Monthly Archives: June 2012

Normal service resumed?

After a few weeks of feed problems with the blog, we are hoping that everything is sorted. In the next few days a choice to receive the blog via email should appear wherever you can sign up to the newsletters.  You should not sign up via Feedburner.  If you have already been receiving the blog … Continue reading

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Change of RSS feed

Due to problems with Feedburner, we are changing the RSS feed.  If you subscribe via RSS, then you will need to resubscribe (after some brief period). Email subscriptions should transfer okay (though you should not expect to get this post via email).  But there is some possibility that some will get dropped. Sorry for the … Continue reading

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Release of Portfolio Probe version 1.05 plus blog problems

June has been a good month for releases of Portfolio Probe and a bad month for disseminating the blog. Version 1.05 This is a minor release, primarily to fix some bugs, but a little sugar slipped in as well. bug: when forced trades created a portfolio that satisfied all of the constraints, then all “random” … Continue reading

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US market portrait 2012 week 26

US large cap market returns. Fine print The data are from Yahoo Almost all of the S&P 500 stocks are used The initial post was “Replacing market indices” The R code is in marketportrait_funs.R Subscribe to the Portfolio Probe blog by Email

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Two new, important books on R

Two books were recently published that are sure to help R grow even faster. R has a reputation, partially deserved, for being hard to learn.  These books will help.  The first makes learning easier, the second can make learning less necessary for initiates. I have not yet touched either book. R for Dummies The authors … Continue reading

Posted in Book review, R language | 1 Comment

To R or not to R, and other events

New events To R, or not to R, that is the question The Statistical Computing Section of the Royal Statistical Society presents a one-day event on 2012 June 29. The details of the day.  See in particular the abstract for “Teaching statistics: a pain in the R?” by Andy Field — it involves a sheepdog … Continue reading

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High frequency trading and the volume clock

A pictorial summary of “The Volume Clock: Insights into the High Frequency Paradigm” by David Easley, Marcos M. Lopez de Prado and Maureen O’Hara. “HFT” means “high-frequency trading/trader”, “LFT” means “low-frequency trading/trader”. Legend holds that Nathan Mayer Rothschild used racing pigeons to front run his competitors and trade on the news of Napoleon’s defeat at … Continue reading

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Cross sectional spread of stock returns

A look at a simplistic measure of stock-picking opportunity. Motivation The interquartile range (the spread of the middle half of the data) has recently been added to the market portrait plots.  Putting those numbers into historical context was the original impulse. However, this led to thinking about change in stock-picking opportunity over time. Data Daily … Continue reading

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US market portrait 2012 week 25

US large cap market returns. Fine print The data are from Yahoo Almost all of the S&P 500 stocks are used The initial post was “Replacing market indices” The R code is in marketportrait_funs.R Subscribe to the Portfolio Probe blog by Email

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Smoothing the market for alpha

How to get money to alpha, and vice versa. The problem Let’s focus on two groups: People who have money and want alpha People who have alpha and want money When there is a cross between those two groups, there is happiness. Identifying Group 1 is easy.  Identifying people who want money is not difficult … Continue reading

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