the finance industry / wall street

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"We spent 18 months planning the route," says Mike Saunders, Hibernia Atlantic's vice-president of business development. "If it ever gets beaten for speed we end up giving our customers their money back, basically, so my boss would kill me if we got it wrong."

we should be so lucky

dayo, Tuesday, 13 September 2011 11:10 (1 year ago) Permalink

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/sep/15/ubs-rogue-trader-man-arrested

tut tut

idk how that money is 'lost' rly. some cunts lost it, some other cunts got it.

a fake wannabe trying to be a pimp (history mayne), Thursday, 15 September 2011 10:00 (1 year ago) Permalink

here is an interesting thing on why/how they can make money out of microsecond advantages http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n10/donald-mackenzie/how-to-make-money-in-microseconds

p.s. that telegraph thing is written by my actual bro.

caek, Thursday, 15 September 2011 10:09 (1 year ago) Permalink

how many imaginary bros you got

talking heads, quiet smith (darraghmac), Thursday, 15 September 2011 10:22 (1 year ago) Permalink

I met someone who seemed pretty rich and told me that he had quit his job at micr0s0ft and moved to hong kong so that he could focus on writing microtrading software

dayo, Thursday, 15 September 2011 10:27 (1 year ago) Permalink

Human beings can, and still do, send orders from their computers to the matching engines, but this accounts for less than half of all US share trading. The remainder is algorithmic: it results from share-trading computer programs. Some of these programs are used by big institutions such as mutual funds, pension funds and insurance companies, or by brokers acting on their behalf. The drawback of being big is that when you try to buy or sell a large block of shares, the order typically can’t be executed straightaway (if it’s a large order to buy, for example, it will usually exceed the number of sell orders in the matching engine that are close to the current market price), and if traders spot a large order that has been only partly executed they will change their own orders and their price quotes in order to exploit the knowledge. The result is what market participants call ‘slippage’: prices rise as you try to buy, and fall as you try to sell.

ffs this is like playing quake w/ an aimbot

dayo, Thursday, 15 September 2011 10:34 (1 year ago) Permalink

No one in the markets contests the legitimacy of electronic market making or statistical arbitrage. Far more controversial are algorithms that effectively prey on other algorithms. Some algorithms, for example, can detect the electronic signature of a big VWAP, a process called ‘algo-sniffing’. This can earn its owner substantial sums: if the VWAP is programmed to buy a particular corporation’s shares, the algo-sniffing program will buy those shares faster than the VWAP, then sell them to it at a profit. Algo-sniffing often makes users of VWAPs and other execution algorithms furious: they condemn it as unfair, and there is a growing business in adding ‘anti-gaming’ features to execution algorithms to make it harder to detect and exploit them. However, a New York broker I spoke to last October defended algo-sniffing:

lol, he has a better aim-bot than you do!

god it just kills me to think about how many smart and brilliant people are spending 16 hours a day coming up with a better arbitrage algorithm.

dayo, Thursday, 15 September 2011 11:08 (1 year ago) Permalink

as opposed to doing what? Y'know, lyfe mayne

talking heads, quiet smith (darraghmac), Thursday, 15 September 2011 11:13 (1 year ago) Permalink

"I just feel incredibly lucky to be living now. What would I have been doing with my maths skills 100 years ago? Or 100 years from now? This is exactly the right time in history to have these skills. And I have them."

yah i mean the fuck use was maths in 1911?

diouf est le papa du foot galsen merde lè haters (nakhchivan), Thursday, 15 September 2011 11:50 (1 year ago) Permalink

lol

this stuff is still my plan b : (

caek, Thursday, 15 September 2011 11:54 (1 year ago) Permalink

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/15/us-ubs-idUSTRE78E15I20110915

(Reuters) - Swiss bank UBS said a trader who had lost it around $2 billion in unauthorized deals had been arrested in London, where police were holding 31-year-old Kweku Adoboli.

dayo, Thursday, 15 September 2011 17:38 (1 year ago) Permalink

The trader in question, Mr. Adoboli, who graduated with an honors degree in computer science from the University of Nottingham,

think about all the social media websites these guys could be starting

dayo, Thursday, 15 September 2011 17:39 (1 year ago) Permalink

One of the few noteworthy moments in Michael Moore's last film was showing how Wall Street woos math majors.

