FX Trading-System Boom Fuels Liquidity Concerns

FX Trading-System Boom Fuels Liquidity Concerns

We're Hiring: Executive Support Specialist (Top Financial Firm, NYC)

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Candidates MUST HAVE green card, US CITIZENSHIP, or valid current h1b with AT LEAST 3 YEARS LEFT.


Call or text 203-29-QUANT 203.297.8268 if you have any questions and are qualified for this role or others posted.

Please speak clearly if leaving a voicemail, and let me know the role you are applying for and if you have sent a resume or not. You may call or text at any time. All discussions and messages are fully confidential...

Email resume onto QuantRec @gmail.com & Quant at QuantRec dot com.

Goto http://www.QuantRec.com for updates on jobs, bookmark it!

Also include the best times to reach you over the near term (this week & or next week).

Candidates MEETING MOST OF the SPEC below will be contacted PROMPTLY.
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Executive Support Specialist (Top Financial Firm, NYC)

Need an extraordinarily bright technologist to provide direct technical support to the firm's senior management.

The candidate will work closely with our IT systems staff and will be responsible for projects covering a wide range of technology.

On-site and off-site support for all technology-related needs of the firm's senior management: installation, configuration, and troubleshooting of desktops, laptops, and mobile devices; researching, testing, and evaluating new technology products and; developing new monitoring and administration tools to automate maintenance tasks; as well as involvement in firm-wide technology projects.

The ideal candidate will have a computer science or engineering degree, extensive knowledge of Windows and/or UNIX environments, some programming and scripting ability (perl, python, shell, etc.), as well as excellent verbal and written communication skills. 

Successful candidates will get broad exposure to enterprise technologies and an opportunity to collaborate on large scale systems engineering projects.
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- 0 to 5 years of experience
- Experience in enterprise environments such as large finance firms, tech companies, or university IT labs
- Excellent communication skills both written and verbal are an absolute necessity
- GPA of 3.2 or higher and SAT verbal of 650 or greater
- Programming experience is a plus

We're Hiring: HIGH FREQUENCY EQUITY TRADER (Top Tier Prop Trading Firm, Chicago)

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Candidates MUST HAVE green card, US CITIZENSHIP, or valid current h1b with AT LEAST 3 YEARS LEFT.


Call or text 203-29-QUANT 203.297.8268 if you have any questions and are qualified for this role or others posted.

Please speak clearly if leaving a voicemail, and let me know the role you are applying for and if you have sent a resume or not. You may call or text at any time. All discussions and messages are fully confidential...

Email resume onto QuantRec @gmail.com & Quant at QuantRec dot com.

Goto http://www.QuantRec.com for updates on jobs, bookmark it!

Also include the best times to reach you over the near term (this week & or next week).

Candidates MEETING MOST OF the SPEC below will be contacted PROMPTLY.

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HIGH FREQUENCY EQUITY TRADER

Seeking highly-motivated and focused equity trader with financial engineering/quantitative credentials. The successful candidate will identify and execute trading opportunities in cash equivalents and ETF’s using a combination of real time and proprietary analytics. The position requires an enthusiastic person with superlative analytical and technical skills, proven quantitative background and personal qualities who desires to contribute immediately within all levels of the team.

JOB REQUIREMENTS

High aptitude for analytical and quantitative thinking

Propose trading strategies and algorithm enhancements

Monitor trading performance and devise improvements

Ability to react quickly and accurately in an electronic trading environment

Proven record of continually driving strategic, scalable trading methodology

Excellent organizational skills

Values teamwork

Effective communicator within all mediums

EXPERIENCE AND EDUCATION

At least 5+ years experience with equity trading on multiple exchanges and Dark Pools

Reg NMS knowledge necessary

Expert knowledge of order management, smart order routing and fee structures

Undergraduate degree in statistics, math, science, or another quantitative discipline; advanced degree preferred

Established statistical and quantitative background

After Years of False Hopes, Signs of a Turn in Housing

After Years of False Hopes, Signs of a Turn in Housing


"The housing market is starting to recover. Prices are rising. Sales are increasing. Home builders are clearing lots and raising frames.

