Hedge Fund Methodologies - How To Price Spreads And Baskets

Introduction

Hedge funds are always in the media, and frequently regarded as secretive and esoteric.

This is largely due to a a lack of detailed specific information regarding what hedge funds actually do. To help combat this, I have decided to write a short series of articles describing how long/short equity strategies may be defined.

Long/short equity hedge funds generally go long certain shares. And short others. Some may maintain a market neutral position. This means that for every million pounds of stock that they hold, they'll short a million pounds of another stock. Others may have a long bias. For example, maintaining a 70% long, 30% short portfolio.

The portfolio selection processes can be discretionary or systematic. In this opening article, I shall describe the basic pricing process, and move on to technical selection processes at a later date.

Pricing Products

In order to compare stocks, the prices need to be normalised to enable a like for like comparison. For example, if stock XYZ goes up by 10% and stock ABC goes up by 10%, then we'd probably want a market neutral spread between the two to remain static.

This is commonly done by dividing prices by a "base price", where the base price is normally a recent historical price of the associated stock.

For example, if XYZ closed at 232 last night, we could set the base price to be 232. Assume XYZ opens at 250 the next morning. The rebased price would be 250/232 = 1.07759.

It is clear that this represents an overnight increase of 7.759%.

Now assume that ABC has moved from 450 to 459. Using 450 as the base price, the new rebased price would be 1.02.

The spread between XYZ and ABC is therefore:

1.07759 - 1.02 = 0.05759

ie. The spread has moved 5%.

So a trader who'd been long the spread over night, holding a market neutral position, would have made a 5% return on the nominal value of his position.

This concept can be expanded to baskets of shares. For example, if a trader wanted to trade a market neutral position of XYZ against a 50/50 weighted basket of ABC and DEF, the rebased spread would be:

n(XYZ) - 0.5 * n(ABC) - 0.5 * n(DEF)

where

n(X) = (Price of X) / (Base price of X)

In essense, these simple pricing methodologies are used to define new synthetic tradable products. Unlike normal shares, they do not follow lognormal random walks, and do not have an upwards drift. However, some traders and hedge fund managers believe that they possess inefficiencies that can be exploited.

Some of these inefficiencies will be investigated in later articles.

Jon C is an Internet Entrepreneur and Trader. If you have any questions regarding this article, please contact him via the comments for on

http://www.dawjee.com

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How to Pick a Profitable Forex Trading System

In the beginning of my trading career I was jumping from one trading system to another as soon as it gave me a few failing trades. I think it's a common thing among beginner traders to change system without even testing it.

Oftentimes I can hear traders argue which system is better or which trading style is more profitable. I believe that it all depends on trader's personality. One has a greater emotional control so he can sit and continuously monitor his trade. Some type of short-term trading strategy will suit him the best. Another trader is more patient. He can wait for his trade to mature for a few days. For this trader long-term trading systems are more relevant.

It is surprising to see that even very successful traders do not realize that a trading style must suit a personal trait of the trader to make him successful. Usually traders advocate their own trading style or system. Anyone who wants to become a successful trader needs to study himself before studying the market to know what is best for him.

Personally I dislike short -term trading suchlike scalping. Besides that it's emotionally challenging for me to watch continuous fluctuation of the market, there is another reason I don't practice scalping.

Scalping is a trading style that targets very few pips per trade. Therefore to make a significant profit one needs to make several trades a day. Brokers nowadays do not charge commissions for trades, but there is a spread. The more trades you execute the more pips in spread you lose. Let's say you scalping a currency pair that has 3 pips spread and you need to make 10 trades a day. By doing so you are already 30 pips behind. It will add up into 150 pips in a week.

A long term trading strategy on the other hand usually targets quite a large profit for a single trade. This style of trading suits me the best. I can analyze the market, set a trade and keep coming back to see how it evolves. No emotional overreaction. No huge number of trades to lose spreads on.

I don't mean to put down any trading style. What I mean is that you are the one who needs to choose what trading style suits you the best. Once you find that out buy studying yourself then success in trading will come easy to you.

Albert Schmidt is a part-time currency trader. After quite a few months of struggle he learned to make consistent profit trading in Forex. Review a trading strategy that he is trading successfully.

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