Anakin Ska Walker (AKA Skarth Vader) (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 15 September 2011 17:40 (1 year ago) Permalink

haha this same conv is going on in the grad school thread

iatee, Thursday, 15 September 2011 17:41 (1 year ago) Permalink

hardly surprising though. from reading books about when finance companies fuck up, this kind of thing happens every 2-3 years. bet these companies build this into their models.

dayo, Thursday, 15 September 2011 17:41 (1 year ago) Permalink

lol

caek, Thursday, 15 September 2011 17:41 (1 year ago) Permalink

like "commodities market volatile this year, 23% chance... blue chips up this year, 10% chance... broken arrow rogue trader, 25% chance...oh, pizza's here! meeting adjourned"

dayo, Thursday, 15 September 2011 17:42 (1 year ago) Permalink

"we model so well when we're on cocaine!" *fist bumps*

caek, Thursday, 15 September 2011 17:43 (1 year ago) Permalink

sorry "I love that we can model while were on cocaine"

caek, Thursday, 15 September 2011 17:43 (1 year ago) Permalink

buzza, Thursday, 15 September 2011 17:51 (1 year ago) Permalink

But I don't care. I expect to make enough money to be out of this business in a few years. I think I would like to go back to university. I have become very interested in the humanities and philosophy.

my friend used to work for a company that designed materials to help assuage successful businessmen about their guilt at having made huge amounts of money

it was a bunch of pseudophilosophical tracts that, when boiled down, said "yes, you DESERVED to make all that money! don't feel bad! if you like, give some to charity!"

dayo, Thursday, 15 September 2011 21:20 (1 year ago) Permalink

that's amazing

iatee, Thursday, 15 September 2011 21:21 (1 year ago) Permalink

haha you know him! you can ask T about it sometime

dayo, Thursday, 15 September 2011 21:22 (1 year ago) Permalink

!

how would u even find such a company? do they leave brochures lying around hotels in st moritz

diouf est le papa du foot galsen merde lè haters (nakhchivan), Thursday, 15 September 2011 21:23 (1 year ago) Permalink

company reps on every 35th storey ledge in new york

diouf est le papa du foot galsen merde lè haters (nakhchivan), Thursday, 15 September 2011 21:24 (1 year ago) Permalink

I wish I could find the article, from the NYT I think, about a Ph.D. in math from Berkeley, a logician even, who took a quant job, made gobs of cash, fucked things up so that his company lost gobs of cash, quit, & ended up doing shark fishing in the Pacific, because it had the thrills to which he'd become accustomed on Wall Street.

Euler, Thursday, 15 September 2011 21:24 (1 year ago) Permalink

article would be from the late 1990s I think

Euler, Thursday, 15 September 2011 21:24 (1 year ago) Permalink

haha wow yeah I'm gonna I want to hear more xp

iatee, Thursday, 15 September 2011 21:25 (1 year ago) Permalink

I might be misremembering but I think that's the thrust

I imagine this company was probably started by a successful businessman turned professional confessional

dayo, Thursday, 15 September 2011 21:25 (1 year ago) Permalink

pretty sure that article wasn't from the 90s cuz it would have been made into a major motion picture with cuba gooding jr in a supporting role

diouf est le papa du foot galsen merde lè haters (nakhchivan), Thursday, 15 September 2011 21:27 (1 year ago) Permalink

relevant to our interests here:

If Aristotle Ran General Motors: The New Soul of Business

written by a former Notre Dame philosophy prof who now is fantastically wealthy peddling this sorta stuff to the plutocrats

Euler, Thursday, 15 September 2011 21:28 (1 year ago) Permalink

I've looked SO LONG for that article over the last few years (shark fishing quant I mean); I think I read a scan of it on a webpage in the 90s & now I can find nothing.

