The Lure of Fundamentally Weighted ETFs

Many of you will have read about the advantages of Exchange Traded Funds over Mutual Funds. However, have you considered beyond the “ETF” moniker to ask: “What ETF index should I be looking for”?

To start with, let’s quickly examine the basics of ETFs. These are generalities, but tend to hold true.

Exchange Traded Funds are managed such that the asset allocation of the fund matches the underlying index the fund is attempting to emulate. The indexes range from well known (e.g. S&P500) to obscure, created specifically for the ETF (e.g. water focused). Management fees are generally less than 0.5%, but can be higher for specialized funds. ETFs trade daily on the stock exchange and can trade at a premium or discount to the underlying assets. Through fancy footwork, ETFs generally retain profits within the fund and make only small distributions each year.

Watch List Notes for 26JUN07

I’m writing this one directly into the blog, and with any hope it will go up before market open today. Let’s what we have on dee plate. AMGN Notes from late last week: “Stoch sell. MACD still strong. I think this guy is recharging.” I’ve since changed my theory from “recharging” to “dropping”. It’s looking (more…)

Watch List Notes for 11JUN07

Below are my notes from yesterday, which I wrote before the open. I realize that I should be a bit quicker about putting these online because (1) they are sometimes timely and people might find them useful and (2) if I make a great prediction it will be easier to believe if I posted my (more…)

Watch List Notes for 6JUN07

I thought I would share my watch list notes again. Here’s what I wrote out this morning before the market opened. It was a really tough day out there, so I’m going to have to re-evaluate a bunch tomorrow. Hopefully this is helpful to you guys. AMGN No sell signals. Test of 30DMA coming up. (more…)

My Watchlist Notes from Yesterday

I’m getting back into trading a bit. Here are my watchlist notes from yesterday. Be warned, I’m a total hack. Even I’m going to do more research before using this stuff. Comments appreciated. AMD – Buy now. Watch intraday for bounce. Supports at $15, $13.50, $10. Half now, half on dip? ERTS – Buy soon. (more…)

AI and Trading

I was reading a blog entry on CPPTrader that was referencing an article from Bloomberg. I am a newbie with respect to trading, but with respect to AI I have been a few times around the block. It was something that I studied in University and have had an attraction to for a long time. I guess I am lazy and would love to write a program that “thinks” for me. As a sidenote I am using AI in my algorithmic trading software, but in a different context.

Avoiding Getting Burnt

Colin brought up the following point:

Christian, it is extremely interesting to read your thoughts on neural nets. I’ve been looking at Neural Nets in a piece of software called Merchant of Venice – http://mov.sourceforge.net/ . Beyond that, what’s interesting is that as humans, we can look at current day situations and have an innate sense that history is repeating itself, yet there are these outlying situations that break those rules – like Amazon’s recent performance.

How to put that “sense” into code and avoid getting burned by the outliers is the real rub

Stochastics and Multiple Realities

Tom gave a reply that I think deserves more attention. Tom made the following comment to one of my blog entries.

One more thing, if the market is random per the stochastic process and you can’t find patterns in a market where patterns don’t exist, then why do we have trends? A trend is a pattern in my opinion.

If you look at the definition of stochastic process at wikipedia it does not say random as in completely random walk. What the definition is saying is that at each and every point multiple realities can occur.

Is the Model Important?

Tom wrote the following comment:

Christian, great article! I was building an ATS myself but had to put it on the back burner. Do you dabble in neural nets and AI modeling as well? I predominately use YALE, an open source data mining, machine learning software to build currency, futures, and stock models.

This helps me identify emerging market trends and trade (discretionary) accordingly.

Quant Based Trading: Good News, and Bad News

For the past eight months or so I have been writing my own quant based trading system. I like to call it quant based trading, and not automated trading because quant implies analysis and some automated trading. Trading based on quantative analysis is becoming the norm, not the exception. Automated trading implies auto-pilot and not as much analysis. If you don’t know much about automated trading it is time that you start learning about it.Now brokerage companies are starting to release automated trading software that you can use to devise your own strategies. For example, TDAmeritrade has released such software. I use Interactive Brokers as an online brokerage, which has an application programming interface allowing me to write my automated trading software. Or you can buy software that allows you to write scripts.