Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with trading

Financial world post apocalypse

namewithhe1d — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 14:08:46 -0800

What types of job opportunities exist for people with a skill set derived from 3-5 years as an sector trader on the international trading desk for one of the top private equity investment firms? Do those skills translate well into other positions outside of trading? This role was to execute the trades of portfolio managers, research industries and portfolios, trade with sell side brokerage firms as well as electronic algorithms and direct market access.
Product managers? Project managers? Market analysts?

Any ideas are a big help... Kudos if these opportunities exist in the northeast.

Does this game genre even have a name?

The Winsome Parker Lewis — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 13:18:17 -0800

What are some great computer games for people who enjoy non-linear privateering, combat, and risky missions? I've loved the Escape Velocity games for years. I recently got into Frontier (previously) and enjoyed it a lot, but it was way too short and easy. I'd like to try Transcendence (previously) but I'm on a Mac, and I'd like to try SAIS (previously) but I can't get it to run under Snow Leopard. Finally, I just discovered Skyrates (previously) and it's fun but so very slow.

All that build-up is to ask: What other Macintosh or Flash games are like these? Specifically I'm looking for games that feature trading, fighting, upgrades and customization, and a big world to explore. I especially love games that let you choose to be good or evil (or neutral) and to become a hero, villain, or impossibly wealthy merchant. Even better if there are a bunch of different factions to choose from besides "good" and "evil," with shades of moral ambiguity. If the game is free that's also a big plus. Any suggestions?

Learning C++ or Matlab from scratch

jsmith78 — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 12:11:51 -0800

Is it possible to learn C++ or matlab for financial engineering without a strong background in math or previous experience in computer science or engineering? Any advice would be appreciated.

Before Etsy: What was that DIY trading community from way back when?

junkbox — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 08:16:20 -0800

Years ago (2002? 2003?), long before Etsy, there was an online community for DIY/crafty blogger types to trade materials and maybe handmade goods as well. What was it called, and what happened to it? I remember the background was a dark red color, and it might have had the word "thread" in the title or maybe not. It was popular with the personal blogging set, which was in its heyday at the time, with everybody trading knitting yarn for beads or jewelry hooks or homemade lip balm. I only made a couple of trades, then wandered away and lost track of the thing entirely. Anybody else remember this? What was it called?

Jobs buying low and selling high?

shivohum — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 18:30:08 -0800

What careers mainly involve buying low and selling high by knowing a market in great detail, in part by making contacts and in part by combing through reams of information - and how does a college student get an entry level job in them? NOT interested in entrepreneurial suggestions, or things that require much theory or advanced mathematics (no i-banking/hedge funds) - more emphasis on information-gathering and shrewdness. What reasonably solid jobs might there be and what's the entry path (recommended academic background, internships, etc.)?

Learning about online shares trading very quickly

gttommy — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 08:11:56 -0800

What is the fastest way to learn online shares trading very quickly? Hi, investment newbie here!

I bought "Online Shares Investing FOR DUMMIES" :) and ready to sign up for a trading game or 2 using fake cash. I would like some tips on what investment paths or style I should take to learn quickest?

I suppose an analogy is like being able to drive unlimited cars on a race track and to maximise the opportunity to improve your driving skills you would try interesting things to learn about the dynamics of a car driving, as opposed to driving normally. I think playing it safe I won't learn as much... ?

Any other ideas or suggestions would also be appreciated. Thanks!

Assuming that I believe that the U.S. economy will not recover in the near future, what's a relatively simple way to make a bet that would profit from my belief?

realpseudonym — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 12:08:24 -0800

Assuming that I believe that the U.S. economy will not recover in the near future, what's a relatively simple way to make a bet that would profit from my belief? I don't have a lot of money to bet, but I'm willing to lose all of the amount that I put down.

I've never set up any kind of trading accounts before and don't intend to be an active trader in the future, so I would prefer something with relatively low setup (both in terms of time and money).

One thought I had was to bet on the price of crude oil. Any other suggestions?

Company goes public, I go...?

