Has this place died?

Some basic math:

CME Crude Oil: Initial margin now $5100 (had been significantly lower), and with the fall in Crude prices this margin is now all the way up to 7% of the notional value of the Oil.

Equities: RegT margin 50% of notional. If you qualify for "Portfolio Margin" (as many serious traders do) you can get the margin down to 20% or so if you hold a hedged portfolio.

So, at a minimum, you can obtain 3 times as much leverage in Crude Oil (and Natural Gas) as in Equities.

And for a hedged Equities portfolio, the kind you can lever up, you are looking at daily moves of +/-0.75% or so. In Crude and NatGas, it's twice that much, 1.5% or so a day.

So, in terms of leveraged vol, if that makes sense, you get at least 6 times as much to play with in Crude as in Equities.

And costs? The bid-ask spread on Crude is usually $0.01 during the trading day, or roughly 0.01%. In equities, you have to be trading stocks like AAPL to get a spread that narrow.

 

To answer the original question : no it has not died.
Holidays, breaks, etc...
just now I thin P&R is getting very active!

Next year, time to contact back friends - contact severed to protect them- and
few of them here as well!!!

 

Just to put in my 2 cents after discovering this thread. I'm not sure what this placed used to be like as I have only been around a year, but I find it to be better than excellent considering its free. Having gone to some of the other websites that pop up when you do goggle searches for specific questions as an example, the other sites seem just way too commercial to me.

When you spend enough time in here and become familiar with the consistent posters, its easy to get a sense of who posts quality and who is just trolling. The fact that many members on here have years worth of posting history speaks volumes. There are also many members who remain in the background often but do contribute in the form of personal messages.

So I think given the fact that this site is free, its nice that there is hardly any commercial influence, and there are more than enough experts here to help. I wouldn't want it much busier, and although I certainly understand that the goal of any website is to increase traffic, I think the community here, the members and admin, are doing an excellent job of keeping it unbiased yet civil.

 

Many people have been sold a bill of goods when it comes to trading. With all the trading school scams, get-rich-quick books and other hustles, even smart and well-educated people have sometimes been duped into thinking that trading is the one area where wealth comes easily. So no surprise that many of the low-information crowd have been sucked in as well.

 

lol, i have to point out (having done so here before) my best buddies coworker who is a captain at a major airline. this guy and his wife were lulled in to an options guru (gary williams) 7 years ago with spreadsheets promises of 25% gains per month with his system.

needless to say i gave him my background as a full time trader and told him carefully that what he is promised was not possible. he went on to tell me "pilots are smarter than most people and i have determined this is possible" "i met other pilots retired on this system"

i was floored..now go to 2014...he is broke..having used his 401k to fund this training, pc's, Christian ra ra bullshit, et al.. my head is still spinning on what this guy and his wife did to their lives.

so, yes hubris and supposed intelligence (i personally believe the guy is so dumb he thinks he's smart) sends a lot of money in to the market for simple people like me to skim!

 

http://ir.cboe.com/press-releases/2014/sep-04-2014a.aspx

Is this going to attract volume or will it remain obscure?

 

Interesting post. From what I know from watching American Greed is that pilots are very easy to scam. They seem to fall for "affinity" type scams at an alarming rate and your saying that he pointed out about other pilots getting rich confirms my thoughts about the affinity nature of these scams. Pilots and dentists are extremely gullible based on my albeit unscientific observation. surf

 

Baron, I'm not talking about overall intelligence. Rather intelligence as it relates to quantitative analysis and trading. A pilot knows more then a Doctor about flying and a Doctor knows more about medicine then a pilot. THAT is the problem. As you pointed out, doctors and pilots come to this website with ZERO quantitative background or even a basic understanding of simple math. LOL. You would be shocked how many people on here can't even compute a compounded return vs a simple return. It's why you have doctors on this very website that say things like, I just want to make 15% a month, that's all. If they had just a f*cking basic understanding of numbers, they would know that at 15% a month they would own the entire world 5 times over in 10 years. But I'm sure the guy knows a lot about high blood pressure and statin drugs. Hell there are PHDs on here that still think selling out of the money puts is free money. LOL.

 

I agree with 95% of what you post here, Mav. However, being a long time participant, I need to disagree that edges were not posted or available here. For many years in the 2001 -2007 era they were plentiful. let me list the two primary ones.

1, Last Atlantis & Metoxx--- This firm had amazing software with a tremendous edge for inter-exchange option arbitrage. It was free money while it lasted and Metoxx taught traders just for the asking from elitetrader. I know because I had the privilege of working for the firm and experiencing the free money for about 6 months before the edge went away. That was a monster edge that was given out on elite trader.

2. Meeting major hedge fund managers was a tremendous edge I was able to use. One example, since you came to one of the parties back in 2005, I think Mav was Vic Niederhoffer. I made enough contacts from that one relationship I made here on elitetrader to raise large sums in capital over several years to place with a variety of trading programs-- that now allows me to live without much worries about the necessities and to do what I want, when I want. If that wasn't a major edge in life, I don't know what was-- thanks to elite trader.

3. Back in day, news and rumors would often be posted here first. Some of these would have been able to turn huge profits had they been acted on. This has completely ended.

surf