Hacker News: scarletham

New comment by scarletham in "Facebook shareholders are getting fed up with Zuckerberg but can’t do anything"

scarletham — Wed, 17 Apr 2019 20:10:48 +0000

Yeah, definitely good points. Even with a department looking after voting, they're not nearly as "vested" in the results of their voting as something like an actively managed long value fund is.

New comment by scarletham in "Facebook shareholders are getting fed up with Zuckerberg but can’t do anything"

scarletham — Wed, 17 Apr 2019 19:54:59 +0000

Yes, and they voted against the proposals mentioned in the article, except for equal share class voting rights.

New comment by scarletham in "Facebook shareholders are getting fed up with Zuckerberg but can’t do anything"

scarletham — Wed, 17 Apr 2019 19:44:31 +0000

Why? How is Vanguard, an investment management firm which employees thousands of trained professionals, not qualified to cast votes on corporate governance? And in what sense is it "power collecting"?

Yes, this is an issue that is largely debated, and there are some very interesting conflicts of interest - just curious why you specifically think it's so bad.

New comment by scarletham in "Facebook shareholders are getting fed up with Zuckerberg but can’t do anything"

scarletham — Wed, 17 Apr 2019 19:42:12 +0000

They have a department responsible for this, among other things.

https://about.vanguard.com/investment-stewardship/perspectiv...

New comment by scarletham in "Goldman Sachs will open-source some of its trading software"

scarletham — Wed, 03 Apr 2019 16:06:58 +0000

I work in a MM group so take this as you will, but the days of profitably making markets by just fitting everything to the screens are long gone.

New comment by scarletham in "Goldman Sachs will open-source some of its trading software"

scarletham — Wed, 03 Apr 2019 15:57:53 +0000

I think you're missing the gist of his statement and also overlooking the word "almost"?

That being said, most of your definitions are still dependent on competitively pricing securities. A market maker who can't calculate reasonable theos won't be a market maker for long.

New comment by scarletham in "What is the Boeing 737 Max Manoeuvring Characteristics Augmentation System?"

scarletham — Tue, 12 Mar 2019 18:35:27 +0000

Yeah, it really is. If you haven't already, check out the full BEA report - it's incredibly comprehensive and leads to lots of "jumping off" points for further research.

https://www.bea.aero/docspa/2009/f-cp090601.en/pdf/f-cp09060...

New comment by scarletham in "What is the Boeing 737 Max Manoeuvring Characteristics Augmentation System?"

scarletham — Tue, 12 Mar 2019 15:03:29 +0000

There is both a visual and aural indicator. That being said, nobody (except Bonin) knew that the PF had his stick completely back until it was too late.

You can see more here: https://safetyfirst.airbus.com/app/themes/mh_newsdesk/docume...

New comment by scarletham in "Hedge-fund managers that do the most research will post the best returns"

scarletham — Thu, 22 Mar 2018 16:58:25 +0000

Yeah, to clarify I was agreeing that those firms certainly pull and use that data, but not necessarily in the same traditional fashion that paper seems to imply.

New comment by scarletham in "Hedge-fund managers that do the most research will post the best returns"

scarletham — Thu, 22 Mar 2018 14:27:35 +0000

Take this with a grain of salt as I don't work at any of the funds mentioned (but still in the industry), but why not?

Filings are subject to change due to errors, updates, etc. It's cheaper, easier, and less error prone to just scrape and overwrite data than search for any updates.

I may have been heavyhanded in saying that the firms are rescraping the entire universe of filings on a daily basis, but I guess my point here is that these numbers can very easily be skewed and are generally a pretty poor indicator of actual data access.

New comment by scarletham in "Hedge-fund managers that do the most research will post the best returns"

scarletham — Thu, 22 Mar 2018 14:22:52 +0000

They're not HFT, although they are more blackbox / quant than the "traditional" hedge fund, which I think still supports OP's point.

New comment by scarletham in "Hedge-fund managers that do the most research will post the best returns"

scarletham — Thu, 22 Mar 2018 14:10:02 +0000

Yes, exactly. Wouldn't surprise me if most of these firms were rescraping the data every night and overwriting.

New comment by scarletham in "Hedge-fund managers that do the most research will post the best returns"

scarletham — Thu, 22 Mar 2018 14:08:51 +0000

Tradeworx is HFT. Yes, the premise of this paper is completely absurd. Drawing a line between overnight batch jobs for internal databases and performance is a quantum leap to say the least.

New comment by scarletham in "The large crack in the Antarctic ice shelf has grown 6 miles"

scarletham — Fri, 20 Jan 2017 16:49:08 +0000

Last I saw, ~300ft wide and ~1700ft deep.

https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/rift-in-antarcticas-larse...

New comment by scarletham in "New Bloomberg Terminal Keyboard"

scarletham — Thu, 19 May 2016 18:32:42 +0000

We've been using this keyboard for well over a year and a half...

New comment by scarletham in "HFT in the Banana Land"

scarletham — Wed, 27 Jan 2016 15:32:03 +0000

μs or ms. As I mention below, there may be a little delay as people failover and reassess their view of the book, but that's all.

New comment by scarletham in "HFT in the Banana Land"

scarletham — Wed, 27 Jan 2016 15:13:11 +0000

Market liquidity would not "disappear". Liquidity providers do not rely on their microwave lines quite that much (yet). In the case of a microwave failure (more common than you'd think), all one does is failover to physical and keep on pricing.

Worst case is widening your quotes while you reassess your view of the world (the book), but never withdrawing completely from the market.

New comment by scarletham in "Fed Ends Zero-Rate Era"

scarletham — Wed, 16 Dec 2015 22:20:22 +0000

Equities dry up as well. Pretty much everything dries up before FOMC announcements.

New comment by scarletham in "Debt Market Distortions Go Global as Nothing Makes Sense Anymore"

scarletham — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 19:01:13 +0000

He's saying that if the investor wants a Treasury, the only way you can sell that to him is with a Treasury. If he's open to a swap, you can sell (write) that contract to him and hedge it with either a Treasury or another swap.

The only way to deliver a Treasury is with a Treasury, which you have to track down out of inventory or from another dealer. You can write a swap without having to go through that ordeal. This means lower transaction costs.

New comment by scarletham in "Dozens of oil tankers cluster off the coast of Texas due to oil price fall"

scarletham — Fri, 13 Nov 2015 16:05:35 +0000

Oil rigs have specially designed flare stacks, so you won't really see flare fires right on the deck like that.

http://photorator.com/photos/images/north-sea-oil-rig-flarin...