It’s not only a bad hair day. It’s a bad commute day. And it’s a bad day for the quants, according to DealBreaker’s readers.
“The worst day ever,” one reader tells DealBreaker. Another describes it as “a bloodbath.”
In particular, statistical arbitrage hedge funds—StatArb, as they say—are said to have taken a beating in the last couple of days. For all you investment bankers in M&A, a typical statistical arbitrage strategy is to look for stocks whose prices usually move together but have recently diverged. They then place take positions intended to make money when the usual relationship is re-established. Sometimes this means shorting stocks that have unexpectedly risen or buying stocks with downside divergence. The idea is to make money from temporary mispricing in the market.
A number of DealBreaker readers have written in to say that the StatArbs are in trouble.
“The trading volumes are going thru roof, to the point that the program trading desks servers are crashing,” one reader writes. “For what it's worth, I think it's part of the unwinding of leverage from June and July. A number of multi-strategy shops are looking at losses and can't even get a bid on certain swaps, fixed income and derivatives. So, what's a risk manager/CIO going to do? Sell the most liquid part of their book.”
None of the computers or gerbils running the StatArb books would comment to DealBreaker.
Posted by anon , Aug 08, 2007 5:11PM
that picture is outa control (looks like my porn control room, strangely, but with more tickers less uh, other things)
Posted by A.Non.E.Mous , Aug 08, 2007 5:24PM
Jesus...is that really someone's desk! Looks like a hellish way to spend the day to me.
Posted by , Aug 08, 2007 5:32PM
LTCM unavailable for comment.
Posted by roger , Aug 08, 2007 5:45PM
the number of screens in a trading room is inversely proportional to the common sense of its occupants.
Posted by QuantStar , Aug 08, 2007 5:48PM
Mo' Monitors, Mo' Problems.
Oh yeah and not all StatArbs are down.
Posted by no-tor-i-ous , Aug 08, 2007 6:42PM
lol @ mo' monitors, mo' problems, biggie would have been proud (had somebody explained to him what a monitor was)
Posted by , Aug 08, 2007 7:15PM
i run a paper strategy and i did get a nasty shock for the last couple of days (especially today) but still up 7% ytd (incl. tc, no fees).
Posted by confucius , Aug 08, 2007 7:15PM
quantstar/roger haha def true (just don't tell jim simons he'll smoke your ass!)
Posted by bevo , Aug 08, 2007 8:15PM
It wasn't all that much fun for some of us Stoneage long/short guys either.
Posted by AJ , Aug 08, 2007 9:45PM
Heard that its goldman's quant fund not global alpha having the most trouble... so this might be along those lines
Posted by div , Aug 09, 2007 1:59AM
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Posted by div , Aug 09, 2007 2:04AM
Great Blog.People go online just about everyday to do activities such as checking their email, researching information, to get their news and surf the web. At some point in time, you may have wondered whether you can put your computer to work and earn some extra dollars in the process. So what are the best online home based businesses that you can start? Get more info here http://www.squidoo.com/best-online-home-based-business-101/
Posted by A.Non.E.Mous , Aug 09, 2007 9:46AM
Just think how much money you could make in a home based business if you put all the computers shown in the picture to work!
Posted by ford , Aug 09, 2007 2:32PM
stories like this are part of the problem not the solution
Posted by ford , Aug 09, 2007 2:33PM
stories like this are part of the problem not the solution