ask Dcifrths...well, anything...about finance/mkts/ports that is.

[Moonshine]

Barron,

Did you work in trading? There's an empty desk here next to me and I've been wondering if it used to be yours

[DcifrThs]

[ QUOTE ]
Barron,

Did you work in trading? There's an empty desk here next to me and I've been wondering if it used to be yours

[/ QUOTE ]

hehe. nope. never was officially a trader.

PM me as i'm curious where you work next to an empty seat [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

Barron

[quant_trader]

3 macro-strategy hedge fund

1. GSAM
2. Bridgewater
3. Mellon?

Am i close?

[DcifrThs]

[ QUOTE ]
3 macro-strategy hedge fund

1. GSAM
2. Bridgewater
3. Mellon?

Am i close?

[/ QUOTE ]

why does it matter where i worked? i don't want to train wreck anything and i'm more than willing to share what i learned and further delve into fin.mkt. analysis with this board. i love this stuff and will be interviewing w/ other funds for full on resaerch roles.

PM me if you'd like to discuss anything in particular off of the public boards.

Thanks,
Barron

[kimchi]

The likelyhood of becoming sucessful at day trading is far less than swing or position trading (which itself has around 90% mortality in the 1st year, probably much like poker).

There's too much pressure to be on your A1+ game every day, and many successful longer term traders have been quoted as saying that having a real-time quote screen on their desk is akin to having a one-armed bandit sitting there.

Day-trading appeals to gamblers and action junkies and actively encourages their vice through the perpetually flashing red and green quotes sending them into a trance.

The commission and slippage costs for day-trading would also be extremely difficult to overcome, and so you'd be limited to trading markets that move in a sufficiently wide daily channel.

Having said this, that graph (if true) is the dog's bollox.

[quant_trader]

just stumbled onto this thread, and was curious that's all. Since you mentioned "top 3 macro hedge fund", was just curious about what your def. of top 3 global macro hedge fund is. Are you guys quant driving, or?

[Statutory]

Barron,

I read a lot of your stuff on here, but to be honest, much of it is over my head. Nonetheless I really enjoy you posting. I'm looking for some general advice on how to invest my money.

I'm a 24 yo grad student/poker player. I live on <20% of my income and try to invest the rest for the long term. I don't have much faith in the US and don't want to be left helpless if the dollar and/or our country bust. The effect on my investment strategy is that I would like to be protected from US failure because if the US is a great success I should have many opportunities to recover what I missed out on in investments.

I could explain my current allocation, but I doubt any of my rationale matters, anyways it looks like this:

HSBC Direct 46%
Vanguard Money Market: 16%
Vanguard 500 Index: 7%
Vang Pacific Index: 7%
Vanguard European Index: 16%
IMMR (Sklansky's stock [img]/images/graemlins/blush.gif[/img]): 2%
ING Mutual Fund 5% (probably gonna sell this and move funds to vanguard)

All of my investments have made money, therefore, I don't think I should sell them to better balance my portfolio and incur taxes. I think I should be adding to my portfolio from funds currently in my savings accounts and from future earnings.

I see earlier in this thread you recommended the following:

30% global equities (F*CKING HEDGED)
30% global developed aggregate bonds (also hedged, but for some reason asset managers always hedge bond allocations but not equities)
15% developing world bonds (hedged)
15% global inflation linked bonds (hedged)
5% commodities
5% global real estate (hedged)


Would you change any of this based upon my details?

I am not really sure where my various investments fall into your categories. Nor do I have any clue how to go about replicating it in vanguard. Not sure how familiar you are with vanguard, but if you are, a "vanguard translation" would be awesome.

You follow all your categories with a hedging reference. I am not sure whether this means that category is in its self a hedge, or whether I must do something to hedge with it.

I see you recommend a lot of bonds. Do bonds have the same tax delaying effect as stocks?

Any advice and corresponding rationale would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[DcifrThs]

sorry for the delayed reply.

from the looks of it, your current allocation is 100% equity based. thats obviously not optimal

first off, in terms of taxes, i think that if you get dividends from any security and those are immediately reinvested in the fund (automatically via the fund where nothing gets shipped to you) then i don't think you pay taxes on it. I AM NOT sure about this though so taxes is not what i'm good for in this case.

you don't need to sell to increase your portoflio efficiency if you just keep investing so that'll work.

first thing i'd do is look for leveraged int'l TIPS fund via interactivebrokers.com. getting this fund leveraged by 2:1 would greatly increase diversification & boost risk adjusted returns while not sacrificing absolute returns.

leveraged nominal int'l S-T bond funds. same as above, leveraged 1.5-2:1.

bond funds are typically hedged so you don't have to worry about that.

next, i'd want to allocate new money to commodity funds & REITs in small amounts.

those changes would greatly increase your risk adjusted returns.

hedging your current equity allocations, though, takes some work [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

i've outlined an example of going through that in this thread, i think. basically you need to use futures to hedge the add-on risk of currency exposure you currently have. to do that, you first need to figure out what your currency exposure is in risk space. then work from there to get to the amt of futures of each currency you need to hedge.

there may be MSCI hedges sold as a package so that might be cheaper in terms of transaction costs. they won't be as accurate but would get a good part of the job done.

hope this helps,
Barron

[ifckladyluck]

[ QUOTE ]
Barron,

Did you work in trading? There's an empty desk here next to me and I've been wondering if it used to be yours

[/ QUOTE ]

where/what do you trade?

[poker_n00b]

I heard that FOREX trading cannot be beaten. It is a zero sum market, because it is so efficient and unpreditable. True?

What are the fundamental argumens that one can make a profit in forex trading?