Hedge Funds Trail Stocks by the Widest Margin Since 2005

Weasel word excuse – “It has been difficult for hedge funds on the short side,” said Nick Markola, head of research at Fieldpoint Private, a $3.5 billion Greenwich, Connecticut-based private bank and wealth-advisory firm. “Funds were defensively positioned. Central bank action did bode well for equities and made for a more challenging environment for hedge funds.” Drunkenmiller…

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How Many Tulips Can You Buy With One Bitcoin?

Bitcoin’s sudden rise has people thinking about the ludicrous heights that tulips achieved in the Netherlands in the 1630s. At the peak of that bubble, a single tulip bulb could cost more than ten times a craftsman’s annual salary. While some of these prices were “justified” by market forces—the rarest breeds were enviable luxury goods—the…

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Chasing Noise

This is a rather complicated piece but the abstract does a very good job of summarising the papers content. We present a simple model in which rational but uninformed traders occasionally chase noise as if it were information, thereby amplifying sentiment shocks and moving prices away from fundamental values The notion of chasing noise as…

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Entertainment

Traditionally westerners equate activity with productive effort, as such the more noise and the more fuss you make the more productive you are. The same philosophy drifts into trading, as such trading becomes an activity-based endevour, which then migrates into entertainment. Research by W.B. Canoles, S.R. Thompson, S.H. Irwin, and V.G. France in their paper…

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