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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Tories the main winner, UKIP the main loser in the March 20

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  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,624

    Well here are some points in HFTs' favour.

    1/ they increase market liquidity by providing a constant supply of bids and offers

    Is that really true?

    I thought the basic principle of HFT systems was to sniff out large orders and then front-run them.

    So, let's say you put in an order for 10,000 shares of IBM. After you get the first 100, the HFT firm then buys 9,900 shares of IBM and moves the price up 0.1% or so. Said HFT firm then sells the shares back to you at a price 0.1% higher than you would otherwise pay.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 43,046
    rcs1000 said:

    Well here are some points in HFTs' favour.

    1/ they increase market liquidity by providing a constant supply of bids and offers

    Is that really true?

    I thought the basic principle of HFT systems was to sniff out large orders and then front-run them.

    So, let's say you put in an order for 10,000 shares of IBM. After you get the first 100, the HFT firm then buys 9,900 shares of IBM and moves the price up 0.1% or so. Said HFT firm then sells the shares back to you at a price 0.1% higher than you would otherwise pay.
    The basic principle of HFTs is to act as an electronic market maker, capturing the spread. If you think about it without any of the available literature, if 50-75% of the liquidity is provided by HFTs then that will in itself tighten spreads.

    As for the Lewis contention (ie yours of "front running"), then yes, there are practitioners who attempt to determine the size and direction of other market participants but these are being technologised out of existence by a number of yet more innovative measures.
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 42,147

    AndyJS said:

    Patrick said:

    Stuart

    Looks like YES is reeling them in but not nearly fast enough to be ahead in 6 months' time.

    I think Salmond will probably be able to switch a few percentage points in his favour during the last couple of weeks. So No needs to be ahead by more than about 5 points at that stage.
    Another factor to bear in mind is the methodology of the polling companies. Some firms are showing a much tighter race (eg. "The Gold Standard" ICM). Some are showing huge No leads. Not all of them can be right.

    So, when betting, you have to make a judgement on with side of the Poll of Polls average is most likely to be correct. That is why I refuse to make a prediction. I really think that this is far, far too tight to call this far out.
    I wonder if any of the pollsters are going to make an effort to gauge opinion of hitherto non-voters (c.1m), a group that the Yes campaign is targetting strongly and who won't be featuring much in current polls. Hard to do almost by definition, but interesting to find out how many might vote in the referendum (if turnout is 75%+, hundreds of thousands of them will be voting), and how their vote will split.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,624
    rcs1000 said:

    Well here are some points in HFTs' favour.

    1/ they increase market liquidity by providing a constant supply of bids and offers

    Is that really true?

    I thought the basic principle of HFT systems was to sniff out large orders and then front-run them.

    So, let's say you put in an order for 10,000 shares of IBM. After you get the first 100, the HFT firm then buys 9,900 shares of IBM and moves the price up 0.1% or so. Said HFT firm then sells the shares back to you at a price 0.1% higher than you would otherwise pay.
    As an aside, that was exactly how locals at LIFFE used to make their money. They would spot a representative from a large firm (Morgan Stanley, Goldman, etc.) recieving a large order from a customer, and would attempt to get out in front of it.
  • NeilNeil Posts: 7,983

    a group that the Yes campaign is targetting strongly and who won't be featuring much in current polls

    Why wont they be featuring much in current polls?
  • TOPPING said:

    As to what I believe is Lewis' contention of "front running" - there is little evidence that HFT significantly distorts the price paid or received by both institutional or individual investors although I appreciate that certain practitioners attempt to determine the size and direction of other market participants.

    I haven't read Lewis' book and I don't therefore know what, if anything, he characterises as "front running". FR is generally understood as the practice where your broker hears your order, sees the market move your way so then takes that price for himself and gives you a worse one, which is however the price you asked for.

    Eg you offer to sell at 49
    Market moves to 50
    Broker sells at 50 for himself
    Broker buys from you at you 49
    Broker says "you're done at 49 sir"
    So you've sold at 49
    Broker has bought at 49 from you and sold to the market at 50
    Broker makes 1 pip and you're none the wiser

    None of that is available to an HFT because they cannot see your order flow to abuse it. What they can do is study the order stack on each side on the assumption that well bid => price ise imminent, well offered => price fall imminent. This is a legitimate and valid trading strategy based on cues anyone can see.

    How an HFT may get in front of you is typically because he can see 10 lots on the bid at 49 and 10 on the offer at 50. You then wade in offering 100 at 50, at which point the HFT jumps in and sells 1 at 49 then switches to joining you on the offer with 1 lot. Your 100 lots then may or may not trade but if they do he's betting he can buy 1 lot back better than 49. This only works on a trivial scale - if he tried to match your size he'd rebalance the order book - and also entails market risk for the HFT (because you may cancel your order).

    If HFT were a surefire way of making money, eventually there would be nobody left but HFTs, because everyone else would have lost all their money to HFTs.
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 42,147
    Neil said:

    a group that the Yes campaign is targetting strongly and who won't be featuring much in current polls

    Why wont they be featuring much in current polls?
    Perhaps I'm wrong, but I'm making the assumption that people who aren't usually politically engaged enough to vote, aren't going to be arsed to sign up to polling panels.

  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758

    TOPPING said:


    Charles said:


    HFT is a terrible distortion of the market that has very little value added and huge volatility risk



    wrong.
    A small prize for the least illuminating exchange on PB, ever.
    High frequency trading - supercomputer driven automated trading to exploit arbitrage. Think about the "flash crash" and things like that
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 43,046

    TOPPING said:

    As to what I believe is Lewis' contention of "front running" - there is little evidence that HFT significantly distorts the price paid or received by both institutional or individual investors although I appreciate that certain practitioners attempt to determine the size and direction of other market participants.

    I haven't read Lewis' book and I don't therefore know what, if anything, he characterises as "front running". FR is generally understood as the practice where your broker hears your order, sees the market move your way so then takes that price for himself and gives you a worse one, which is however the price you asked for.

