Knowing if HFT Prospers at your Expense with The Speed Traders Workshop 2012 DVD Video Package

Feb. 8, 2013 - PRLog -- (February 9, 2013, New York) In a new study commented by Bloomberg, Andrei Kirilenko, the chief economist at the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, along with researchers at Princeton University and the University of Washington, examined high-frequency trading in a futures contract called the e-mini S&P 500, between August 2010 and August 2012. The study looked at only the expiring contracts (which trade electronically on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange) that are used to bet on the direction of the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index. The researchers also did something they’d never been able to do before: Use actual trading data from individual firms, though none were identified.

What that data does is help explain the frenzy in today’s markets: The most aggressive firms tend to earn the biggest profits, hence the incentive to trade as quickly and as often as possible. Furthermore, these traders make their money at the expense of everyone else, including less-aggressive high- frequency traders. The study found that the most hyperactive trading firms earned an average daily profit of $395,875 in the e-mini S&P 500 contract over the two-year period. First and foremost among those on the losing end: small retail investors. The study found that, on average, they lost $3.49 on every contract to aggressive high-frequency traders.

A big puzzle, though, is why these small investors lost at all. Edgar Perez, author of The Speed Traders, and former McKinsey & Co. consultant and New York University Adjunct Professor, presents the answer to this and other puzzles with The Speed Traders Workshop 2012 DVD Video Package: How High Frequency Traders Leverage Profitable Strategies to Find Alpha in Equities, Options, Futures and FX (http://TheSpeedTradersWorkshopDVD.eventbrite.com), the most comprehensive review of high frequency trading now available for the very first time on DVD in an insightful 4-disc set.

As Mr. Perez covers in The Speed Traders Workshop 2012 DVD Video Package, high-frequency trading is the use of sophisticated technological tools to trade securities like stocks or options, and is typically characterized by several distinguishing features: highly quantitative, employing computerized algorithms to analyze incoming market data and implement proprietary trading strategies, investment positions are held only for very brief periods of time, from seconds to hours, and rapidly traded into and out, sometimes thousands or tens of thousands of times a day, no net investment position at the end of a trading day, mostly employed by proprietary firms or proprietary trading desks in hedge funds and banks, and very sensitive to the processing speed of markets and of their own access to the market. The Speed Traders Workshop 2012 DVD Video Package displays an agenda full of information and insights:

1.    Understanding High Frequency Trading in Equities and other Asset Classes
•    The need for speed and sophisticated computer programs in generating, routing, and executing orders
•    Co-location and individual data feeds to minimize latency
•    Time-frames for establishing and closing highly-liquid positions
•    Review of the most important strategies: market making, trend following, value arbitrage and others

2.    Key Enablers for High Frequency Trading
•    Technological innovation: computing power, complex event processing, and low-latency bandwidth
•    Shift to electronic trading and the rise of alternative trading systems
•    In-depth look at strategies high frequency traders leverage to find alpha in equities, options, futures and FX
•    The profitability of typical high frequency trading strategies and its evolution

3.    Global Regulatory Overview: from the U.S. and Europe to China and Brazil
•    Regulations in place before the "flash crash"
•    Proposed regulatory initiatives after the "flash crash" in the U.S. and Europe, circuit breakers, limit up limit down and consolidated audit trail
•    High frequency trading in Asia, from Japan, Singapore and India to Hong Kong and China
•    Regulating speed trading to samba beats: Brazil and Mexico

4.    The Future of High Frequency Trading
•    Enhancing profitability: from equities to FX to cross-asset trading
•    High frequency trading in the world: from the U.S. and Europe to China and Brazil
•    Adding ammunition to the high frequency trader toolkit, FPGA, GPUs and enhanced technologies
•    Turning the tables on high frequency trading: the transparency challenge for the buy-side

Mr. Perez is widely regarded as the preeminent global expert in the specialized area of high-frequency trading. He is author of The Speed Traders, An Insider’s Look at the New High-Frequency Trading Phenomenon That is Transforming the Investing World, published in English by McGraw-Hill Inc. (2011), in Mandarin by China Financial Publishing House (2012) and currently being translated into Bahasa Indonesia and Portuguese. He is course director of The Speed Traders Workshop 2012, How High Frequency Traders Leverage Profitable Strategies to Find Alpha in Equities, Options, Futures and FX (Hong Kong, Sao Paulo, Seoul, Kuala Lumpur, Warsaw, Kiev, New York, Singapore, Beijing, Shanghai, Jakarta, London, Mexico City, Moscow, Ho Chi Minh, New York, Dubai and Chicago), and was Adjunct Professor at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University, where he taught Algorithmic Trading and High-Frequency Finance. He contributes regularly to China’s International Finance News.

Mr. Perez has been interviewed on CNBC Cash Flow, CNBC Squawk Box, BNN Business Day, CCTV China, Bankier.pl, TheStreet.com, Leaderonomics, GPW Media, Channel NewsAsia Business Tonight and Cents & Sensibilities. In addition, Mr. Perez has been featured on Yicai, eastmoney, Caijing, ETF88.com, 360doc, AH Radio, CNFOL.com, CITICS Futures, Tongxin Securities, ZhiCheng.com, CBNweek.com, Caixin, Futures Daily, Xinhua, CBN Newswire, Chinese Financial News, ifeng.com, International Finance News, hexun.com, Finance.QQ.com, Finance.Sina.com, The Korea Times, The Korea Herald, The Star, The Malaysian Insider, BMF 89.9, iMoney Hong Kong, CNBC, Bloomberg Hedge Fund Brief, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Dallas Morning News, Valor Econômico, FIXGlobal Trading, TODAY Online, Oriental Daily News and Business Times.

Mr. Perez has been engaged to present to the Quant Investment & HFT Summit APAC 2012 (Shanghai), U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (Washington DC), CFA Singapore, Hong Kong Securities Institute, Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University, University of International Business and Economics (Beijing), Hult International Business School (Shanghai) and Pace University (New York), among other public and private institutions. In addition, Mr. Perez has spoken at a number of global conferences, including CME Group‘s Global Financial Leadership Conference 2012 (Naples Beach, FL), Harvard Business School’s Venture Capital & Private Equity Conference (Boston), High-Frequency Trading Leaders Forum (New York, Chicago), MIT Sloan Investment Management Conference (Cambridge), Institutional Investor’s Global Growth Markets Forum (London), Technical Analysis Society (Singapore), TradeTech Asia (Singapore), FIXGlobal Face2Face (Seoul) and Private Equity Convention Russia, CIS & Eurasia (London).

Mr. Perez was a vice president at Citigroup, a senior consultant at IBM, and a strategy consultant at McKinsey & Co. in New York City. Mr. Perez has an undergraduate degree from Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería, Lima, Peru (1994), a Master of Administration from Universidad ESAN, Lima, Peru (1997) and a Master of Business Administration from Columbia Business School, New York, with a dual major in Finance and Management (2002). He belongs to the Beta Gamma Sigma honor society. Mr. Perez resides in the New York City area and is an accomplished salsa and hustle dancer.