Anonymous — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 14:01:41 -0800

What will it mean for me if my new company goes public? I've just recently started work at an interesting positioning firm. My boss mentioned in passing today that he's planning to take the company public once the economy makes an upswing. Assuming I'm still working here when this happens, what will "going public" mean for me? What type of package should I negotiate for in order to be in the best position when this does happen?

Limit, stop, stop-limit on the TSX with Questrade

omair — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 09:47:23 -0800

I am having trouble contacting Questrade to ask them this question, and am hoping someone familiar with TSX trading rules can answer this for me: I bought shares at 45 dollars. If the price of my stock is 60 dollars right now (and going up), and I want to put a stop (or stop-limit) at 57 dollars because I am afraid there is some bad news coming and the stock will plummet suddenly, when the actual price reaches 57, it should trigger my order and sell, right?

However, apparently, on the TSX, stop orders are not allowed, but stop-limits are, but the limit price has to be set equal to the stop price.

1) What is the practical difference, then, between a Stop and a Stop-Limit order if TSX forces the limit price to be set equal to the stop price?

2) If issuing a Stop-Limit on the TSX, will the order be sent to the market when the stock price reaches the value I set for stop/limit, or will it send the order to the market right away because it is not purely a stop order, but actually a stop-limit?

3) What happens if, at the end of the day, the price is still at 60 dollars, but during after hours trading it hits 57, and continues to go down, say to 50 dollars. And then, the next morning, it opens at 50. Does my order get triggered at 50 and that's the price I end up selling at?

Thank you!

Is trading round lots tradition or good practice?

Deep Dish — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 16:31:10 -0800

I have started dabbling in the stock market again, and I've been trying to figure out why conventional wisdom suggests that trading in round lots (usually of 100) is better than trading odd lots (<100). Can you help? I bought a couple of equities today in lots of 50 and 65, and didn't seem to take any penalty on either the trading fee or stock price. Nor did I encounter what seemed to be delayed trades (maybe I did, but it didn't look like it). I've also read that the practice of trading in round lots, essentially predates Internet trading and no longer needs to apply, as long as the trading fees don't become an issue. These were just brief blurbs and I am looking for solid information here. All my equities are from the New York or Toronto exchanges.

How to get started with Pokemon TCG?

felix — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 11:56:21 -0800

If someone wanted to start out playing the Pokemon trading card game with their 7 year old kid, what is the minimal optimal current per-person set of purchases required to be able to have an interesting and enjoyable time?

Queenback to Greenback

awenner — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 08:14:10 -0800

Who will tell me when the Canadian dollar rises again? As a Canadian student going to school in the US, I make regular tuition payments in USD. My payments are spread over six-week increments, which means that I can to schedule my purchases of US dollars in order to get the best rate. I'd like to avoid constantly staying glued to Google Finance, but neither Google nor Yahoo allow you to add currency to your portfolios. Is there a service that will just email me when the Canadian dollar hits USD$0.84, for example?

This question could apply to anything traded, I suppose.

cards! get your cards here!

lou — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 10:07:17 -0800

What do I do with thousands upon thousands of collectible trading card game cards? (Mostly from the Star Trek TCG.) (Boy that's an awkward use of the word "card"...)

So I inherited six or seven very large boxes that each hold thousands of cards from several collectible trading card games, most of them being Stark Trek, and also a some boxes of a few other games I've never heard of (WARS, The Spoils, and another one I can't remember). Since I'm actually a Trek fan I got together some buddies and we gave it a shot, but gave up halfway through skimming the manual, and it turned into Calvinball-style card playing for a little while before we decided we did have better things to do in life. So much for that.

Now I have to figure out what to do with all these cards. Does anyone actually still play with these anymore? Is there a market for it? (My geekiness is in video games, not card games.) From what I can tell the Star Trek cards are first edition and apparently they're on second edition now, and the rules are completely different, but does anyone still want/play first edition?

I can probably just sell the whole thing, but I don't know where to start, and I'd prefer to sell or give it to someone who can actually use it, not just a reseller. I can probably sell pieces of it myself via ebay or whatever, but that takes time I don't have. I can probably use them in some kind of magnificent art project; anyone have any ideas? or anyone have an art project in dire need of some nerdy cards?