Joe Niece, a real estate agent in the Minneapolis suburb of Eden Prairie, said he recently concluded a streak of 13 consecutive bidding wars over homes that his clients wanted to buy. Each sold above the asking price.

“I just had a home that wasn’t supposed to go on the market for two weeks sold before it even went on the market,” Mr. Niece said. “It’s definitely a lot different than what we saw” during the last few summers.

Like the economic recovery that began three years ago, what happens next is likely to prove a little disappointing. The pace of recovery will probably be slow, and the prices of many homes will continue to decline.

Millions of people remain underwater, owing more on their homes than the homes are worth, and unable to sell. Millions of families still face foreclosure. And a setback in the still-fragile economic recovery could easily reverse the uptick in housing prices, too."

Whistleblowers win $46.5 million in foreclosure settlement

Whistleblowers win $46.5 million in foreclosure settlement

The IPO Market Closed After Facebook. That's a Good Thing

The IPO Market Closed After Facebook. That's a Good Thing

In June, when Goldman Sachs (GS) banker Anthony Noto warned at the investment bank’s F.ounders conference recently that the initial public offering market was effectively going to be closed to Silicon Valley startups all summer, it shook up the Valley. This came on the heels of Y Combinator founder Paul Graham’s warning that the bad performance of Facebook’s (FB) IPO will hurt the funding market for earlier-stage startups.

Facebook IPO buyers deserved to lose

Facebook IPO buyers deserved to lose

"

The outcry over the pounding that Facebook IPO investors took might lead you think this was an unusual event. You would be wrong. Initial public offerings, especially those preceded by lots of hype, have long histories of burning shareholders, who rarely understand their low odds of success.

This fact seems little understood, despite the vast amount of research that supports it. University of Florida finance professor Jay Ritter, for example, has studied IPO performances for years. His findings suggest that IPO buyers are like rock climbers with frayed ropes. Examining 1,006 IPOs from 1988 to 1993, he found that the median IPO underperformed the Russell 3000 index of small-cap stocks by 30% during the three years after the offering. At the end of that period, 46% of the stocks were below their IPO price. Piper Jaffray, working for U.S. Bancorp, conducted a similar study, looking at 4,900 IPOs from May 1988 to July 1998. This 10-year period was great for the market: the S&P 500 gained 472%. But new IPOs didn’t keep pace. Fewer than one-third of the newly public businesses were trading above their IPO price by the decade’s end.

Some might assume that IPO winners easily offset the losers. There’s the story of Microsoft, up nearly 31,000% since its 1986 IPO. Then there’s Google which, according to Morningstar, has gained more than 400% since its 2004 public debut. But dreamers believing that blockbuster IPOs are the tickets to financial freedom need to examine the bigger picture.

Outsized IPO gains, according to Wharton Finance professor Jeremy Siegel, are rare. In a study covering 1968 to 2003, Siegel found that IPOs underperformed the small-cap stock index 29 out of 33 years. In his book The Future for Investors, he argues that “investing in IPOs is much akin to playing the lottery.” After tracking the performance of nearly 9,000 IPOs, he concluded that they’re a great deal for the investment banks that underwrite them but usually a terrible deal for regular investors.

This is a long-term trend. Siegel notes that 80% of IPOs during the period he studied underperformed the small-cap index since their IPO date. In fact, IPO investors lagged the S&P 500 by 2% to 3% per year. What’s more, the worst-performing initial public offerings tended to be those companies on which investors pinned the highest hopes.

The fact is, the world’s most profitable IPOs weren’t storybook stocks like Microsoft or Google, but dull businesses that didn’t open at silly prices. Fastenal, for example, provides building supplies. Since its 1987 IPO, which occurred a year after Microsoft’s, its shares have gained about 1,000% more than Bill Gates’s company.