    Eg you offer to sell at 49
    Market moves to 50
    Broker sells at 50 for himself
    Broker buys from you at you 49
    Broker says "you're done at 49 sir"
    So you've sold at 49
    Broker has bought at 49 from you and sold to the market at 50
    Broker makes 1 pip and you're none the wiser

    None of that is available to an HFT because they cannot see your order flow to abuse it. What they can do is study the order stack on each side on the assumption that well bid => price ise imminent, well offered => price fall imminent. This is a legitimate and valid trading strategy based on cues anyone can see.

    How an HFT may get in front of you is typically because he can see 10 lots on the bid at 49 and 10 on the offer at 50. You then wade in offering 100 at 50, at which point the HFT jumps in and sells 1 at 49 then switches to joining you on the offer with 1 lot. Your 100 lots then may or may not trade but if they do he's betting he can buy 1 lot back better than 49. This only works on a trivial scale - if he tried to match your size he'd rebalance the order book - and also entails market risk for the HFT (because you may cancel your order).

    If HFT were a surefire way of making money, eventually there would be nobody left but HFTs, because everyone else would have lost all their money to HFTs.
    he is defining a new definition of front running - say you have a large order to buy in a dark pool or as an iceberg in the lit. An HFT will send in - "ping" - a small sell order to see if anyone is buying. If they find a buyer (100 shares of your much larger order) they might move the lit market up so your order in the dark, which is pegged to those lit markets, will move up also and then they will "hit your bid" in the dark. You will then have paid up.

    That is illegal.

    What you are describing is a short term market micro-structure model embedded in an algorithm which uses the factors you describe to predict short term price movements.

    That is most certainly not illegal and aims for an optimal execution.
  • Charles said:

    TOPPING said:


    Charles said:


    HFT is a terrible distortion of the market that has very little value added and huge volatility risk



    wrong.
    A small prize for the least illuminating exchange on PB, ever.
    High frequency trading - supercomputer driven automated trading to exploit arbitrage. Think about the "flash crash" and things like that
    Indeed, but also think that the flash crash happened once and the only victims were other HFTs.
  • Stuart_DicksonStuart_Dickson Posts: 3,557
    If you look at the pricing of all the Lib Dems seats, here are the Favourites:

    LD 36
    Lab 12
    Con 8
    SNP 1

    So, on current prices the LDs are set to lose approx 21 MPs. That makes NOM much harder.
  • isamisam Posts: 41,118

    Neil said:

    a group that the Yes campaign is targetting strongly and who won't be featuring much in current polls

    Why wont they be featuring much in current polls?
    Perhaps I'm wrong, but I'm making the assumption that people who aren't usually politically engaged enough to vote, aren't going to be arsed to sign up to polling panels.

    Isnt that the same for UKIP polling? If so many are previous DNVs
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,624

    TOPPING said:

    As to what I believe is Lewis' contention of "front running" - there is little evidence that HFT significantly distorts the price paid or received by both institutional or individual investors although I appreciate that certain practitioners attempt to determine the size and direction of other market participants.

    I haven't read Lewis' book and I don't therefore know what, if anything, he characterises as "front running". FR is generally understood as the practice where your broker hears your order, sees the market move your way so then takes that price for himself and gives you a worse one, which is however the price you asked for.

    Eg you offer to sell at 49
    Market moves to 50
    Broker sells at 50 for himself
    Broker buys from you at you 49
    Broker says "you're done at 49 sir"
    So you've sold at 49
    Broker has bought at 49 from you and sold to the market at 50
    Broker makes 1 pip and you're none the wiser

    None of that is available to an HFT because they cannot see your order flow to abuse it. What they can do is study the order stack on each side on the assumption that well bid => price ise imminent, well offered => price fall imminent. This is a legitimate and valid trading strategy based on cues anyone can see.

    How an HFT may get in front of you is typically because he can see 10 lots on the bid at 49 and 10 on the offer at 50. You then wade in offering 100 at 50, at which point the HFT jumps in and sells 1 at 49 then switches to joining you on the offer with 1 lot. Your 100 lots then may or may not trade but if they do he's betting he can buy 1 lot back better than 49. This only works on a trivial scale - if he tried to match your size he'd rebalance the order book - and also entails market risk for the HFT (because you may cancel your order).

    If HFT were a surefire way of making money, eventually there would be nobody left but HFTs, because everyone else would have lost all their money to HFTs.
    There are some specific allegation in the Michael Lewis book that are interesting. The one I found most concerning was that prices were changing when a trader at a large firm merely entered the ticker of a stock into the software supplied by the exchange. (I forget the name of the exchange). That is, if you were a large investor and you entered 'IBM' into the buy ticker box, then the HFT system would automagically front-run you. Said exchange was - he claimed - owned by a number of HFT firms - and because it had the lowest 'exchange fees' then brokers' were obliged to go to it first to offer best value to their customers.

  • Richard_NabaviRichard_Nabavi Posts: 30,821
    Never mind HFT computer trading skimming off sub-0.1% profit margins, I think we should be more worried about the 10% to 20% market hits caused by Miliband and (in a real 'you couldn't make it up' development) the Financial Conduct Authority shooting their mouths off.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 78,406
    Can't find the EU commissioner (British) market with either Ladbrokes or Paddy Power.

    Is there some some sort of village 'leak' on this I am unaware of ?
  • isamisam Posts: 41,118
    AndyJS said:

    "Channel 4's Nigel Farage documentary was so cloying even UKIP fans would find it sickly, says Neil Midgley":

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/tv-and-radio-reviews/10735505/Nigel-Farage-Who-Are-You-Channel-4-review.html

    It was almost a PPB for UKIP... people who didn't know much about Farage would probably love him after it, political anoraks may have found it a bit contrived.

    A bit in the way professional gamblers, who watch EVERY football and cricket match on tv can get a bit annoyed with the commentators repetition of cliches, whereas more casual fans love them
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,326
    Re HFT, think back a decade or so when a human "market maker" took a fat spread for not really doing very much. Spreads increase, liquidity dries up and ultimately all market participants lose out. HFT has resulted in much larger volumes and the margins are very much smaller than before. HFT is not perfect but people forget that the alternative is not necessarily better.
  • NeilNeil Posts: 7,983

    Neil said:

    a group that the Yes campaign is targetting strongly and who won't be featuring much in current polls

    Why wont they be featuring much in current polls?
    Perhaps I'm wrong, but I'm making the assumption that people who aren't usually politically engaged enough to vote, aren't going to be arsed to sign up to polling panels.

