Author Archives: Chris Tate

What If Sir Isaac Newton Had Been A Trendfollower?

Abstract: Investment manias and financial bubbles have likely existed for as long as humans have been involved in financial markets. In this research piece we take a look at some of the more famous market bubbles in history and the extreme volatility and drawdowns they experienced. We then examine a simple trendfollowing approach investors could…

Its Friday

And its painful

Commodities

The following dropped into my inbox this morning – it shows the long term performance of the main DJ-UBS commodity indices. It makes a compelling case for the inclusion of commodities into any portfolio. The interesting thing about these indices is that they trade as equities – as such they give investors easy access to…

Once Upon A Time

I often ponder the ability of society to deal with the challenges that it faces, everything from alienation of the individual to degradation of the environment gets a look in. My general conclusion is a depressing one, to put it succintly we are screwed – the reason for this conclusion is simple….IKEA. That’s right a…

I Dont Think I Need To Say Anything Else

Bye Bye HFT

This should be interesting – (Reuters) – U.S. securities regulators have taken the unprecedented step of asking high-frequency trading firms to hand over the details of their trading strategies, and in some cases, their secret computer codes. The requests for proprietary code and algorithm parameters by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), a Wall Street…