Sexy stocks like Facebook are generally absent from lists of IPOs with the highest cumulative returns. Siegel compiled the 10 best-returning initial public offerings since 1968, measuring their overall stock and dividend gains to the end of 2000. The winners included Wal-Mart, St. Jude Medical, Mylan Labs and Limited Stores. The only tech company that made the cut was Intel. Popular businesses fetch expensive prices at IPO, which may please the founders and underwriters, but routinely leaves the little guy dangling."

In Caymans, It’s Simple to Fill a Hedge Fund Board

In Caymans, It’s Simple to Fill a Hedge Fund Board

Surprise: Stocks are having a strong year

Surprise: Stocks are having a strong year

"NEW YORK—For all the scary headlines -- a bailout of Spanish banks,JPMorgan's huge trading loss, the sputtering job market, Facebook's failed initial public offering -- it's a wonder stocks aren't down more this year.

Actually, stocks aren't down. That was a trick sentence. At the halfway mark for 2012, stocks are up more than 8 percent.

"People think we're down because memories are short," says Rex Macey, chief investment officer at Wilmington Trust Investment Advisors. "It feels like the market's been worse than it actually has."

The year began with investors focusing on corporate America's record profits and scooping up stocks. The Standard & Poor's 500 index surged 12 percent from January through March.

It looked like that gain might be wiped out in the second quarter. Investors worried about Europe's inability to find a lasting solution to its debt crisis and about slower job growth in the United States.

Then came Friday: European leaders announced a broad strategy to funnel money into failing banks and keep borrowing costs down for governments, and stocks soared around the world.

It all left the S&P 500 up a healthy 8.3 percent for the year.

What happens next will probably depend on corporate earnings again. For April through June, they are expected to fall 0.7 percent from a year ago, according to S&P Capital IQ, a research firm. That would be the first drop in nearly three years.

So far, though, stocks in the U.S. are trouncing those in many countries. European markets are nearly all down this year, and several are down more than 10 percent. And many big emerging markets are struggling. China is down 1 percent, Russia 7 percent and Brazil 14 percent.

The backdrop is a darkening economic picture. China's economy is slowing, consumer confidence in the U.S. has sunk for four straight months, and a report next Friday is expected to show a fourth straight month of weak job growth.

As if that weren't bad enough, U.S. companies, from retailers to consumer goods makers to technology firms, are talking down investor expectations for how much they'll earn over the next several months, and that is sinking their stocks."

Hutchin Hill Said To Exit Bets Against JPMorgan’s Whale

Hutchin Hill Said To Exit Bets Against JPMorgan’s Whale

Corporate Profits Just Hit An All-Time High, Wages Just Hit An All-Time Low

Corporate Profits Just Hit An All-Time High, Wages Just Hit An All-Time Low

Home prices rise for first time in 7 months

Home prices rise for first time in 7 months

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Home prices rose in April for the first time in seven months, though they are still near record lows, according to a report out Tuesday.

Average home prices increased 1.3% in April in 20 major markets, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller home price index. This comes after prices hit new post-bubble lows in March.

As of April, average home prices nationwide are back to where they were in early 2003. Prices are down 34% from their summer 2006 peak.

On an annual basis, prices are down 1.9%, though that's an improvement over March's decline. Ten cities -- Boston, Charlotte, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Miami, Minneapolis, Phoenix, Tampa and Washington D.C. -- had positive annual returns. (Where home prices are rising for the wrong reasons)

Artur Fischer: Debt Crisis Will Make Euro Stronger (VIDEO)

Artur Fischer: Debt Crisis Will Make Euro Stronger (VIDEO)

Banks Now Getting In Big Into Patent Deals

Banks Now Getting In Big Into Patent Deals

Mitt and the junk bond king Michael Milken

Mitt and the junk bond king Michael Milken

It was at the height of the 1980s buyout boom when Mitt Romney went in search of $300 million to finance one of the most lucrative deals he would ever manage. The man who would help provide the money was none other than the famed junk-bond king Michael Milken.