    I'm sure the pollsters who use panels in that way are confident of their techniques in correcting for any such effect (not that it seems particularly large when looking at how they weight their samples according to past voting behaviour).
  • TOPPING said:

    he is defining a new definition of front running - say you have a large order to buy in a dark pool or as an iceberg in the lit. An HFT will send in - "ping" - a small sell order to see if anyone is buying. If they find a buyer (100 shares of your much larger order) they might move the lit market up so your order in the dark, which is pegged to those lit markets, will move up also and then they will "hit your bid" in the dark. You will then have paid up.

    That is illegal.

    What you are describing is a short term market micro-structure model embedded in an algorithm which uses the factors you describe to predict short term price movements.

    That is most certainly not illegal and aims for an optimal execution.

    I would need more details of how these alleged "dark pools" operate, in particular why anyone would place bids or offers into one rather than another.

    However, taking what you say (he says?) at face value, what's described has been illegal in the UK under FSMA since 2000 - specifically, manipulating the price on one screen so as to obtain a payoff in another constitutes false and misleading information as to value or the supply / demand of an investment. It is market abuse, in so many words, and the sanction for it is anywhere between civil penalty and criminal depending on whether the FCA thinks it has a balance-of-probabilities case or a beyond-reasonable-doubt case.

    In fact, in the UK, you can be charged with this for lying to a price reporter if the reporter's prices are used to settle a regulated contract such as a future.

    It's also illegal in the US under comparable statutes, though offhand I can't remember which one.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 78,406

    If you look at the pricing of all the Lib Dems seats, here are the Favourites:

    LD 36
    Lab 12
    Con 8
    SNP 1

    So, on current prices the LDs are set to lose approx 21 MPs. That makes NOM much harder.

    The SNP will gain a few, UKIP might even get one or two...

    It makes NOM harder but not THAT much harder.
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 60,216
    I would offer this as an April Fool, but I suspect Jim Sillars is serious:

    The importance of this combination of plans will put Scotland in a strong negotiating stance against a very weak rUK position. We can operate successfully with a separate currency, whereas rUK has nowhere else to go. From that position of strength, we can write the terms of a currency union that reduce the Bank of England's role in Scottish fiscal policy, increase our representation on the Monetary Policy Committee, dictate its remit to take account not only of Scotland but the neglected parts of northern England and minimise the transfer of sovereignty involved in such a union.

    http://www.heraldscotland.com/comment/columnists/agenda-it-is-for-westminster-to-produce-a-plan-b-option-to-currency-union.23845527
  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 61,952
    Good morning, everyone.

    F1: I'd forgotten Bahrain's a night race this year. So, it'll be on at a civilised hour (about 4pm). The official site mini-forecast has Friday suffering thunderstorms...
  • AveryLPAveryLP Posts: 7,815
    edited April 2014
    Cost of Labour crisis?

    Some promising figures on Labour productivity from the ONS this morning.

    Short story is that productivity has been rising over 2013 and has now recovered ground lost since 2010, but is still back 3% on pre-recession. The trend though is the key and it is currently accelerating upward.

    As productivity gains are a key foundation for non-inflationary real wages growth, George and the government will be welcoming the news. Not so good however for Labour as productivity growth does little to perpetuate the "cost of living crisis" meme.

    Falls in oil and gas extraction and lower transaction volumes and values in the financial sector are both major and distorting influences on productivity stats. The overall picture elsewhere is much stronger. The financial sector should recover: oil and gas less likely to certainly in the short term.

    Commentary from ONS:

    Whole economy real output per hour fell for six consecutive quarters between Q3 2011 and Q4 2012, reflecting a combination of resilience in the labour market and sluggish output growth. Since the start of 2013 the average pace of output growth has accelerated while the average growth of hours worked has slowed a little, allowing a slow expansion of output per hour. Other measures of labour productivity show a broadly similar picture: output per worker and output per job both bottomed out in Q4 2012 and showed some signs of recovery through the course of 2013.

    Looking at annual levels of productivity, output per hour was around 1 percentage point below its level in 2010 in 2013 (and over 3 percentage points lower than the level in 2008, before the economic downturn). Output per worker and output per job had both regained their 2010 levels in 2013. This pattern reflects faster growth of hours worked than workers employed and the number of jobs; or equivalently, a small increase in average hours per worker and per job.

    Labour productivity movements in production industries have tended to be more volatile than those in services. Output per hour in production drifted downwards on a trend basis between 2010 and Q1 2013 and has see-sawed since then. In terms of levels, output per hour at the end of 2013 was almost 6 percentage points lower than in 2010, compared with less than 1 percentage point for the whole economy. This masks a rather better productivity performance by manufacturing, which is the largest component of the production industries, and reflects steep falls in labour productivity in the non-manufacturing components of production, especially the oil and gas industry.

    Labour productivity across all service industries closely mirrors that of the whole economy, reflecting the large weight of services in overall economic activity. On an annual basis, labour productivity in services has been broadly flat since 2010 measured either by output per hour or output per job.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758

    Charles said:

    TOPPING said:


    Charles said:


    HFT is a terrible distortion of the market that has very little value added and huge volatility risk



    wrong.
    A small prize for the least illuminating exchange on PB, ever.
    High frequency trading - supercomputer driven automated trading to exploit arbitrage. Think about the "flash crash" and things like that
    Indeed, but also think that the flash crash happened once and the only victims were other HFTs.
    And confidence.

    HFT has its value, but a lot of it comes at the cost of the retail investor.

    (I am talking about the equity markets, because that is what I know most about)
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 43,046

    TOPPING said:

    he is defining a new definition of front running - say you have a large order to buy in a dark pool or as an iceberg in the lit. An HFT will send in - "ping" - a small sell order to see if anyone is buying. If they find a buyer (100 shares of your much larger order) they might move the lit market up so your order in the dark, which is pegged to those lit markets, will move up also and then they will "hit your bid" in the dark. You will then have paid up.