As far as selling goes, I think it would be fun to take these to a local comic book convention (or similar) and set up my own table for a couple of days. Anyone try this before?

Am I overpaying for stocks?

SirStan — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 13:31:52 -0800

Help me understand what I am paying for stocks at Sharebuilder.com I have purchased two stocks at Sharebuilder.com. I am not looking for any criticism of the stock, or my time to start investing -- I am looking to understand why it seems like I paid too much for the stock.

I bought GM on 10/21/08. I believe I bought $71 worth, and there was a $4 automatic investment fee.

10/21/2008 BUY ORDER POSTING GM 9.9470 -$70.00

I bought $475 CV on 11/27/08 @ 12:58 ET. I paid $9.95 for the trade.

11/28/2008 BUY ORDER POSTING CV 25.0000 -$484.95

If I bought 9.9470 shares for $66, isnt that $6.635 a share?

If I bought 25 shares for $475, isnt that $19.00 a share?

Neither of these stocks hit that price -- infact GM was @ $5 that day... what am I missing?

How do Bid and Ask work on Intrade?

wastelands — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 07:55:56 -0800

How exactly does the Bid/Ask work on Intrade.com? So last night I bought a bunch of shares of "Dow down at least 25 points by close on Monday" with my remaining play money. I was excited this morning when I saw the markets were way down. I was about to quadruple my money. But then on Intrade, no one had sold me the shares I requested. I bought them last night when there was no Ask price. Other people had bid 25 points ($2.5/share?), so I did the same.

How does that work? Do all contracts start off at 50 points when they go live? Had that one not started until opening bell?

If anyone could clarify the whole Bid/Ask thing, I would appreciate it. Intrade's help pages only talk about the bare minimum. I googled on the terms and get the general idea, but obviously I don't get it enough. I'm missing out on a huge (virtual) payday today. :-(

Dan Ackroyd and Eddie Murphy prepared me for porkbellies, but not this.

10ch — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 15:07:38 -0800

I'm doing an experiment about socks and want to find data about the commodity price of merino wool. My problem is that I know nothing about trading/stock/commodities vernacular and am having difficulties finding a good place to start. Ideally, there is a source similar to http://money.cnn.com/quote/quote.html?symb=AAPL for this information so that I can download it and visualize it over time.

But anything, even words to search Google with, would be helpful at this point.

Thanks!

investing on losers

SirStan — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 13:44:32 -0800

Investing/Day Trading -Why is it bad to pick stocks off the losers of the day assuming they will rebound? I have been casually watching stocks on Google's daily losers list, and playing with $1000 of pretend money and Excel.. and so far I am up 50% on three weeks (not counting $9/trade fees).

So -- Why doesn't this system work? Bonus points for any investing research that shows its a bad idea (tm).

Naturally there are some mega losers.. but even back when Fannie May tanked.. there would have been money to be made by buying at the crest of the loss, and selling the next day.

For example... If I had invested $1000 in Fannie May at the end of trading on September 8th, and sold it at the end of the day on September 9th I would have netted $356 (minus trade execution fees). I caught Foundry Networks as they started to go up a second time on the 24th of October @ $10.85 and now they are at $12.39.

Naturally there are really bad examlpes of this (like the drug company Savient, but even that might go up tomorrow! It seems like people overreact on large percentage sales.. and then it rebounds.

Am I playing with fire that will burn me? Is this how day trader junkies get hooked?

30 Year Swaps for the personal account?

raz5 — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 11:25:43 -0800

Is there a way I can buy the 30 year swap for my personal account? Right now the 30 year swap is trading at ~4.03...I'd love to make a long term bet where I pay out 4.03% fixed rate and receive floating. The irony is that while I work for a bank and can make that bet in size on my book, I want to do it for personal account and have no idea as to where/why the mechanics of how it would work. Would the account get marked to market/margin called? Is there a way I can buy that swap for straight cash (not sure how this would work, as how could a counterparty take on someone's personal credit risk?). Anyone out there have an idea?

