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Wall Street’s Trading Desks Endure Worst First Half in a Decade

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11–20 of 76 posts

Re: Wall Street’s Trading Desks Endure Worst First Half in a Decade

#11

A lot of our clients work in investment banks. There’s been a long (since the election) and growing narrative that the market will correct any second now... any second. Meanwhile the market has gone up up up. Part of that, I believe, is because most of these trading desks sit in one place - NYC, a super liberal anti trump environment - so it’s hard not to buy into the narrative and go risk off which means you would h…

It’s definitely a strange market. My worry is that the poor get basically no benefit from this (nor the tax cuts, nor the policies). They’ve gotten a 3% raise in the last year after several years of no unemployment and double digit growth for the stock market, and you can bet that’ll fall away after any downturn. It’s like we’ve created a perfect system to make the rich richer while not dealing with pesky inflation because wages are stagnant.

Re: Wall Street’s Trading Desks Endure Worst First Half in a Decade

#12

A lot of our clients work in investment banks. There’s been a long (since the election) and growing narrative that the market will correct any second now... any second. Meanwhile the market has gone up up up. Part of that, I believe, is because most of these trading desks sit in one place - NYC, a super liberal anti trump environment - so it’s hard not to buy into the narrative and go risk off which means you would h…

We are back in a market manipulated by central banks. I call it “junkie mode”, you can tell because when there is bad economic news the market goes up, as it expects central banks to pour more liquidity/lower rates, lifting asset prices, like a junkie waiting for its fix. A healthy market goes down on bad economic news.

I think you shouldn’t forget December last year, which was a pretty clear warning shot. The last 6 months of gains could be reversed very quickly.

Re: Wall Street’s Trading Desks Endure Worst First Half in a Decade

#13

Off-topic discussion below. This is the most vile dark pattern I have seen in recent times. On loading this page, there is an auto-playing, muted video. When you press its pause button, it is unmuted and keeps playing. Only when you press the pause button AGAIN does it actually stop playing. At some point when implementing that feature someone said "Sure, I'm OK with that". What went wrong there?

> What went wrong there?

nothing out of the ordinary, probably some team had to increase some company wide KPI of engagement, and likely every team has their own spin on it.

it was ab tested and provided statistically significant increase on video engagement, which was likely defined as "people interacting with the player", in the end you see a chart with engagement growing due to experiment x,y,z.. and everybody is happy and convinced they are doing the right thing.

Re: Wall Street’s Trading Desks Endure Worst First Half in a Decade

#15
post #4

> And technological advancements have narrowed spreads in many areas of trading. > “Part of the problem is that it’s too late to hedge interest-rate volatility, there’s not currency volatility to hedge. Speculators need volatility to hedge and enter the market.” Sounds like a good thing to me. > New rules limited lenders’ ability and willingness to make principal bets with their own money Anyone know what regulation…

The smaller players are doing worse - at least on the trading side that the article is talking about. Even well-bankrolled foreign operators like Deutsche Bank and Nomura are too small to make money and are exiting the market bit by bit, and anyone who is smaller than that just doesn't have the economies of scale (Not just on regulatory compliance but to be competitive on pay). There are a few niche players who carved out a place to be profitable, like Imperial Capital, but if they grew any bigger, one of the big 5 would just buy them.

Re: Wall Street’s Trading Desks Endure Worst First Half in a Decade

#16

Off-topic discussion below. This is the most vile dark pattern I have seen in recent times. On loading this page, there is an auto-playing, muted video. When you press its pause button, it is unmuted and keeps playing. Only when you press the pause button AGAIN does it actually stop playing. At some point when implementing that feature someone said "Sure, I'm OK with that". What went wrong there?

Advertisement is a cancer. It is time we forbid it instead of making it fund every website in existence.

Re: Wall Street’s Trading Desks Endure Worst First Half in a Decade

#17
I'm going to lay everything I have on the line next week by trying to catch a short position on index futures by Monday morning, July 22, 2019. My guess for Sunday is a big dip down, followed by dead cat bounce for somewhere at or near the open Monday morning.

Sell the rallies as long as we are below ES ~8,000 / NQ ~3,000. Would be interesting to see MSFT, for instance, take a 70%-75% haircut in the next X years. [SPX 666 ??]

This is not investment advice.

Re: Wall Street’s Trading Desks Endure Worst First Half in a Decade

#18
post #11

A lot of our clients work in investment banks. There’s been a long (since the election) and growing narrative that the market will correct any second now... any second. Meanwhile the market has gone up up up. Part of that, I believe, is because most of these trading desks sit in one place - NYC, a super liberal anti trump environment - so it’s hard not to buy into the narrative and go risk off which means you would h…

It’s definitely a strange market. My worry is that the poor get basically no benefit from this (nor the tax cuts, nor the policies). They’ve gotten a 3% raise in the last year after several years of no unemployment and double digit growth for the stock market, and you can bet that’ll fall away after any downturn. It’s like we’ve created a perfect system to make the rich richer while not dealing with pesky inflation b…

I don’t pretend to believe I can predict the market... I suspect flight to quality is playing a role. If America is in a precarious situation, how would we position Europe (brexit, macro trade immigration), the Middle East (Iran, war), South America (Venezuela melt down) and Asia (trade war, militarization)?

A lot of money is pouring into the US because it is relatively stable. Helps that US companies have favorable tariff policy, economic policy and a competitive landscape.

Re: Wall Street’s Trading Desks Endure Worst First Half in a Decade

#19
post #16

Off-topic discussion below. This is the most vile dark pattern I have seen in recent times. On loading this page, there is an auto-playing, muted video. When you press its pause button, it is unmuted and keeps playing. Only when you press the pause button AGAIN does it actually stop playing. At some point when implementing that feature someone said "Sure, I'm OK with that". What went wrong there?

Advertisement is a cancer. It is time we forbid it instead of making it fund every website in existence.

It will end only when there is a viable alternative and as of now there is none.

Re: Wall Street’s Trading Desks Endure Worst First Half in a Decade

#20

A lot of our clients work in investment banks. There’s been a long (since the election) and growing narrative that the market will correct any second now... any second. Meanwhile the market has gone up up up. Part of that, I believe, is because most of these trading desks sit in one place - NYC, a super liberal anti trump environment - so it’s hard not to buy into the narrative and go risk off which means you would h…

>I believe, is because most of these trading desks sit in one place - NYC, a super liberal anti trump environment

I would disagree. Most of the bankers where I worked last were happy with Trump winning.

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