    That is illegal.

    What you are describing is a short term market micro-structure model embedded in an algorithm which uses the factors you describe to predict short term price movements.

    That is most certainly not illegal and aims for an optimal execution.

    I would need more details of how these alleged "dark pools" operate, in particular why anyone would place bids or offers into one rather than another.

    However, taking what you say (he says?) at face value, what's described has been illegal in the UK under FSMA since 2000 - specifically, manipulating the price on one screen so as to obtain a payoff in another constitutes false and misleading information as to value or the supply / demand of an investment. It is market abuse, in so many words, and the sanction for it is anywhere between civil penalty and criminal depending on whether the FCA thinks it has a balance-of-probabilities case or a beyond-reasonable-doubt case.

    In fact, in the UK, you can be charged with this for lying to a price reporter if the reporter's prices are used to settle a regulated contract such as a future.

    It's also illegal in the US under comparable statutes, though offhand I can't remember which one.
    It might also be possible for an HFT to work out that you are a buyer of a stock and then buy before you in the markets. Your order when it comes will then push up the price at which point the HFT will sell out of its position and might even sell you the stock it has just bought.
  • rcs1000 said:

    There are some specific allegation in the Michael Lewis book that are interesting. The one I found most concerning was that prices were changing when a trader at a large firm merely entered the ticker of a stock into the software supplied by the exchange. (I forget the name of the exchange). That is, if you were a large investor and you entered 'IBM' into the buy ticker box, then the HFT system would automagically front-run you. Said exchange was - he claimed - owned by a number of HFT firms - and because it had the lowest 'exchange fees' then brokers' were obliged to go to it first to offer best value to their customers.

    That would constitute insider dealing and is illegal everywhere. The knowledge that "a trader at a large firm merely entered the ticker of a stock into the software supplied by the exchange" is material non-public information, and if someone else, but not everyone else, is able to trade off that, then it appears to me prima facie that a criminal act has occurred.

    If OTOH the information has been made available to everyone, and some have built machines to trade off it, that is different. Possibly anyone could trade off that in the same way.

    If the pre-order data is made available only to those HFTs that own the exchange, well, that would be illegal again, but I have to wonder how such an exchange could possibly get or keep a license to operate in a proper country. CTFC are very hot on pre-trade transparency and equal access to market information.

    Perhaps hosting dodgy HFT markets is something YES ought to look into as they'll not have much other industry left.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,624

    If you look at the pricing of all the Lib Dems seats, here are the Favourites:

    LD 36
    Lab 12
    Con 8
    SNP 1

    So, on current prices the LDs are set to lose approx 21 MPs. That makes NOM much harder.

    I would be surprised if the SNP gained only one from the LibDems. I would also be surprised if the Conservatives gained 8. I can think of two seats where the LibDems are likely gainers.

    However, there are several seats in the 36 which are more than 50% likely to be lost.

    32-38 (sorry about the wide spread) sounds about right.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 43,046
    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    TOPPING said:


    Charles said:


    HFT is a terrible distortion of the market that has very little value added and huge volatility risk



    wrong.
    A small prize for the least illuminating exchange on PB, ever.
    High frequency trading - supercomputer driven automated trading to exploit arbitrage. Think about the "flash crash" and things like that
    Indeed, but also think that the flash crash happened once and the only victims were other HFTs.
    And confidence.

    HFT has its value, but a lot of it comes at the cost of the retail investor.

    (I am talking about the equity markets, because that is what I know most about)
    wrong (!).

    It is the retail investors that benefit from HFTs on account of lower dealing costs, increased liquidity and narrower spreads. If anyone is at risk it is large institutional investors trading large blocks of stock which might incur significant market impact (of course they do so on behalf of retail investors if that is what you mean). Studies on the benefits or otherwise of HFT usually focus on institutional investors.
  • glwglw Posts: 9,954

    I would offer this as an April Fool, but I suspect Jim Sillars is serious:

    The importance of this combination of plans will put Scotland in a strong negotiating stance against a very weak rUK position. We can operate successfully with a separate currency, whereas rUK has nowhere else to go. From that position of strength, we can write the terms of a currency union that reduce the Bank of England's role in Scottish fiscal policy, increase our representation on the Monetary Policy Committee, dictate its remit to take account not only of Scotland but the neglected parts of northern England and minimise the transfer of sovereignty involved in such a union.

    http://www.heraldscotland.com/comment/columnists/agenda-it-is-for-westminster-to-produce-a-plan-b-option-to-currency-union.23845527

    Are you sure that's not an April Fool?
  • OblitusSumMeOblitusSumMe Posts: 9,143

    If you look at the pricing of all the Lib Dems seats, here are the Favourites:

    LD 36
    Lab 12
    Con 8
    SNP 1

    So, on current prices the LDs are set to lose approx 21 MPs. That makes NOM much harder.

    In an abstract sense, of course, the smaller number of seats going to parties other than the big two makes NOM less likely. However, in the specific scenario that we find ourselves in, it makes rather less of a difference.

    8 Conservative gains from the Lib Dems is not enough to give a Conservative majority, so the Conservatives would still need to gain seats from Labour to gain an overall majority. While this is possible it currently looks very unlikely, so this path to avoiding NOM can be ignored.

    Labour need to win 68 seats to gain an overall majority, and your figures suggest that they will take 12 from the Lib Dems, leaving them with only 56 to pick up from the Tories. In fact, Labour currently have 13 non-Tory seats in their top 68 target list (including one Green, two Plaid Cymru and one SNP with nine Lib Dems), so the loss of non-Tory seats to Labour implied by your figures is not that different from what would happen under UNS were Labour to gain an overall majority.

    Furthermore, if you assume that the Lib Dems will hold 36 seats then that is still better than the 20 they won in 1992, and the last time (before 1997) that the Liberals had that many seats was, 1931 (if you combine Liberal, Liberal National and Independent Liberal they had a total of 72), or 1929 when they had 40 seats.