Euler, Thursday, 15 September 2011 21:29 (1 year ago) Permalink

the monk who sold his ferrari kinda shite

talking heads, quiet smith (darraghmac), Friday, 16 September 2011 17:33 (1 year ago) Permalink

have long pondered a book of common-sense negativity, provisional title 'feel the fear and cop the fuck on'

talking heads, quiet smith (darraghmac), Friday, 16 September 2011 17:36 (1 year ago) Permalink

Detective Superintendent Lee Neiles told the hearing: ‘Mr Birch had been redundant since September 2009 and had had difficulties in finding other means of employment, although the family were financially stable.’

god I *hate* the british use of the term 'redundant'. it's so callous.

iatee, Friday, 16 September 2011 17:41 (1 year ago) Permalink

not in the british meaning, though

talking heads, quiet smith (darraghmac), Friday, 16 September 2011 17:43 (1 year ago) Permalink

iykwim

talking heads, quiet smith (darraghmac), Friday, 16 September 2011 17:44 (1 year ago) Permalink

yeah I guess I didn't think of that! but from an american's perspective it just sounds evil.

iatee, Friday, 16 September 2011 17:44 (1 year ago) Permalink

here it's like 'you were bad at your job' or 'we can't afford you' but 'redundant' gives me a sense of 'you are unnecessary as a human being'

which means it probably was correctly used w/r/t to this banker, but outside of that...

iatee, Friday, 16 September 2011 17:47 (1 year ago) Permalink

nobody rly uses redundant as a synonym for unemployed and 'laid off' is more often used instead of 'made redundant' in newspapers etc

i think it's just policemen and their strangely clunky phrasing, cf 'other means of employment' instead of 'a job'

diouf est le papa du foot galsen merde lè haters (nakhchivan), Friday, 16 September 2011 17:48 (1 year ago) Permalink

'made redundant' still common terminology iirc, though there's subtle emp. law differences between the two i think

talking heads, quiet smith (darraghmac), Friday, 16 September 2011 17:50 (1 year ago) Permalink

it is a shitty term tho, def

diouf est le papa du foot galsen merde lè haters (nakhchivan), Friday, 16 September 2011 17:51 (1 year ago) Permalink

eh i dunno, it's quite useful as a means of conveying the right tone of contempt society ought to feel for the wastrel layabouts tbh

talking heads, quiet smith (darraghmac), Friday, 16 September 2011 17:53 (1 year ago) Permalink

I have no problem w/redundant. It doesn't imply fault like 'fired' does. It implies that the employer doesn't have any meaningful/profitable work for you to do.

em vee equals pea queue (Michael White), Friday, 16 September 2011 18:01 (1 year ago) Permalink

that's awful

partistan (dayo), Friday, 16 September 2011 19:18 (1 year ago) Permalink

this is typical police illiterately pretentious usage though. no one except a policeman would say "he has been redundant for a year". you get made redundant, and then you are unemployed. like how only police say "i was proceeding along oxford st" or "he asked myself how to get to piccadilly circus".

caek, Saturday, 17 September 2011 07:51 (1 year ago) Permalink

holler

is it shakeymostep? (cozen), Saturday, 17 September 2011 08:52 (1 year ago) Permalink

Redundant is only a little better than 'managed out'. Not by much.

xyzzzz__, Saturday, 17 September 2011 08:59 (1 year ago) Permalink

I think what's really striking is that there's a huge dropoff in leverage from the 80-90 group to the 90-100 group, whereas 70-80 is pretty similar to 80-90. But I guess that makes sense if the 70-80 is x income to y income, the 80-90 is y income to z income, but the 90-100 is z income to infinity.

