Robot James

Quant trading

Tesla’s inclusion in the S&P 500 – Is there a trade?

The S&P index committee recently announced that Tesla, already one of the biggest stocks listed in the country, would be included in the S&P 500. Here’s the press release: Due to TSLA’s size, it was widely expected to have entered the S&P 500 index much earlier – but S&P has some discretionary criteria it applies

Where does FX sit in a Systematic Trading Portfolio?

FXQuant trading

Where does FX sit in a Systematic Trading Portfolio?

You rarely meet a rich forex trader. I’ve met plenty of rich traders who trade quant factors or stat arb. Plenty of market makers, futures spreaders and volatility traders that do nicely. But I don’t think I’ve ever met a rich forex trader. Jeez man – what a downer! Don’t run away, we’re gonna turn

Some Things Just Go Up (If You Wait Long Enough)

Quant trading

Some Things Just Go Up (If You Wait Long Enough)

  Here’s a chart of long-term asset performance…. The blue line shows returns from US stocks from 1900 to today. That’s a 48,000x increase in nominal value. The yellow line shows the returns from US bonds from 1900 to today. That’s a 300x increase in nominal value. If you look at this in isolation things

Quant trading

Trading the US Election – Profiting from “Known Unknowns”

You’ve probably noticed that there’s a US election on the horizon. This is an event of known uncertainty: a “known unknown” in the now immortal language of Donald Rumsfeld. In trading, we sometimes observe marginal pricing inefficiencies around these “known unknowns”. For example, ahead of  stock earnings announcements or significant economic or policy announcements, we tend

Book Review: Positional Option Trading by Euan Sinclair

Quant trading

Book Review: Positional Option Trading by Euan Sinclair

This is a review of Positional Option Trading by Euan Sinclair.  Trading books set a low bar for the reviewer. 99% are full of facile feel-good advice (don’t fight the trend, always use a protective stop). The 1% that are useful tend to either be dry technical treatments (quants who don’t trade), or sporadically helpful

How to extend ETF prices with mutual fund data using SQL

Think like a traderTools of the tradeTrading infrastructure

How to extend ETF prices with mutual fund data using SQL

In this post, we explain how to use SQL to extend back ETF price data with total return data from mutual funds or indexes. On Zero to Robot Master Bootcamp, we teach how to build a portfolio of three automated systematic trading strategies. One of them is a long term Risk Premia Harvesting strategy which

What Would it Feel Like to Invest in RenTech’s Medallion Fund?

Think like a trader

What Would it Feel Like to Invest in RenTech’s Medallion Fund?

Nearly everyone starts trading with unrealistic expectations. “If I make a 0.5% returns every day I can make over $100k in a year on 20k of starting capital.” 0.5% return every day sounds realistic, right? Wrong. Let’s sense check that… If we could make 0.5% returns every day… then our 20k would be worth: $123,000

Weekly Roundup 29 May – Crash Protection, Sloppy Regressions and Data Munging Skillz

OptionsQuant tradingR

Weekly Roundup 29 May – Crash Protection, Sloppy Regressions and Data Munging Skillz

Here’s a round-up of our new articles this week. They cover crash protection, sloppy, noisy regressions, and data-munging skills. Finding Options for Effective Crash Protection Large capital losses can be devastating to your trading account. A couple of weeks ago, we explained how you can use SPY put options to protect your portfolio against severe market

How to Fill Gaps in Large Stock Data Universes Using tidyr and dplyr

Quant tradingRTools of the trade

How to Fill Gaps in Large Stock Data Universes Using tidyr and dplyr

When you’re working with large universes of stock data you’ll come across a lot of challenges: Stocks pay dividends and other distributions that have to be accounted for. Stocks are subject to splits and other corporate actions which also have to be accounted for. New stocks are listed all the time – you won’t have

Find Cheap Options for Effective Crash Protection Using Crash Regressions

OptionsQuant tradingR

Find Cheap Options for Effective Crash Protection Using Crash Regressions

One way we can quantify a stock’s movement relative to the market index is by calculating its “beta” to the market. To calculate the beta of MSFT to SPY (for example) we: calculate daily MSFT returns and daily SPY returns align the returns with one another regress MSFT returns against SPY returns. This shows the

Weekly Roundup 22 May – Doubling Down in Losing Trades Like a Drunken Hedge Fund Manager

OptionsQuant tradingRTools of the tradeTrading strategies

Weekly Roundup 22 May – Doubling Down in Losing Trades Like a Drunken Hedge Fund Manager

Here’s a round-up of our new articles this week. They cover options trading, digital signal processing, data munging and Kris’s luxurious moustache… Trading Insanity! Every new trader tries out a few insane trading ideas! In a new series on the blog, Kris explores three insane trading strategies that tempted him back when he didn’t know any

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