    So from a historical perspective the chance of NOM is still a lot higher than it was at any point since WWII, given that the Tories were so uncompetitive in 1997, 2001 and 2005 that there was little the Lib Dems could do to avoid Labour winning a majority.

    I would say that "much harder" is an exaggeration. I would say that your predicted fall in Lib Dem seats by 3/8ths is the only thing prevents NOM being an absolute certainty.
  • Stuart_DicksonStuart_Dickson Posts: 3,557

    Neil said:

    a group that the Yes campaign is targetting strongly and who won't be featuring much in current polls

    Why wont they be featuring much in current polls?
    Perhaps I'm wrong, but I'm making the assumption that people who aren't usually politically engaged enough to vote, aren't going to be arsed to sign up to polling panels.

    Shhh...

    They'll find out soon enough. ;)
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 60,216
    A brilliant April Fool (or "it had bloody well better be") in the Telegraph comments:

    DAVID CAMERON EXPOSED AS CURRENCY UNION 'MOLE'

    The Prime Minister himself revealed the government's revised position on currency union should Scotland vote YES in the referendum next September, the Press Association will report later today. The Guardian's Nicholas Watt is persona non grata in 10 Downing Street for breaking the story before Mr Cameron could confide in senior colleagues.

    Sources close to the Prime Minister report he is “incandescent” with Watt. The understanding was that the story would not break until after the spring conference of the Liberal Democrats in Scotland. It was part of a grander Coalition strategy to abandon the 'Project Fear' negative campaign to Labour in favour of a new “Sunshine” strategy pursued by the Coalition parties. The only other cabinet member who knew was the deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, who proposed the idea to Mr Cameron.

    It was intended that the “Sunshine” branding be announced in a keynote speech by the Scottish LibDem leader, Willie Rennie, who knew nothing of the wider strategy. The plan was then for the prime minister and his deputy to include Chancellor George Osborne and his Treasury number two, Danny Alexander, in an official launch today of the Sunshine strategy.

    The Clegg-Cameron calculation was that “Sunshine” would better help save the Union and isolate Labour as the negative purveyor of “Project Fear”, thus conferring electoral benefit on the Coalition parties at Labour's expense. But the plan misfired when The Guardian published part of the plan prematurely and both the Coalition and Better Together are left to mount damage -limitation operations.


    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/scotland/10735671/Salmond-would-love-a-positive-campaign.html
  • john_zimsjohn_zims Posts: 3,399
    @glw

    'I would offer this as an April Fool, but I suspect Jim Sillars is serious:'

    Good sense of humor.
  • NeilNeil Posts: 7,983

    Neil said:

    a group that the Yes campaign is targetting strongly and who won't be featuring much in current polls

    Why wont they be featuring much in current polls?
    Perhaps I'm wrong, but I'm making the assumption that people who aren't usually politically engaged enough to vote, aren't going to be arsed to sign up to polling panels.

    Shhh...

    They'll find out soon enough. ;)
    You think these kind of polls are systematically biased for this reason, Stuart?
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    TOPPING said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    TOPPING said:


    Charles said:


    HFT is a terrible distortion of the market that has very little value added and huge volatility risk



    wrong.
    A small prize for the least illuminating exchange on PB, ever.
    High frequency trading - supercomputer driven automated trading to exploit arbitrage. Think about the "flash crash" and things like that
    Indeed, but also think that the flash crash happened once and the only victims were other HFTs.
    And confidence.

    HFT has its value, but a lot of it comes at the cost of the retail investor.

    (I am talking about the equity markets, because that is what I know most about)
    wrong (!).

    It is the retail investors that benefit from HFTs on account of lower dealing costs, increased liquidity and narrower spreads. If anyone is at risk it is large institutional investors trading large blocks of stock which might incur significant market impact (of course they do so on behalf of retail investors if that is what you mean). Studies on the benefits or otherwise of HFT usually focus on institutional investors.
    I'm in a meeting on IFRS9 so haven't responded properly.

    Not advocating a move back to the old fashioned approach. More concerned about the algorithim driven trading measured in miliseconds. I'm a believer in the value of fundamental analysis - there is value in arbitrage and in liquidity, but UHFT adds minimal value at high cost for other market participants
  • isamisam Posts: 41,118

    Neil said:

    a group that the Yes campaign is targetting strongly and who won't be featuring much in current polls

    Why wont they be featuring much in current polls?
    Perhaps I'm wrong, but I'm making the assumption that people who aren't usually politically engaged enough to vote, aren't going to be arsed to sign up to polling panels.

    Shhh...

    They'll find out soon enough. ;)
    Shows my naivety, I didn't know that people who answered polls were signed up to them, ie were interested in politics anyway

    That must explain why UKIP are always so vastly underestimated in polling
  • shadsyshadsy Posts: 289
    One of the more interesting aspects of the indyref betting has been the very large of money people have been staking on YES getting over 55%

    YES Vote %
    12 Under 30
    7 30-35
    4 35-40
    5/2 40-45
    4 45-50
    7 50-55
    6 55+

    The 6/1 seems way too short to me, but it's been hammered down all the way from an opening 20/1. 2/3 of all the money staked on this market has been on that option.
  • AlastairMeeksAlastairMeeks Posts: 30,340
    We seem to be wandering into ouija polling, where posters with a particular party allegiance hold hands, close their eyes and let the spirits of the electorate guide their views of the current state of play.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 78,406
    shadsy said:

    One of the more interesting aspects of the indyref betting has been the very large of money people have been staking on YES getting over 55%

    YES Vote %
    12 Under 30
    7 30-35
    4 35-40
    5/2 40-45
    4 45-50
    7 50-55
    6 55+

    The 6/1 seems way too short to me, but it's been hammered down all the way from an opening 20/1. 2/3 of all the money staked on this market has been on that option.

    20-1 sounds like a great price.

    6-1 not so much.

  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 42,147
    shadsy said:

    One of the more interesting aspects of the indyref betting has been the very large of money people have been staking on YES getting over 55%

    YES Vote %
    12 Under 30
    7 30-35
    4 35-40
    5/2 40-45
    4 45-50
    7 50-55
    6 55+

    The 6/1 seems way too short to me, but it's been hammered down all the way from an opening 20/1. 2/3 of all the money staked on this market has been on that option.