Does it say whether those ratios are median ratios, within the decile? Is the ratio listed exactly the 95th percentile mark?

huun huurt 2 (Hurting 2), Wednesday, 1 May 2013 17:11 (1 month ago) Permalink

anyway, even if you broke down that top decile further I don't think you'd find a significant percentage of those people were MORE leveraged than most Americans.

huun huurt 2 (Hurting 2), Wednesday, 1 May 2013 17:12 (1 month ago) Permalink

well, the point was more if we pull the super rich out of the equation (as affable outliers!) then are the rich still leveraged like the rest of us (by percentage of aggregate debt!)? Honestly, with debt levels around 20% for even 70% of households, my argument about people being leveraged seems HORRIBLE. I need to find a new metric. Or invent one.

I didn't read the details of the breakdown that well. I think it's possible to download the whole table of data and then maybe we could (likely?) slice and dice by whatever we wanted and create our own income stratas.

I thought I'd read before that typical HH debt target (for mortgage purposes and including mortgage) was somewhere around 36%. Was very surprised to see aggregate debt levels below that.

I will forlornly return to my home planet soon (dandydonweiner), Wednesday, 1 May 2013 17:20 (1 month ago) Permalink

Keep in mind that those debt levels are heavily skewed by renters. Mortgages are going to be by far the biggest ticket debt item for a family, and a family that doesn't have a mortgage is going to have a much tinier debt burden than an equal income family with none. That's why you see relatively even debt-service-to-income ratios, yet the percentages of lower income families with greater than 40% of their income going to service debt are MUCH higher.

huun huurt 2 (Hurting 2), Wednesday, 1 May 2013 17:26 (1 month ago) Permalink

yes, I was thinking I could go get a table of home ownership and then manually factor that in but it became too much of a hassle. And really this discussion point was supposed to be essentially about cash flow...so rents are related if I'd not have strayed over into debt.

But still, I would probably assume that at least the middle income strata had a high degree of home ownership, and that those home owners likely were near the limits of their loaning ability, and that therefore the 20% was low.

I will forlornly return to my home planet soon (dandydonweiner), Wednesday, 1 May 2013 17:35 (1 month ago) Permalink

it's a cliche, but that almost seems like an onion article

not to derail or be too lol obvious, but the kickoff to this conversation seems rather liberally sourced from this chestnut

the orig. article seems a bit dry f/ satire, though even the lonely-at-the-top sentimental horseshit w/ Oliver James waxing on the simple (and apparently inexpensive) joys of one's student years is ripped straight from the novel. (OTOH "Sarah Butcher" seemed f/ at least a few minutes to have effectively pitched the noxious notion of the upper strata as just another besieged bourgeois outpost affected terribly by the financial shenanigans of ~mysterious others~).

/parenthetical bs

Hellhouse, Wednesday, 1 May 2013 21:38 (1 month ago) Permalink

"bad bonus"

Aimless, Thursday, 2 May 2013 17:44 (1 month ago) Permalink

huun huurt 2 (Hurting 2), Thursday, 2 May 2013 18:15 (1 month ago) Permalink

Was that "bad bonus" piece for real?

curmudgeon, Thursday, 2 May 2013 18:28 (1 month ago) Permalink

this is amazing:

3. Don’t accuse your wife or girlfriend of being a hypocrite
One equity researcher who said he hasn’t had a bonus for five years, advised bankers to resist the temptation to criticize wives’ reactions to the size of their bonus

“My own experience is that a lot of wives and girlfriends of investment bankers don’t necessarily like the fact that their partner is in banking – they’d rather be with someone who’s doing something much more worthy. Spouses pretend that they don’t like the money and the long hours, but the fact is that they also love the expensive holidays and meals out.

