Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Funny charts from Zero Hedge

In this chart, analysts estimated the change in Philly Fed index, forming a nice bell curve. Just one problem: it is wrong by 8 standard deviations.



These cute little sine waves appeared in the price of a bond bear ETF (upper chart) and natural gas (lower chart). Some high frequency trading algorithm made the price oscillate. I don't understand why anyone would want to do that, but the commentors speculated that it drives out human investors. Oscillations make stop losses explode. For example, if someone owning a stock has a stop loss order saying "sell if price goes below 26.60" or someone shorting a stock has a stop loss order saying "buy if price goes above 26.90", then oscillations explode those limits, driving out human investors.




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