    2/3s? Wow, interesting. I guess that may be characterised as blind optimism in certain quarters!
    Thanks for the heads up.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 78,406
    Charles said:

    TOPPING said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    TOPPING said:


    Charles said:


    HFT is a terrible distortion of the market that has very little value added and huge volatility risk



    wrong.
    A small prize for the least illuminating exchange on PB, ever.
    High frequency trading - supercomputer driven automated trading to exploit arbitrage. Think about the "flash crash" and things like that
    Indeed, but also think that the flash crash happened once and the only victims were other HFTs.
    And confidence.

    HFT has its value, but a lot of it comes at the cost of the retail investor.

    (I am talking about the equity markets, because that is what I know most about)
    wrong (!).

    It is the retail investors that benefit from HFTs on account of lower dealing costs, increased liquidity and narrower spreads. If anyone is at risk it is large institutional investors trading large blocks of stock which might incur significant market impact (of course they do so on behalf of retail investors if that is what you mean). Studies on the benefits or otherwise of HFT usually focus on institutional investors.
    I'm in a meeting on IFRS9 so haven't responded properly.

    Not advocating a move back to the old fashioned approach. More concerned about the algorithim driven trading measured in miliseconds. I'm a believer in the value of fundamental analysis - there is value in arbitrage and in liquidity, but UHFT adds minimal value at high cost for other market participants
    A friend of mine who has done a PhD in number theory has started a HFT hedge fund. He is aiming for ~25% ROI.
  • AveryLPAveryLP Posts: 7,815
    shadsy said:

    2/3 of all the money staked on this market has been on that option.

    Are you running a Sterling book?

  • Richard_NabaviRichard_Nabavi Posts: 30,821
    Pulpstar said:

    He is aiming for ~25% ROI.

    Aren't we all!
  • A bit O/T but I'm impressed by this:

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/10735666/British-sniper-in-Afghanistan-kills-six-Taliban-with-one-bullet.html

    A British sniper in Afghanistan killed six insurgents with a single bullet after hitting the trigger switch of a suicide bomber whose device then exploded...The 20-year-old marksman...hit his target from 930 yards (850 metres) away...The same sniper, with his first shot on the tour of duty, killed a Taliban machine-gunner from 1,465 yards

    Blimey. 930 yards is like leaning out of a window in the Gherkin and potting someone standing on the deck of HMS Belfast. 1465 yards is like picking them off from a window in the Barbican.
  • Pulpstar said:

    He is aiming for ~25% ROI.

    Aren't we all!
    Indeed. HFTs regularly go bust because someone else is cleverer.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    Pulpstar said:

    Charles said:

    TOPPING said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    TOPPING said:


    Charles said:


    HFT is a terrible distortion of the market that has very little value added and huge volatility risk



    wrong.
    A small prize for the least illuminating exchange on PB, ever.
    High frequency trading - supercomputer driven automated trading to exploit arbitrage. Think about the "flash crash" and things like that
    Indeed, but also think that the flash crash happened once and the only victims were other HFTs.
    And confidence.

    HFT has its value, but a lot of it comes at the cost of the retail investor.

    (I am talking about the equity markets, because that is what I know most about)
    wrong (!).

    It is the retail investors that benefit from HFTs on account of lower dealing costs, increased liquidity and narrower spreads. If anyone is at risk it is large institutional investors trading large blocks of stock which might incur significant market impact (of course they do so on behalf of retail investors if that is what you mean). Studies on the benefits or otherwise of HFT usually focus on institutional investors.
    I'm in a meeting on IFRS9 so haven't responded properly.

    Not advocating a move back to the old fashioned approach. More concerned about the algorithim driven trading measured in miliseconds. I'm a believer in the value of fundamental analysis - there is value in arbitrage and in liquidity, but UHFT adds minimal value at high cost for other market participants
    A friend of mine who has done a PhD in number theory has started a HFT hedge fund. He is aiming for ~25% ROI.
    I can believe that.

    The concern for me, is that is a lot of speculative money making a high return. It undermines the fundamental purpose of the capital markets - to facilitate the provision of capital to companies. Some HFT is beneficial in terms of liquidity. The closer you get to UHFT - and the kind of sustainanble returns your friend is expecting - hmmh, not so much.

  • AndyJSAndyJS Posts: 29,395
    Maybe if the Euro election is very close there could be four different winners of the popular vote in England, Scotland. Wales and the UK as a whole: UKIP, SNP, Labour and Conservative.
  • AndyJSAndyJS Posts: 29,395
    shadsy said:

    One of the more interesting aspects of the indyref betting has been the very large of money people have been staking on YES getting over 55%

    YES Vote %
    12 Under 30
    7 30-35
    4 35-40
    5/2 40-45
    4 45-50
    7 50-55
    6 55+

    The 6/1 seems way too short to me, but it's been hammered down all the way from an opening 20/1. 2/3 of all the money staked on this market has been on that option.

    Can't believe 55+ is more popular than 50-55.
  • shadsyshadsy Posts: 289
    At one stage, we were 11/2 about any YES vote, but still laying the 7/1 about over 55%. So, I conclude that a certain amount of this money is from nationalists living in a bubble of confirmation bias.

    Still, it's made the 7/1 for a 50-55% outcome quite a good bet, arguably.
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 60,216
    antifrank said:

    We seem to be wandering into ouija polling, where posters with a particular party allegiance hold hands, close their eyes and let the spirits of the electorate guide their views of the current state of play.

    The best description I have ever read of the post-Thatcher Tory Party was Richard Vinen's, likening it to "a deranged seance".......are you there, Margaret?......have you got a message for us Margaret?.....one rap for yes, two raps for no.....

  • AndyJSAndyJS Posts: 29,395
    7/1 for 50-55 is very good value, 6/1 for 55+ incredibly bad IMO.
  • Stuart_DicksonStuart_Dickson Posts: 3,557
    shadsy said:

    One of the more interesting aspects of the indyref betting has been the very large of money people have been staking on YES getting over 55%

    YES Vote %
    12 Under 30
    7 30-35
    4 35-40
    5/2 40-45
    4 45-50
    7 50-55
    6 55+

    The 6/1 seems way too short to me, but it's been hammered down all the way from an opening 20/1. 2/3 of all the money staked on this market has been on that option.