Chinese Data Mask Depth of Slowdown, Executives Say

Chinese Data Mask Depth of Slowdown, Executives Say

Administrator Melissa King gets 6 years in prison for stealing $42 million from Sandhogs union accounts

Administrator Melissa King gets 6 years in prison for stealing $42 million from Sandhogs union accounts

J.P. Morgan's Gatch says investors panicking

“Investing should not be gambling,” Mr. Gatch, the keynote speaker at the conference, told about 500 attendees. Mr. Gatch said that between 2006 and mid-March of 2012, unprecedented volatility in markets has spurred inflows of $1.1 trillion into fixed income. Equities and ETFs, on the other hand, have only had $221 billion in inflows during the same period.

He said the result is that investors' portfolios are unbalanced, and told his audience that investors need to diversify back into equities and alternatives."

High Frequency Trading Hotshots

High-frequency trading has grabbed headlines in the past year, but little is known about the top players in the business.

These speed-focused hotshots aren't household names such as George Soros or Warren Buffett. That's partly because of the the secretive nature of the industry, which has largely shunned the limelight, at least until recently.

Here's seven forces in the business. 

David Whitcomb and Steven Swanson

Photo credit: business.rutgers.edu|cseweb.ucsd.edu David Whitcomb (left) and Steven Swanson.

In all likelihood, the first true high-frequency trading operation got its start in the unlikely place of Mount Pleasant, S.C. What came to be known as Automated Trading Desk, or ATD, was launched in the late 1980s by a small group of finance and computer whizzes, including David Whitcomb and Steven Swanson.

Whitcomb, a finance professor at Rutgers University, had been alarmed by the failure of market makers during the crash of Black Monday, Oct. 19, 1987, when the stock market took its steepest ever one-day dive.  Convinced that computers could automate the function of market makers, who buy and sell stocks on behalf of clients, Whitcomb got in touch with James Hawkes, a former student who was teaching statistics at the College of Charleson in South Carolina. They eventually brought on a team of computer and math experts—including Swanson —and set up shop in Hawkes’ house.

Originally called Mount Pleasant, ATD tracked dozens of factors that impact stocks and rapidly calculated which direction those stocks would move. Swanson, who eventually ran the firm, came to believe that ATD’s computer-driven strategies could operate far more efficiently than a human trader. In 2007, Citigroup [C  Loading...      ()   ] purchased ATD for $700 million and Swanson became co-head of Citi’s global electronic trading group. He recently left the bank and is rumored to be starting up a new trading firm.

Dan Tierney and Stephen Schuler

In the mid-1990s Dan Tierney and Stephen Schuler, co-founders of high-frequency market making giant Getco, were floor traders banging elbows in Chicago’s futures and options pits. But as they witnessed the rise of electronic trading platforms all around them, they realized that they could soon be dinasaurs. In October 1999, on a Friday afternoon, they founded Getco—short for Global Electronic Trading Co.—over a handshake. They set up shop in a tinyChicago Mercantile Exchange office lined with computers and started trading futures contracts tied to the S&P 500.

They rapidly pushed into more securities, including Treasuries, ETFs andcurrencies. Today, Getco is one of the most active trading operations in the world.

Dave Cummings

David Cummings

Dave Cummings is known within the high-speed community as one of the smartest market-structure minds in the world. And yet he has never worked in either New York or Chicago—the two hubs of electronic markets. Instead, Cummings runs his world-class high-frequency trading outfit, Tradebot Systems, out of a small nondescript office in Kansas City.

Cummings got his start a pit trader swapping wheat futures at the Kansas City Board of Trade in the mid-1990s. But the cererbral Cummings, who’d earned degrees in computer programming and electrical engineering from Purdue University, quickly realized that the actions of pit traders could be replicated by a computer. In short order he designed a program and started trading with it in the late 1990s.

His timing was fortuitous, as a new generation of fast-moving electronic communications networks, or ECNs, had been popping up, competing with giants such as the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq. Cummings started trading stocks and ETFs on networks such as Island ECN, Archipelago and Brut. To Cummings’ dismay, however, in the early 2000s, the  NYSE and NasdaqOME [NDAQ  Loading...      ()   ] , rather than create their own electronic platforms, started to scoop up their rivals—NYSE Euronext [NYX  Loading...      ()   ]  merged with Archipelago; Nasdaq purchased Brut and then Island (which had merged with another elecronic market, Instinet). To create more competition, Cummings launched his own ECN—Better Alternative Trading System, or BATS. Today, BATS controls about 10% of U.S. stock market volume.