“Banking partners are therefore a bit hypocritical. It’s tempting to point this out when a bonus doesn’t come through. I’ve never actually said that to my girlfriend though as it would just cause an argument,” he added.

huun huurt 2 (Hurting 2), Thursday, 2 May 2013 18:30 (1 month ago) Permalink

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/06/opinion/a-disappointing-debut-at-the-sec.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130506&_r=0

Mary Jo White's initial review for early actions taken

curmudgeon, Monday, 6 May 2013 13:48 (1 month ago) Permalink

wow so much wrong with that Forbes article

huun huurt 2 (Hurting 2), Monday, 6 May 2013 14:58 (1 month ago) Permalink

forbes blogs are like bleachercrowd / gawkers new thing etc. etc.

iatee, Monday, 6 May 2013 15:00 (1 month ago) Permalink

the crowdsourcing of linkbait

iatee, Monday, 6 May 2013 15:00 (1 month ago) Permalink

http://blogs.forbes.com/help/how-do-i-become-a-contributor/

ilx should start a forbes blog

iatee, Monday, 6 May 2013 15:01 (1 month ago) Permalink

Assuming 4.5% inflation, a 20-year-old starting to save for retirement today will need a $9.97 million portfolio value at age 65 to have a lifestyle of $60,000 in today’s dollars.

We haven't had inflation of 4.5% or close to it since the early 1990s.

huun huurt 2 (Hurting 2), Monday, 6 May 2013 15:01 (1 month ago) Permalink

the bigger point though is that Obama's proposal is not a cap on how much you can save for retirement, which is what the article makes it sound like

huun huurt 2 (Hurting 2), Monday, 6 May 2013 15:02 (1 month ago) Permalink

this is like finding fault w/ a comment for a yahoo news article

iatee, Monday, 6 May 2013 15:02 (1 month ago) Permalink

Is it really? The guy has written dozens of pieces for Forbes and has his own wealth management firm

huun huurt 2 (Hurting 2), Monday, 6 May 2013 15:06 (1 month ago) Permalink

yes...in charlottesville virginia

iatee, Monday, 6 May 2013 15:06 (1 month ago) Permalink

with 66 twitter followers
https://twitter.com/MarottaOnMoney

iatee, Monday, 6 May 2013 15:06 (1 month ago) Permalink

What I also don't get about the cap proposal -- traditional IRAs already have a tax-free contribution limit per year, so what would the cap change?

huun huurt 2 (Hurting 2), Monday, 6 May 2013 15:06 (1 month ago) Permalink

again he has not written '66 pieces for forbes', forbes allows basically anyone to start a forbes blog

iatee, Monday, 6 May 2013 15:07 (1 month ago) Permalink

the seeking alpha of money magazines

huun huurt 2 (Hurting 2), Monday, 6 May 2013 15:09 (1 month ago) Permalink

Don't care about a Forbes blog, or the W, Post editorial re a Forbes blog, here's the USA Today(!):

The president's proposed budget would cap IRAs and other retirement plans at $3 million, but it could fall below that in future years.

It's not easy to get more than $3 million in a retirement account, which includes IRAs, 401(k) and 403(b) plans. Currently, the cap would affect just 0.03% of retirement accounts, says the Employee Benefit Research Institute.

But despite the above:

Capping IRA could deter savings without helping reduce the deficit, Ronald O'Hanley, president of Asset Management and Corporate Services at Fidelity Investments, argued at a speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Wednesday. Most retirement programs are tax deferrals, not tax breaks, he argues: Savers pay taxes when they withdraw. "Not only will such a proposal further challenge retirement savings, it will not generate additional revenue," he says.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2013/04/10/presidents-budget-plan-iras-cap/2071529/

Sure buddy.

curmudgeon, Monday, 6 May 2013 15:30 (1 month ago) Permalink

New rules to regulate derivatives, adopted last week by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, are a victory for Wall Street

That's from the New York Times

http://truth-out.org/video/item/16500-banks-win-big-as-regulators-refuse-to-rein-in-700-trillion-derivatives-market

A discussion of it from elsewhere

curmudgeon, Wednesday, 22 May 2013 15:06 (3 weeks ago) Permalink

Upthread there are comments from Hurting 2 and others about how you can't charge Wall Street folks for actions that are not crimes.

