TheRiskBlog

Volatility can be really bad for your long time performance. Before you can think, the market hits your stop only to bounce back a few minutes later.
The flash crash on May 6th was an awful example for this.
If your stop is close, you will surely get kicked out in one volatile move. But if you enlarge your stop too much, you hurt your Riskmanagement. A loss that’s too high for your account.
But how can our positions survive a volatile phase?

It is common knowledge that sometimes we lose and sometimes we win as traders. That’s what happens and the only important thing is the result at the end. Did you earn more or did you lose more?

I read an Article that says a lot about Recessions and when they end. Peter Cohan from the Daily Finance Blog shows you what role the “National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)” plays and what they are looking for to finally come out with a statement everybody wants to hear:  The Recession is over.

Sometimes you get carried away by a moving stock and since you want to participate you add it to your portfolio. Most of the times you have watched the stock for a long time but didn´t have the guts to invest in it. Or you did invest in it only to find out that it turned south the very next moment. The market had just waited for you to jump in. Once in a time though you find that magic stock, you invest in it and to your surprise it goes on and makes money, lots of it. Shouldn´t you be a bit suspicious? Here is such a stock

The SEC said last Friday that it wants to charge Goldman with fraud. This has caused quite some turbulence in the markets. But what is the SEC’s charge against Goldman Sachs actually telling us?

For most investors and traders risk is something they need to accept in order to come up with decent returns. Most of the times risk is measured in your account by how much you are losing when trading different positions. But sometimes risk shifts and it is not measured in the account any longer. When this occurs some positions can be made bigger without risking more but you need to know how to find out when this happens.

Very often a customer wants to learn all there is about the futures markets. He is not interested in the opportunity to make money in equities, all he wants is to trade futures. Now, there are a few things to know about these markets and how to deal with risk when trading futures. Here are things you really need to know…

Today’s post deals with media phenomenons, that for us as traders can be very important.
As we know markets are made by people who sell and buy. And most of these people read newspapers or news related websites. So if we are able to discover what interests them the most, it helps us creating a better opinion about the markets.

A While ago Brett Steenbarger posted a quite interesting questionaire at his Blog that helps you to define your curent attitude.

There is quite a bit math involved with risk management. To be on the safe side we have to cope with ratios, P&L equations, risk engines, no trade zones, beta, volatility and so on. Most of this stuff is straight forward though and can be done with only a little knowledge of the formulas behind it. But here is an article about something that has not yet found its way into risk management.