    IMHO it is just as likely that YES will get 55%+ as NO getting 55%+.

    The entire campaign could simply run away from NO in the final few weeks. It could turn into something of a rout.
  • NickPalmerNickPalmer Posts: 21,564
    isam said:



    Shows my naivety, I didn't know that people who answered polls were signed up to them, ie were interested in politics anyway

    That must explain why UKIP are always so vastly underestimated in polling

    Possibly, though people don't sign up for politics polls in particular but for polls on everything. You can do it too - go to YouGov, Survation etc. You'll get asked for your opinion on e.g. the Coca-Cola brand (have you heard anything positive or negative about it in the last 7 days?) and anything else people want to commission them to ask.you'll be paid 50p or so for bothering. If you persist in answering these questions (and only then, for YouGov anyway) you'll occasionally be asked about voting intention. I used to get asked about once a year, but I got tired of brand polls (I don't care about brands at all, full stop) so I no longer get any YouGov surveys on anything.

    It seems to work, in that internet surveys produce pretty similar results to classic phone polls (which have their own biases - some people are hard to reach by phone, the very elderly may be too deaf, etc.) and both are usually fairly close to the results. Because UKIP is unusual, it's possible that their support differs in some way that is affected by the sampling methods - but probably best not to bet on that assumption.

  • TheWatcherTheWatcher Posts: 5,262

    A bit O/T but I'm impressed by this:

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/10735666/British-sniper-in-Afghanistan-kills-six-Taliban-with-one-bullet.html

    A British sniper in Afghanistan killed six insurgents with a single bullet after hitting the trigger switch of a suicide bomber whose device then exploded...The 20-year-old marksman...hit his target from 930 yards (850 metres) away...The same sniper, with his first shot on the tour of duty, killed a Taliban machine-gunner from 1,465 yards

    Blimey. 930 yards is like leaning out of a window in the Gherkin and potting someone standing on the deck of HMS Belfast. 1465 yards is like picking them off from a window in the Barbican.

    Some of the ranges at Bisley are that long; incredible shooting, with amazing ballistics.

    Even more impressive is that they're trained to shoot at great distance whilst standing up, as well as lying on the ground.
  • I used to get asked about once a year, but I got tired of brand polls (I don't care about brands at all, full stop) so I no longer get any YouGov surveys on anything.

    I got bored of them when I kept getting sent polls along the lines of "imagine eSure car insurance came to life as a person. Would you describe their personality as..."

    And I thought, what a stupid buıʞɔnɟ question.
  • Shadsy (if still there) - Thanks for greatly increasing the number of individual constituency betting markets - even if the outcome in most is a foregone conclusion.

    Have you any plans please to offer number of GE Seats won bands for each of the three major parties.

    Previously you were offering such bands for the LibDems only, but this market appears to have been taken down recently.
  • anotherDaveanotherDave Posts: 6,746
    Clegg-Farage debate
    "Nick Clegg has cracked out the Student Debating Playbook. The Deputy Prime Minister’s taxpayer-funded Special Adviser Adam Pritchard is secretly approaching bosses from household name firms to try get them to sign this pre-drafted letter to be placed in a paper tomorrow morning

    Clegg will then brandish this letter from the podium as if he had nothing to do with it."

    http://order-order.com/2014/04/01/clegg-using-taxpayer-funded-spad-for-secret-debate-trick/
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 60,216
    isam said:

    Neil said:

    a group that the Yes campaign is targetting strongly and who won't be featuring much in current polls

    Why wont they be featuring much in current polls?
    Perhaps I'm wrong, but I'm making the assumption that people who aren't usually politically engaged enough to vote, aren't going to be arsed to sign up to polling panels.

    Shhh...

    They'll find out soon enough. ;)
    Shows my naivety, I didn't know that people who answered polls were signed up to them, ie were interested in politics anyway

    That must explain why UKIP are always so vastly underestimated in polling
    I don't think it does - I think it is representative of people who like filling out online surveys - of whom those interested in politics must be a very small subsample. I signed up to YouGov and maybe one in ten of the polls I participate in are about politics.

  • isamisam Posts: 41,118

    isam said:

    Neil said:

    a group that the Yes campaign is targetting strongly and who won't be featuring much in current polls

    Why wont they be featuring much in current polls?
    Perhaps I'm wrong, but I'm making the assumption that people who aren't usually politically engaged enough to vote, aren't going to be arsed to sign up to polling panels.

    Shhh...

    They'll find out soon enough. ;)
    Shows my naivety, I didn't know that people who answered polls were signed up to them, ie were interested in politics anyway

    That must explain why UKIP are always so vastly underestimated in polling
    I don't think it does - I think it is representative of people who like filling out online surveys - of whom those interested in politics must be a very small subsample. I signed up to YouGov and maybe one in ten of the polls I participate in are about politics.

    Who knows? There must be a reason ukip are always underestimated. Maybe kippers aren't the sort of people that go in for polls of any sort? It is a bit lefty and beauracratic.

    Look at how Tim viewed polling statistics as so much more relevant than real life experience. I would say this w because poor working class people haven't the time or inclination to answer questionnaires
  • isamisam Posts: 41,118

    Clegg-Farage debate
    "Nick Clegg has cracked out the Student Debating Playbook. The Deputy Prime Minister’s taxpayer-funded Special Adviser Adam Pritchard is secretly approaching bosses from household name firms to try get them to sign this pre-drafted letter to be placed in a paper tomorrow morning

    Clegg will then brandish this letter from the podium as if he had nothing to do with it."

    http://order-order.com/2014/04/01/clegg-using-taxpayer-funded-spad-for-secret-debate-trick/

    Haha brilliant! Lets hope Nige bashes him over the head with it Godfrey stylee
  • edmundintokyoedmundintokyo Posts: 17,708
    isam said:

    Who knows? There must be a reason ukip are always underestimated.