Manoj Narang

Photo credit: highfrequencytradingview.com Manoj Narang

Perhaps the most vocal advocate for high-frequency trading in the past year has been Manoj Narang, founder of Red Bank, N.J., trading shop Tradeworx Inc. The subject of a page-one New York Times article about the role of high-speed trading in the May 6 flash crash, Narang has forcefully argued that the trading style provides multiple benefits to everyday investors.

A math and computer expert, Narang worked at Wall Street firms such as Citibank and Goldman Sachs in the 1990s. He founded Tradeworx in 1999, initially selling trading software to retail investors. He later launched a hedge fund and in late 2008 started an ultrafast trading operation juggling S&P 500 ETFs such as “Spiders,” and about 300 stocks, at rapid speeds. Narang estimates that trading in Tradeworx’s HFT system, which has about $10 million in capital, accounts for about 3 percent of daily volume in Spiders.

Vincent “Vinnie” Viola

Photo credit: NIAF.org Vincent "Vinnie" Viola

Brooklyn-born Vincent Viola, known to friends as Vinnie, has long been a major player on Wall Street. A graduate of West Point, Viola earned his chops on Wall Street in the 1980s as a trader on the New York Mercantile Exchange. In 1987 he started a commodities trading firm called Pioneer Futures.

By the mid-1990s, he was vice chairman of the Nymex. In the 2000s, he ascended to the role of chairman and helped bring the exchange through 9/11 and the collapse of Enron. Viola stepped down in 2004 and spent his time running Pioneer and several other electronic trading operations.

In late 2008, Viola founded the International Derivatives Clearing Group, a clearing platform for interest-rate swaps. Early the next year, he started Virtu Financial, a high-frequency trading operation, in New York.

Viola also has interests outside trading. In 2004, he joined New York property mogul Bruce Ratner, among others, in the purchase of the New Jersey Nets basketball franchise.

Mark Gorton

Tower Research Capital, the high-speed giant founded by Mark Gorton, sits amid a sprawl of art houses, Chinese bodegas and exotic fashion stores just south of Canal Street in Manhattan. A serial entrepreneur, Gorton is known as something of a creative genius who just happens to run one of the most sophisticated trading outfits in the U.S.

He graduated magna cum laude from Yale University in 1988, then earned a masters degree in electrical engineering from Stanford University before taking a job with a defense contractor working on computerized speech recognition systems. After earning a degree from Harvard Business School, he took a job trading bonds for about five years at Credit Suisse First Boston.

Gorton and CSFB colleague Alistair Brown founded Tower in February 1998,  using their own money and cash from friends and family. The firm looked for small anomalies in relationships between securities. Gorton’s hunger for speed was so great that he decided to form his own brokerage to execute his trades, founding Lime Brokerage in 2000. It soon began to cater to other high-speed funds and today is known as one of the most sophisticated brokerages on Wall Street.

Richard Gorelick

Photo credit: Facebook Richard Gorelick

Like Manoj Narang, Richard Gorelick, chief executive of Austin, Texas-based high-frequency firm RGM Advisors, has been one of the more vocal defenders of the controversial trading practice.

Gorelick, who sports a law degree from the Georgetown University Law Center, helped found RGM in 2001 along with two computer software developers Robbie Robinette (a physics expert) and Mark Melton (electrical engineering and artificial intelligence).

RGM started trading US stocks but has expanded into multiple markets. The firm is known for its use of machine learning, a branch of artificial intelligence that crunches terabytes of data at high speeds in order to predict what will happen next.

Next Silicon Valley IPO: Where Nothing Could Go Wrong - Ponzify

Next Silicon Valley IPO: Where Nothing Could Go Wrong - Ponzify