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NASDAQ closes at a new all time record level

Now erases 203 point decline and close higher for the 1st time in 4 days

The major US stock indices are closing the day near highs for the day.

  • The NASDAQ closed at a record high surpassing the previous high of at 10020.35
  • The NASDAQ has closed at a record low for the 20th time in 2020
  • Apple closes at record high
  • Dow industrial average erased a 203 point decline
  • NASDAQ post longest win streak of 2020 (7 trading days)
  • NASDAQ is up around 12% on the year
  • Dow close higher for the 1st time 4 days
The final numbers are showing:
  • S&P index rose 20.45 points or 0.66% at 3118.19
  • NASDAQ index rose 110.35 points or 1.11% at 10056.42
  • Dow industrial average close up 150.81 points or 0.59% at 26024.23

Flood of Japanese money rushing to USD assets

Bloomberg report on Japanese investors, facing ongoing negative rates domestically, are buying dollars and risk assets

  • “The presence of the Japanese as the main carry trade driver seems to be growing as they must turn to overseas investments”
Demand for higher-yielding American assets growing
  • In April, Japan’s money managers bought the most U.S. corporate debt in eight years and the second-highest amount of equities in five years
  • “Japanese investors use yen to fund purchases of Treasuries or U.S. corporate bonds, for instance, to seek credit spreads and these flows are continuing,” said Koichi Sugisaki, a strategist at Morgan Stanley MUFG Securities Co. in Tokyo.
Check out USD/JPY … its net more or less unchanged, even a little lower, since November last year …. Without all the Japanese money leaving yen into USD it’d have to be lower I guess?
Bloomberg report on Japanese investors, facing ongoing negative rates domestically, are buying dollars and risk assets 

Major indices have worst day since March 16th.

Dow and S&P down for the 3rd day in a row

The major indices had there worst day since March 16 as concerns about the growth prospects and increases in coronavirus cases weigh on equities.  Initial jobless claims should another 1.5 million increase which certainly did not help.

  • The Dow is closing at the lowest level since May 27.
  • The Dow and S&P are down for the 3rd day in a row
  • all 30 of the Dow stocks close lower with Boeing the weakest at -16.42%
  • worst day since March 16 for the major indices
  • The NASDAQ index snapped it’s a 4 day win streak
  • Dow and S&P on track for its worst week in 3 months
  • S&P index closes below its 200 day moving average at 3013
  • the Dow industrial average is within 300 points of a 10% decline from the high (24824 is the level)
  • the Dow industrial average fell back below its 100 day moving average at 25123.55, but is closing just above that level at 25128.13
The final numbers are showing:
  • S&P index -188.04 points or -5.89% up 3002.10. The low for the day reached 2999.49. The high was way up at 3123.53
  • NASDAQ index fell -527.62 points or -5.27% to 9492.72. That was just above the low for the day at 9491.30. The high was up at 9868.02
  • The Dow industrial average fell 1861.82 points or -6.9% to 25128.13. The low for the day reached 25082.72. The high was up at 26294.08
big losers today included:
  • Boeing, -16.42%
  • United Airlines, -16.09%
  • Delta Air Lines, -14.01%
  • Citigroup, -13.37%
  • Schlumberger, -11.60%
  • Southwest Airlines, -11.58%
  • Marriott, -10.91%
  • Fiat Chrysler, -10.10%
  • Bank of America, -10.0%
  • Ford Motor, -9.9%
  • Wells Fargo, -9.83%
  • PNC financial, -9.62%
  • Goldman Sachs, -9.14%
  • IBM, -9.12%
  • J.P. Morgan, -8.37%
The pattern of airlines and financials are chief among the biggest decliners today.
The biggest gainer in the Dow 30 today was Walmart which only fell by -0.87%. Procter & Gamble was the next best performer with a -2.41% decline.
Were there any winners today?
  • Zoom increase by 0.54%

SOME WELL-KNOWN ALGORITHMIC STRATEGIES

On a broad sense most commonly used algorithmic strategies are Momentum strategies, as the names indicate the algorithm start execution based on a given spike or given moment. The algorithm basically detects the moment (e.g spike) and executed by and sell order as to how it has been programmed.

One another popular strategy is Mean-Reversion algorithmic strategy. This algorithm assumes that prices usually deviate back to its average.

A more sophisticated type of algo trading is a market-making strategy, these algorithms are known as liquidity providers. Market Making strategies aim to supply buy and sell orders in order to fill the order book and make a certain instrument in a market more liquid. Market Making strategies are designed to capture the spread between buying and selling price and ultimately decrease the spread.

Another advanced and complex algorithmic strategy is Arbitrage algorithms. These algorithms are designed to detect mispricing and spread inefficiencies among different markets. Basically, Arbitrage algorithms find the different prices among two different markets and buy or sell orders to take advantage of the price difference.

Among big investment banks and hedge funds trading with high frequency is also a popular practice. A great deal of all trades executed globally is done with high-frequency trading. The main aim of high-frequency trading is to perform trades based on market behaviors as fast and as scalable as possible. Though, high-frequency trading requires solid and somewhat expensive infrastructure. Firms that would like to perform trading with high frequency need to collocate their servers that run the algorithm near the market they are executing to minimize the latency as much as possible.