Got any advice for trading Futures?

dragontail — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 12:05:57 -0800

MarketFilter: Got any advice for trading Futures? Help a newbie! I've entered the BP trading game. which is a virtual futures trading game for university students. According to their site, I'll be able to trade live futures prices for ICE Brent Futures and ICE Gasoil Futures over a period of a few weeks.

I've got some idea what to look for when trading stocks (PEs and other bits of fundamental analysis), but have never traded futures before. Have any of you guys got any advice?

Does carbon trading make a difference?

henry.oswald — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 06:16:02 -0800

Why should energy supply companies bother making people houses greener when they are essentially reducing demand for their good? (quite a UK based question) I've been looking at carbon credits, the EU Emissions trading scheme and CERTs and have a good handle on it now but the main question is why should the energy suppliers (British gas, powergen etc) bother?

Electricity suppliers such as British gas are obliged to help improve the energy efficiency of peoples homes, from a cert certified process they receive carbon credits. However from a bit of basic maths it seem silly for a business to reduce the demand for their good.

If a house was insulated and then needed 10% less gas to heat the home, on a £800 yearly bill the energy supplier would lose £80 a year. A house around that size probably produces 4 tonnes of carbon a year - 10% of that is worth about £8 in carbon credits.

£80 - £8 = £72 worse of?

So why should British gas, eon, powergen etc bother to really improve peoples energy efficiency?

Buy low, sell high. And?

unSane — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 19:11:16 -0800

What are your trading rules? I'm collecting mob wisdom on trading stocks, on short, intermediate and long term bases. This list of rules is the kind of thing I'm looking to add to. What are your own trading rules? Which rules would you have tattoed to your forehead in mirror writing so you saw it in the mirror every morning before the market opened?

Why do they still do open outcry?

bartleby — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 15:39:40 -0800

Why do they still do open outcry? It would seem that there is a more efficient way to accomplish complex trade transactions than shouting and hand signals.

Do I need a lawyer for possible SEC investigation?

Anonymous — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 16:40:12 -0800

Earlier this year, as part of my 401K, I sold some of my investment in my company's stock (total value ~$2000). A couple of weeks later, my company released a press release that said that they would be restating earnings due to accounting irregularities. I'm now on the list being questioned about insider trading. Do I need my own lawyer? I was contacted last week by a lawyer representing my company wanting to ask me about my trade. After some initial reluctance, I did talk to him and answered all of his questions. During that interview, the lawyer indicated that the SEC may or may not want to talk to me about the trade. (I made it clear to him that I did not have any information about the upcoming restatement, and that I only sold the stock as part of an ongoing process of occasionally selling the company stock to reduce my exposure to the wild swings of the stock).

I'm really reluctant to spend the money on a lawyer because it is only $2000 in my 401K, but I also don't want to lose anything else.

I guess I have two basic questions:

1. Does it seem like I need representation in this matter?

2. If I do, how do I find someone to represent me for a reasonable fee?

Discount brokerage experiences?

small_ruminant — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 10:37:12 -0800

I'm interested in both good and bad experiences people here have had with discount brokerages. Previous questions have touched on this, but they're from a couple of years ago, now, and a lot can change in a company in that time.

This account will be used primarily to trade mutual funds.

There is some chance these assets (about $150k) will be transferred into a managed account within a year. This is in no way certain; I mention it only because things like onerous transfer or account closing fees are things that are relevant information.

Thank you!

How would I go about buying gold?

muthecow — Wed, 28 May 2008 10:02:07 -0800

How would I go about buying gold? It has long been a fantasy of mine to buy some gold when I have a bit (lot) of spare cash. However I do not intend to buy it to trade on the commodities markets, rather I would like it delivered to my house. Right now this is a purely theoretical question, but in practice how would you go about doing this? Who would I ask to buy me a bar of gold and how would I go about getting it delivered to my house?

Furthermore could this then be extended to, say, buying a barrel of oil and having it shipped to my front door? How about wheat? Metals?