Monthly Archives: June 2010

New Quantitative Finance Community

There is a new Quantitative Finance community in incubation at stackexchange.com.   I’ve a big fan of mathoverflow and stackoverflow, having found both to be the best sources of information and problem solving within their respective areas.   In order for the community to have a permanent and free home, it must show a sizable interest base.  Please visit the link above and provide your email address in support of the community.

Here is a quote from the founding member which best describes the motivations for creating this community:

I’m a researcher at a long running multi-billion quantitative hedge fund. I previously worked at Goldman Sachs, which due to its size was able to foster a strong internal community. As a researcher in a hedge fund, I have fairly limited opportunities for collaboration when it comes to learning more about the investment industry and finance as a whole. In short, there are no good, free learning resources for someone involved in finance.

The best available option has been Wilmott. The Wilmott forums are home to a very large community of scholars and professionals. Unfortunately, I find that it can be very difficult to monitor the forums, and even more difficult to find answers to questions that were asked there in the past. Moreover, the forums frequently include controversial or offensive discussions that can detract from everything else.

As such, I am seeking to create a new community that specifically addresses the needs of finance professionals and academics on the StackExchange network. StackExchange is a network built by the creators of StackOverflow.com.  If you haven’t used StackOverflow, I strongly recommend it for programming questions. It’s much more effective than any other format at posing questions and getting answers in very specific technical areas.  If you have any programming questions, you should give it a try and see how quickly the correct answer is given.

This new Quantitative Finance site would be more akin to MathOverflow, where mathematicians gather to ask and answer specific math questions. The beauty of the MathOverflow is that it is a site for expert, by experts. Any non-specific, ill-formatted, or otherwise offensive question gets closed by the community almost immediately. So the attention can always be focused on interesting math questions.

In short, visit the incubating Quantitative Finance community and lend your support.  Thanks!

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Fat Finger

I’ve been doing some manual trades now and then.  Was at the gym this morning and thought to buy an equity.

Dumb thing to do:  Sent in the request from my iphone, accidentally multiplying the amount by 10x.   I ended up long with a 600K$ position that did not want.   For whatever reason could not manage to put in the sell from the phone and was getting worried that I could not properly monitor the appropriate exit.    Had to leave mid-exercise and handle.

Luckily  exited with a few thousand in profit, but could have gone the other way.

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Filed under strategies