a fickle thing...can't live with it...can't kill it...lol
ASAU...RINO...creepin while ya sleepin cats...
gm wise cat...doubled down on the dips...ASAU and RINO...patience is the key ;)
top o' the morning bt cats....
gm cash cow....Before the bell: Futures lower amidst more earnings, ahead of Beige Book
Posted Jul 29th 2009 7:40AM by Melly Alazraki
Filed under: Before the bell, International markets, Earnings reports, Time Warner (TWX), Market matters, Sprint Nextel Corp (S), ConocoPhillips (COP), Economic data, Oil, Federal Reserve, General Dynamics Corp (GD)
More
U.S. stock futures edged lower Wednesday morning as more earnings are on tap and ahead of several economic indicators and the release of a Federal Reserve Beige Book in the early afternoon. This is the third day market observers expect stocks to give back gains made in the short and strong rally of the previous two weeks, only to find them quite resilient, at least on some level.
At 2:00 p.m. Eastern today, the Federal Reserve will release the Beige Book, its report on the state of the economy. Investors generally hope to find the mood more positive in this one, and indication of more progress made towards an economic recovery such as slower pace of declines and stabilization in some segments of the economy.
Much before the Beige Book is released, however, at 8:30 a.m., June durable orders data is due out and could also provide some direction.
Another slew of earnings are due out this morning including Sprint Nextel (NYSE: S), Time Warner (NYSE: TWX), which is the parent of this site, ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP) and General Dynamics (NYSE: GD).
Overseas, Asian shares sold off, with Shanghai stocks losing 5%. European stock markets, however, rose Wednesday after generally positive corporate earnings from leading industrial companies.
Oil prices fell below $66 a barrel Wednesday, reflecting weak demand outlook and rising crude inventories. Inventories rose 4.1 million barrels last week, the American Petroleum Institute said late Tuesday, far more than expectations. Today, at 10:30 a.m., the Energy Department's Energy Information Administration will release its weekly inventory numbers.
morning cats...
interesssting....Short sellers beware -- the regulators are coming
Posted Jul 28th 2009 12:00PM by Connie Madon
Filed under: Market matters, Personal finance, Financial Crisis
More
Remember the fall of Lehman Brothers? During that debacle, 38 millions shares of Lehman were sold as naked short sales, driving the price of Lehman shares to practically zero. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) stood by and did nothing. To this day, whatever investigation into the Lehman failure was due to short selling is not clear. The SEC has not made the names of the naked short sellers public. The Lehman bankruptcy involved securities fraud under SEC regulations. Why aren't the principals being prosecuted and convicted? The SEC has the power to ban firms and individuals from doing business and impose harsh fines on those convicted in this case.
The SEC banned naked short selling from September 19, 2008 to October 2, 2008, four days after the Lehman bankruptcy on September 15, 2008.
Let's be clear about what is a "naked short sale." A naked short sale is where you simply sell the stock short without owning it. It is outright speculation of the worst kind.
After nearly 10 months of doing nothing about the short sellers, the SEC has finally set forth a few proposals. On Monday the SEC banned naked short selling. Now before a trader sells a security short, he or she must first borrow the security, usually from a brokerage house.
The SEC also wants to publish aggregate short sales on a daily basis and information about short sales of publicly traded companies on a monthly basis. These two proposals are still in the talking stage.
The other proposal being floated about is the so called up-tick rule on short selling. Until 2007, if you wanted to sell a stock short, you must do it on the next up tick. What does that mean? Let's say a stock is selling at $5.00 and you want to sell it short. You could only sell it short at the next price above $5.00, let's say $5.10. That would take some of the sting out of computer programs which have been selling short "at the market" after 2007.
So far, there has been much talk but very little action coming forth from the SEC. Where are all the convictions from the slew of abuses that occurred during our financial crisis?
Should the SEC ban short selling altogether?
eye em ga cats...USAU...ACTC...RINO...trip kings...
hell of a pop there wise....3's looking easy....
purrrrin cats...RINO...14.62
gm wildman! how goes the cat race?
no luck needed... ;)
wise old cat...running the treble...USAU...ACTC...RINO
feline trifecta...ACTC...USAU...RINO
cold cola cat...whats happenin?
old school vs. new school cats...High-Frequency Traders Say Speed Works to Everyone’s Advantage
Share | Email | Print | A A A
By Edgar Ortega, Jeff Kearns and Eric Martin
July 28 (Bloomberg) -- Frank Troise, the head of electronic equity trading products at Barclays Plc, says using computers to execute orders in milliseconds is no different than brokers jockeying for position years ago on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.
“This has been going on for quite awhile, and it’s now at a fever pitch,” says Troise, 43, who is based in New York. “There’s always been an advantage to executing with speed.”
Policymakers are asking whether that advantage has become too great for so-called high-frequency traders, whose programs buy and sell shares up to 1,000 times faster than the blink of an eye. Defenders say the competition for profits that gave rise to today’s rapid-fire execution has roots that span decades and has helped reduce costs for investors.
About 46 percent of daily volume is handled through high- frequency strategies, according to estimates by NYSE Euronext, the world’s largest owner of stock exchanges. The transactions are made by about 400 of the 20,000 firms trading stocks in the U.S., according to Tabb Group LLC, a New York-based financial services consultant. Each makes bets in hundredths of a second to exploit tiny price swings in equities and discrepancies in futures, options and exchange-traded funds.