    Are UKIP always underestimated? What are the polls vs elections we're looking at specifically?
  • NickPalmerNickPalmer Posts: 21,564

    I used to get asked about once a year, but I got tired of brand polls (I don't care about brands at all, full stop) so I no longer get any YouGov surveys on anything.

    I got bored of them when I kept getting sent polls along the lines of "imagine eSure car insurance came to life as a person. Would you describe their personality as..."

    And I thought, what a stupid buıʞɔnɟ question.
    Exactly. But we are both insufficiently brand-aware, I guess, so less interesting for market surveys. What used to drive me nuts was page after page of brands, most of which I'd never heard of, with subtly different questions - "Click those which you would be proud to work for", "Click those about which you have heard something positive", "Click those with which you have a positive association". I used to do them so as to wind up PBers with the occasional 0.1% spike in Labour support, but in the end decided life was too short.

  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 43,337
    http://ericjoyce.co.uk/

    Interesting posting by Mr Joyce on the Faslane/Coulport issue.
  • I used to get asked about once a year, but I got tired of brand polls (I don't care about brands at all, full stop) so I no longer get any YouGov surveys on anything.

    I got bored of them when I kept getting sent polls along the lines of "imagine eSure car insurance came to life as a person. Would you describe their personality as..."

    And I thought, what a stupid buıʞɔnɟ question.
    Exactly. But we are both insufficiently brand-aware, I guess, so less interesting for market surveys. What used to drive me nuts was page after page of brands, most of which I'd never heard of, with subtly different questions - "Click those which you would be proud to work for", "Click those about which you have heard something positive", "Click those with which you have a positive association". I used to do them so as to wind up PBers with the occasional 0.1% spike in Labour support, but in the end decided life was too short.

    And did you notice some of the "brands" were companies, and vice versa? I am sure I remembering being asked if I'd be proud to work for Tampax. I would think you'd in fact be working for Unilever or someone, which is a different question.

    One of them used to ask me what films I'd heard of and for the sake of argument this might include both Toy Story 2 and No Country for Old Men.

    I would then be asked whether I planned to see these films

    on your own?
    on a date?
    with the family?
    etc

    No Country for Old Men with the family? Toy Story 2 with a date? Who am I, Jimmy Savile?

    I was getting 50p for this stuff and the answers weren't worth even that.
  • BobaFettBobaFett Posts: 2,789
    @Isam

    Do you have any evidence that Ukip are underpolled? The reason Tim, like most other PBers, placed more faith in polls than anecdotes is because anecdotes tell you almost nothing.
  • BobaFettBobaFett Posts: 2,789
    A friend of mine once worked in market research and devised a question about which chocolate brand made you think most about having sex.
  • MikeKMikeK Posts: 9,053
    It's past midday but I'll print this, for what it's worth:

    Ilån Bεn Zıon ‏@IlanBenZion 27m
    Israeli man changes name to Barack Obama. This is not an April Fools joke, I am serious and so is he.
    http://www.timesofisrael.com/jewish-barack-obama-calls-jerusalem-home/
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 78,406
    BobaFett said:

    @Isam

    Do you have any evidence that Ukip are underpolled? The reason Tim, like most other PBers, placed more faith in polls than anecdotes is because anecdotes tell you almost nothing.

    @Tim left before you joined
  • AlastairMeeksAlastairMeeks Posts: 30,340
    BobaFett said:

    A friend of mine once worked in market research and devised a question about which chocolate brand made you think most about having sex.

    What was the answer? I'm guessing Flake.

  • BobaFettBobaFett Posts: 2,789
    Pulpstar said:

    BobaFett said:

    @Isam

    Do you have any evidence that Ukip are underpolled? The reason Tim, like most other PBers, placed more faith in polls than anecdotes is because anecdotes tell you almost nothing.

    @Tim left before you joined
    His legend precedes him.
  • state_go_awaystate_go_away Posts: 5,818
    edited April 2014
    BobaFett said:

    @Isam

    Do you have any evidence that Ukip are underpolled? The reason Tim, like most other PBers, placed more faith in polls than anecdotes is because anecdotes tell you almost nothing.

    I think polls in general (especially about issues ) reflect a headline opinion ok (depends how question asked of course) but cannot reflect very well the strength of feeling.

    this is where polls are misused imo . You often see a pressure group stating that a poll showed 70% approving of what they are pushing for but most people don't have much strength of feeling for many issues really yet will give an opinion (more of less for the sake of it) if asked on a specific thing.

    Anecdotes go the other way in that they cannot be that representative yet probably reflect more depth of feeling for an issue as they are usually self generated and not prompted
  • TheWatcherTheWatcher Posts: 5,262
    Carnyx said:

    http://ericjoyce.co.uk/

    Interesting posting by Mr Joyce on the Faslane/Coulport issue.

    Interesting, but largely twaddle. He talks of the entire nuclear arsenal remaining in Scotland, ignoring the fact that the majority of the warheads are already on the submarines.
  • state_go_awaystate_go_away Posts: 5,818
    antifrank said:

    BobaFett said:

    A friend of mine once worked in market research and devised a question about which chocolate brand made you think most about having sex.

    What was the answer? I'm guessing Flake.

    Am I strange? because none do for me
  • New Thread
  • NickPalmerNickPalmer Posts: 21,564

    antifrank said:

    BobaFett said:

    A friend of mine once worked in market research and devised a question about which chocolate brand made you think most about having sex.

    What was the answer? I'm guessing Flake.

    Am I strange? because none do for me
    That's like the old joke about the austere Plymouth Brethren: "The trouble with sex is that it leads to eating chocolate".

  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 43,337

    Carnyx said:

    http://ericjoyce.co.uk/

    Interesting posting by Mr Joyce on the Faslane/Coulport issue.

    Interesting, but largely twaddle. He talks of the entire nuclear arsenal remaining in Scotland, ignoring the fact that the majority of the warheads are already on the submarines.
    Indeed a slip, but the support and maintenance equipment for the missiles proper, and the base support complex for it, is in Scotland, so one presumes. Hence part of the issue.

This discussion has been closed.