Adaptive Shortfall

Adaptive Implementation Shortfall algorithm designed for reduction of market impact during executing large orders. It allows keeping trading plans with automatic reactions to price liquidity.

Basket Trading

Basket Orders is a strategy designed to automated parallel trading of many assets, balancing their share in the portfolio’s value.

Bollinger Band

Bollinger bands strategy is a trading algorithm that computes three bands – lower, middle and upper. When the middle band crosses one of the other from the proper side then some order is made.

CCI (more…)

Take Money Off the Table

  • A speculator should make it a rule each time he closes a successful deal to take 50% of his profits and lock this sum up in a safe deposit box. The only money that is ever taken out of Wall Street by speculators is the money they draw out of their accounts after closing a successful deal.
  • There is no better time than after a large “win” on a stock. Cash is your secret bullet in the chamber, keep a cash reserve.
  • The single largest regret I have ever had in my financial life was not paying enough attention to this rule.

Broad indices squeeze higher as sanctions on China are less than feared

Dow has best performance in 7 weeks. Second straight week of gains for the major indices

The major US stocks and see some squeeze higher into the close as sanctions on China are less than feared.  The NASDAQ led the way with a gain of 1.29%. The Dow ended lower as investors shifted back to the technology growth stocks.
The final numbers are showing
  • S&P index up 14.58 points or 0.48% at 3044.31
  • NASDAQ index rose by 120.88 points or 1.29% at 9489.87
  • Dow industrial average fell by 17.53 points or -0.07% to 25383.13.
In Europe today the story was different with most the indices closing near their session lows.
Dow has best performance in 7 weeks. Second straight week of gains for the major indices_For the trading week, the Dow industrial average led the way with a 3.71% gain in the US. The NASDAQ index lagged as earlier in the week the flow funds were into the more beaten down industrial stocks. Nevertheless the NASDAQ gained by 2.21%. The S&P index rose by 3.25%.
In Europe, the France’s CAC rose by 5.64% and the Spain’s Ibex nearly rose 6%. The UK FTSE was the under performer with a 1.02% gain.

Eurostoxx futures +1.1% in early European trading

  • German DAX futures +1.0%
  • UK FTSE futures +2.4%
  • Spanish IBEX futures +1.0%
This follows a round of solid gains across the board to start the week yesterday, in which we saw the DAX starting to break out to fresh highs in nearly two months:
DAX

Trading Discipline -Anirudh Sethi

The foundation of all functional trading strategies is discipline. Without discipline, you’ll be harmed by the risks of active trading. These risks include fear, greed, and missed opportunity. Only by holding yourself accountable and remaining disciplined in this current time will you be ready to achieve your trading goals.

If you put you focus in your trading strategy before learning discipline, the process of your strategy won’t really matter. Discipline is what makes successful trading strategies possible. Discipline is why technical indicators, risk management techniques, and trading principles pay off finally at the end.

It is very easy for traders to feel overwhelmed. Once losses begin to compile, it can often be very tempting to take an early exit. Once gains accumulate, it can be very tempting to press your luck. Disciplined traders aren’t distracted by any particular price movement. They realized that their trading strategies produce net gains over-time when applied correctly.

As the foundation of trading, discipline is what is going to allow you to place your trading knowledge to good use.

 

3 Steps to Becoming a Trading Discipline Master:

Becoming a successful trader must require time and practice. However, there are still quite a lot of things you can do to enhance your level of discipline. When designing an efficient trading strategy, keep these subsequent things in mind:

  1. Have a transparent set of trading discipline rules to follow— If you don’t have guidelines how will you be ready to follow them? You can’t. So, set up some rules and begin to follow them.
  2. Start with something easy and grow your discipline — the efficient trading strategy for you is one you fully understand. Traders are likely to lose their sense of discipline when they are overwhelmed, nervous or confused. Once you begin small and start to possess success following your rules, you’ll gain confidence. Not sure where to start? Find the best trading strategies for your needs
  3. Make Your Goal Following Your Rules – Traders want to get money! However, we need our foundation first. If you can’t build a foundation then you’ll never ever make money trading. So, until you master following your rules, make it your goal to follow the principles, then from there when it’s established then you start to tweak elements of your strategy which will launch you into profitability. Here you’ll learn on the way to fade the momentum in Forex

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EXPLANATIONS OF COMMON TRADING PROBLEMS

Why Traders Naturally Cannot Follow Their Trading Plan

  • The brain automatically engages “distinct mechanisms” to handle these two scenarios differently: (i) risky situation where the probabilities are known, and (ii) ambiguous situation with incomplete information where historical probabilities provide only a clue. For the latter, there will be a “uncertainty circuit” that will raise a red flag to say “more information needed”.
  • This results in traders trying to do exactly what they planned while their brain fights them to find more information or to scramble in the face of a clear, but maybe only subconsciously perceived, threat.
  • Just because you decided on taking a long or short trading position, your “brain on uncertainty” doesn’t change how it goes about making judgment calls in uncertain circumstances. The basic process steps through the context-belief-perception cycle because it can’t help it.
  • Uncertainty means — at least to part of your neural and white matter networks — that a black bear, ready to eat all your apples (and you with them) could be just around the corner. The more uncertainty, the more you can realize how much you are relying on contextual clues in order to make sense of the situation.