Trading¶
$ python3
Python 3.9.10 (main, Jan 15 2022, 11:48:00)
[Clang 13.0.0 (clang-1300.0.29.3)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> 2.56 + 8.22 + 0.01
10.790000000000001
>>> _ - (0.20 + 0.36 + 6.01 + 0.26 + 0.53)
3.4300000000000006
>>>
moving price average. Then you have bollinger lines, basically price +/- standard deviations.
A site that lets you test moving average strategies is Portfolio Visualizer – a backtest of the 200-day moving average crossover on an S&P 500 index fund is at https://www.portfoliovisualizer.com/test-market-timing-model… . The result is that a trend-following system, compared to buy-and-hold, has had slightly lower returns, 10.57% vs. 11.10%, but substantially lower volatility, 11.48% vs. 15.22%, and thus a higher Sharpe ratio, over the period Jan 1985 - Aug 2022.
Shoving stuff in a 401k, IRA, SEP-IRA, etc and leaving it.
In fact relative to position size a highly active simpler system will tend to produce excessive Sharpe.
Buying and holding the market gets you the market return, which by definition has zero alpha.
Well the voo has consistently outperformed vtsax when bought and held so I feel my point stands. A strategy is a strategy. You have to choose one when you invest no matter how simple or complex.
> Because the long-term trend is always upwards
Because the long-term trend is always upwards. Re: That depends on your model. (Because it is your model that defines long term). It is possible for markets to trend downward for decades at a time.
That’s a good strategy, but it’s not alpha, since alpha is defined as outperformance relative to a passive strategy.
The high frequency trading firms are interested in strategies with Sharpe ratio of 3 and above, not the 0.10 incremental Sharpe ratio for the strategy I linked to.
What is efficient market hypothesis?
What is basis points?
Questions and Answers¶
What does -1 indicate?
SELL
What does +1 indicate?
BUY
Where does CALL come from?
The term “call” comes from the fact that the owner of the option has the right to “call (or take) the stock away” from the seller.
Where does PUT come from?
The term “put” comes from the fact that the owner of the option has the right to “put up for sale” the stock or index to the buyer.
When our SELL PUT option goes ITM
We are obligated to buy the stock on the Strike Price at which the action is taken.
What is a Buy Call ?
You pay a premium for right to buy the asset.
What is a Sell Call ?
You get a premium with obligation to sell the asset.
What is a Buy Put ?
You pay a premium for right to sell the asset.
What is a Sell Put ?
You get a premium with obligation to buy the asset.
What you are in a Sell ? …
You enter an obligation
What you are in a Buy ? …
You have a right
Call Option follows the Underlying Asset in … Direction
Same Direction
Put Option follows the underlying asset in the … Direction
Opposite Direction
In this strategy, closing orders are always ..
Either some way of making extra money or getting out of contract early.
What is the difference between ETFs and Index Funds ?
A fund is a generally a basket of stocks. They come in two main forms – mutual funds and ETFs (exchange traded funds).
Mutual funds are their own sort of thing – they don’t have intra-day pricing, trades usually take a day to settle, etc. They’re fine. Often found in retirement accounts, where you’re just throwing more and more money at a fund every two weeks or every month, whatever.
ETFs are bundled up to look like a stock, so they have a stock ticker. You can buy and sell them just like stocks, but underneath, they’re a basket of stocks just like a mutual fund.
Since they’re splitting up money among many companies, they tend to have lower downside risk than individual stocks – one dude at one company cooking the books can’t wipe them out. However, they generally have less upside as well, because one company that explodes can’t make their value go up 1000%. They still have all the systemic risks since they’re often invested in stocks.
That said, some funds invest things other than stocks (bonds, commodities, money markets, derivatives, you name it) – their risks will obviously be different.
Index funds (in mutual or ETF form) is just about what they invest in. An S&P 500 index fund will buy the stocks in the S&P 500, weighted according to size (market cap). Their returns will mirror what the S&P 500 index does, with very small amounts of error for overhead, rebalancing, etc. There are other indexes like the Dow Jones, Russel 2000, etc. There are also indexes specific to sectors of the market, or geographical areas, or precious metals, or other commodities, whatever.
Since index funds are just algorithmically buying what the index has and rebalancing on occasion, they tend to have low overhead expenses. Especially large ones, since the overhead cost is split among way more dollars.
Some other funds (again, mutual or ETF form) have actual fund managers who are picking what stocks to buy. These tend to have higher expense ratios because you’re funding teams that actually do research and try to make smart investing decisions. However, their performance has generally (not always) been worse than a simple index fund.
I should also mention that some mutual funds can have weird shit, like load (they take a percentage of your money right off the top). They may also have minimum buy-in, etc. That’s becoming less common over time, but it’s definitely still around with more niche funds.
Another thing about funds is some of them are closed-end funds. They raise a specific amount of money by selling a specific number of shares in their IPO, then they never issue more shares, and if you want to sell them, you need somebody to buy them from you. That could be at a premium or a discount. This is in contrast to open-ended funds, which simply take your money and give you new shares when you buy in, then cash you out when you sell. Index funds will pretty much always be open ended funds, and closed end funds tend to be things that invest in other things like municipal bonds, or utilizing leverage so they can’t just cash people out whenever.
TL:DR;
If you don’t know what you’re doing, you’re probably looking for open ended, broad index funds with no load, no fees, and low overhead expenses. The ETF vs mutual fund format really doesn’t make all that much difference.
If you kind of know what you’re doing, you can look at narrower open-end funds (e.g. “emerging markets” or “tech” or “growth” or “value”) with low overhead expenses.
Be wary of funds that charge fees, have high overhead, are closed ended, or have load. They aren’t necessarily bad, but you need to know what you’re signing up for.
Options
With a call option, the stock price just needs to be below the strike price at expiration for the option to be worthless. When buying options, you need the stock price to move in your favor in a rapid fashion, so that your option has more value than what you bought it for.
To put it simply, in a short stock transaction the broker loans you stock to sell in the market, and you promise to buy it back and return it to them later.
People buying options are buying insurance contracts. People selling options are the insurance brokers.
Remember, when selling options we’re really betting against stock price movement, rather than betting for it.