The firms compete for $21.8 billion in annual profits, according to Tabb. Among the largest are hedge funds Citadel Investment Group LLC, D.E. Shaw & Co. and Renaissance Technologies Corp., as well as the automated brokerages Getco LLC, Hudson River Trading LLC and Wolverine Trading LLC. Rapid- fire strategies helped equity volume more than double in the U.S. since 2006 to a record 10.8 billion shares a day last year, Nasdaq OMX Group Inc. data show.
Market Patterns
High-frequency programs look for patterns in securities markets. A typical strategy is based on the likelihood that a stock that rose over the past 20 hours will pare its gain, said Irene Aldridge, managing partner at Toronto-based Able Alpha Trading Ltd., a high-speed proprietary trading firm. Others sift through thousands of quotes to calculate the probability of a shift in the market.
“There’s a lot of brainpower involved in this,” said Aldridge, whose book “High-Frequency Trading: A Practical Guide to Algorithmic Strategies and Trading Systems” is scheduled for publication in January 2010. “It’s profitable if you can capture a few basis points and do it a few times a day, and markets have evolved to support this.”
Penny Increments
U.S. equity exchanges have catered to such clients since at least 1997, when the NYSE ended its century-old practice of quoting stocks in eighths of a dollar. It shifted to penny increments in 2000. That eroded earnings for NYSE and Nasdaq market makers, who profit from the difference between bids and offers. For investors, it helped reduce trading costs.
The exchanges sought to compensate for the lost business by paying rebates to high-frequency brokerages that buy shares at the best public prices. Exchanges have also overhauled their trading systems to cut transactions times and rent space in data centers so it takes less time to transmit information to buyers and sellers. Bats Global Markets processes orders in less than 400 microseconds, or 0.0004 second, which is about 1,000 times faster than humans blink their eyes.
As the strategies increased in speed, it became impossible for investors without advanced computer systems to get fair prices, according to some market participants. Firms handling large trades complained that brokers using complex algorithms fire off hundreds of orders and immediately cancel them in an effort to trick them into revealing plans to buy or sell.
Higher Volatility
“If you’re trying to buy a big block of stock, the algorithms notice,” said Bart Barnett, head of equity trading at Morgan Keegan & Co. in Memphis, Tennessee. “It increases volatility and has an adverse effect on the prices customers get on stocks.”
New York’s Charles Schumer, the third-ranking Senate Democrat, asked the Securities and Exchange Commission on July 24 to ban a practice in which some exchanges hold orders for a split-second before publishing them on competing platforms. Schumer said so-called flash orders are used by “sophisticated high-frequency traders” to get an edge.
At Bats, the third-largest U.S. stock exchange, about half of its customers use flash orders, Chief Executive Officer Joe Ratterman said in an interview yesterday. The system is open to everyone and allows brokers to submit prices that are more competitive because the delay gives them a way to anticipate moves in the market, he said.
Waiting for Orders
Ratterman said the danger of flash trades is that brokers may grow reluctant to post publicly accessible quotes, opting instead to wait for flashed orders. That doesn’t mean the deck is stacked against small investors, he said.
“The idea of haves and have-nots is just crazy to me,” Ratterman said. “Every firm in the U.S. has the ability to invest in the same way that every successful trading firm has done. Trading by definition is a competitive business.”
Ben Townson of New York-based BlackBox Group, which uses high-frequency strategies and specializes in algorithmic trading, says “natural abilities and skills” determine who makes money, not computers.
“You can throw a lot of money at technology, but if you don’t take the time to study your trades, it doesn’t matter,” Townson said. “We’ve built a racecar that is optimized for driving fast. Is that an advantage? Yes. Is it an unfair advantage? No.”
gm BT...good luck to all cats...
morning cash cow....Before the bell: Futures edge lower ahead of housing data, more earnings
Posted Jul 28th 2009 7:40AM by Melly Alazraki
Filed under: Before the bell, International markets, Earnings reports, Market matters, Viacom (VIA), BP p.l.c. ADS (BP), U.S. Steel (X), Valero Energy (VLO), Economic data, Teva Pharm Indus ADR (TEVA), Commodities, Oil, Housing
More
U.S. stock futures declined Tuesday morning after managing to close higher on Monday to extend the remarkable rally in the markets in the last two weeks. Today, more earnings are on tap, and investors will also focus on housing data coming out before the opening bell. Finally, there is a hearing about the energy trading that would be of interest to investors.
What on many investors' minds these past recent days is how long will the rally continue. The market, on Monday, on the one hand showed resilience following some disappointing earnings and pressures from sellers trying to cash in profits. On the other hand, the surprise climb in housing sales perhaps should have triggered a more convincing positive performance. While no doubt some would want to take some profit of the table in the coming days, more positive news from corporate results to economic data indicating a better third quarter could sustain markets.
Reporting this morning are several blue chip companies at different sectors of the economy, including BP (NYSE: BP) and Valero Energy (NYSE: VLO), which would also be affected by the proceedings regarding energy trading, U.S. Steel (NYSE: X), Teva Pharma (NASDAQ: TEVA) and Viacom (NYSE: VIA).
At 9:00 a.m., the May S&P/Case-Shiller home price index is due out with economists expecting home prices in 20 major U.S. metropolitan areas probably fell 17.9 percent -- a slower pace in May, indicating the market is stabilizing. Still, rising unemployment, stagnant confidence and the loss of wealth mean a rebound may be slow to take hold.
At 10:00 a.m., July's consumer confidence will be released.
Overseas, world stock markets mostly traded in a narrow range Tuesday, while oil prices inched higher on anticipation that further positive economic news would extend a three-week rally.