This won't help:

May 24 New York Times

DEALBOOK
Banks' Lobbyists Help in Drafting Financial Bills
By ERIC LIPTON and BEN PROTESS
In a sign of Wall Street's resurgent influence in Washington, bank lobbyists are aiding lawmakers in drafting legislation that softens financial regulations

curmudgeon, Friday, 24 May 2013 14:02 (3 weeks ago) Permalink

'lobbyists help draft bills' is not a news story

iatee, Friday, 24 May 2013 14:06 (3 weeks ago) Permalink

It's news to the extent that the details go counter to the Obama and Democratic party PR meme re enforcement of Dodd-Frank (yep I know its only been pr and never really true). I was gonna add that myself, but it's worth mentioning how its still going on, business as usual, although that's no surprise either.

curmudgeon, Friday, 24 May 2013 14:16 (3 weeks ago) Permalink

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/05/23/banks-lobbyists-help-in-drafting-financial-bills/

One bill that sailed through the House Financial Services Committee this month — over the objections of the Treasury Department — was essentially Citigroup’s, according to e-mails reviewed by The New York Times. The bill would exempt broad swathes of trades from new regulation.

iatee, Friday, 24 May 2013 14:19 (3 weeks ago) Permalink

do you know what that means

iatee, Friday, 24 May 2013 14:19 (3 weeks ago) Permalink

it means absolutely nothing because the bill will not be passed

iatee, Friday, 24 May 2013 14:19 (3 weeks ago) Permalink

Representative Maxine Waters, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee, was among the few Democrats opposing the change, echoing the concerns of consumer groups.

curmudgeon, Friday, 24 May 2013 14:28 (3 weeks ago) Permalink

A watered-down compromise version that will satisfy Wall Street may pass though

curmudgeon, Friday, 24 May 2013 14:29 (3 weeks ago) Permalink

Grassley said in a statement late Wednesday he had not heard from the White House about Comey's nomination but said Comey possessed a lot of important experience on national security issues.

"But, if he's nominated, he would have to answer questions about his recent work in the hedge fund industry," Grassley said. "The administration's efforts to criminally prosecute Wall Street for its part in the economic downturn have been abysmal, and his agency would have to help build the case against some of his colleagues."

Senator Grassley, man of the people

curmudgeon, Thursday, 30 May 2013 13:47 (2 weeks ago) Permalink

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/31/join-wall-street-save-the-world/?hpid=z1

Hedge fund types who give large chunks of their salary to fighting malaria and other charities

curmudgeon, Friday, 31 May 2013 19:06 (2 weeks ago) Permalink

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2013_06/dim_prospects_for_brownvitter045192.php

Bipartisan tougher regulation for big banks not likely to go anywhere

curmudgeon, Monday, 10 June 2013 18:33 (1 week ago) Permalink

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/alexis-goldstein-the-intimidate-the-ctfc-act/2013/06/12/18451f48-d374-11e2-a73e-826d299ff459_story.html?hpid=z2

So derivatives experts, is this Occupy guy's guest editorial regarding a derivatives bill wrong?

curmudgeon, Wednesday, 12 June 2013 18:14 (6 days ago) Permalink

Occupy person

curmudgeon, Wednesday, 12 June 2013 18:15 (6 days ago) Permalink

that basically makes sense. iirc lots of components of bank operations are in london instead of e.g. ny because of different regulations. including, especially, the ability to take something you've gotten as a swap from someone else, and in turn engage in a swap with it, etc. so that big pools of capital can be generated from just swapping the same things back and forth.

stefon taylor swiftboat (s.clover), Thursday, 13 June 2013 12:01 (5 days ago) Permalink

We're doomed

curmudgeon, Thursday, 13 June 2013 14:46 (5 days ago) Permalink

here's the paper i was thinking of on this stuff. singh has done lots of follow-on research too. gotta love the term 'rehypothication'!

http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.cfm?sk=24075.0

stefon taylor swiftboat (s.clover), Thursday, 13 June 2013 19:42 (5 days ago) Permalink

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/06/swap-jurisdiction-certainty-act-house-cross-border

More on House efforts to weaken financial oversight

curmudgeon, Friday, 14 June 2013 14:38 (4 days ago) Permalink


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