I can see Wilmott forum very focused around data processing analysis with all computing power, opposed to ET forum where seems everything is more about visual analysis and manual handling Look at here, technical forum from Wilmott with 35000 members http://www.wilmott.com/categories.cfm?catid=4 Though i have some knowledge of easylangauge, VB+Excel, SQLserver, access,... I don't understand any of discussions Now, I have been told trading isn't science, even their forum sponsors differs from ET which geared more toward programing or some seems non-trading related to me at least What is your take on this? Should i sign up? Do you really need too much of digital power
i know a few of the players there. wilmott is mainly quant trading, arb, exotics, and the like. they are traders for inst. desks and not retail. imo also keep in mind, for example, 100MM type funds are not flexible animals. hence the move towards arbs, exotics, etc. find a happy medium --RS
Yeah, I keep track of Wilmott, I was a member over there before ET, hence different handles. Problem is that Wilmott is much more focused on pricing models rather than my current interest which is on market microstructures. So I am keeping track of the discussion there a bit less. It is not just system programming (which I am completely interested in), it is also the analytical models over there. There are people that believe pricing and modeling is trading, and then there are people who believe otherwise. In terms of participant quality, there are a little more pure academic discussions over there, so there a little more brain teasers, but less market and rumors. There are just as many trolls and fanatics over there.
What you mean by exotics? and are you saying many100MM funds still don't apply them or these techniques dying edge today? Thanks for extra confusion
Intersting, can you further explain in details the term microstructures, and are you refering to pricing models as studies like Bjerksund-Stensland, Black- Scholes,...available in TS8 that used for Option trading? Are pricing and modeling each can be separate elements of strategy designing? Also do you find much benifit from their disscution,as they aren't easy to absorb? Pardon my ignorance
Funny ...I've pointed people back to that forum in more than one of my posts here so far.....Three things to offer you as advice....1)They know what they're talking about and aren't affraid to share ideas because we all went to school for the same things anyhow....2.) If you feel threatened by some of the words there use www.Wikipedia.com ... Most everything as we all know is only difficult because we aren't use to the teminology....and 3.)Although those guys are are gushing with brain power....the majority of them would sh*t their pants if they ever were told they would have to be the one to actually trade the money. Most of them are just financial data modelers/computer programmers and have never seen a hard day of trading in their life...So don't be so intimidated by any means, because you are probably already a step ahead... Vizion
The standard pricing models assume a somewhat perfect and efficient market, for instance option pricing. I am much more interested in price drifts, order books (based from Roll model) and time series (like the works that Andrew Lo's group at MIT is doing), O'Hara's work on informed trading, etc. The general idea is that maybe we can explain some of the "irrational" behaviors by the market during a fast market. The general idea is that market is a random walk with noise, and I am trying to focus on the causes of the "noise". Also, the implication is that price drifts (noises) should be applied in a pricing framework (back to pricing models again), so that the "theoretical prices" can be adjusted according to some of the market structures. Naturally, back to trading, my systems currently take advantage some of the ideas to do very short-term trades to exploit the price "noises". Maybe one day I would distill this stuff into a good long journal paper, I have wrote a couple of conference papers, etc, just to write the ideas and preliminary results down.