Financial markets are not generally open continually. Cryptocurrency markets by contrast, are open all the time. If you want to trade Bitcoin over the weekend you can. There are also various weekend markets on some smaller platforms, where you can speculate on assets like Dow Jones. If a market is closed and a big market…
Category: Data
Data, General, Python
Installing Python for financial data science
by Saeed Amen •
What’s the most important part of a holiday? Well, if you can’t get to the airport on time, it’s unlikely you’ll be going anywhere. When it comes to learning Python, the most important thing is to install Python in the first place! So how do you install Python, together with all the libraries you…
Data, General, Python
Visualization in Python
by Saeed Amen •
What’s one of the most important part of analyzing financial markets, or data science in general? There are several answers. If you don’t have any data to start with, there’s not really going to be more to analyze. Once you get the data, it needs to be cleaned, before the analysis etc. Once all the…
Data, General, Python
Are there sources of free data for markets?
by Saeed Amen •
So where’s the best place to get a burger? I get asked that a lot. I’ll try to give my best answer, but if you live in a place I haven’t visited, I’ll probably draw a blank. Yes, you can read reviews, but the only real way to tell if a burger joint is good,…
Data, General, Python
Alt data quants aren’t left out by WallStreetBets
by Saeed Amen •
Over the past few weeks, the retail traders have been in the headlines, in particular because of the massive move in GameStop stock, which has squeezed shorts and also the posts in r/WallStreetBets, a subreddit which is described as “Like 4chan found a Bloomberg Terminal”. r/WallStreetBets has featured a lot of posts on GameStop stock…
Data, Foreign Exchange, General, Python
Calculating FX total returns in Python
by Saeed Amen •
If you want a train, you have to build a train track. It doesn’t matter, if it’s a steam train or bullet train, or any other train. It’s a prerequisite. No track kind of implies the train can’t run. Obviously, each train needs a different type of track, but ultimately the principle is the same…
Data, General, Python
Python days might not be Numba-ed
by Saeed Amen •
You remember when we used to fly? Well, I do! The big bottleneck in flying was not always the flight if you were going short haul. Maybe it took an hour or two. However, what took time was getting the airport, checking in, queuing, delays in boarding etc. One way to try to reduce such…
Data, Foreign Exchange, General, Macro, Python
Hundreds of quant papers from #QuantLinkADay in 2020
by Saeed Amen •
This has been a challenging year by pretty much any other standard. I remember when I was kid, and heard the year 2020, it sounded very exciting. It’d be like Back to the Future, with hoverboards and flying cars. Instead, 2020 has been all about the coronavirus. Whilst I’ve been lucky enough to be safe…
Data, General
Find the questions to solve with alt data
by Saeed Amen •
Buzzwords, buzzwords, buzzwords. Every age has different buzzwords. Today, probably some of the most popular are machine data and alternative data, whether you work in finance or any other industry. Want to make more profits? Well, use machine learning, use alternative data etc. (ok, it isn’t that easy, but I’ll explain more later). Rather…
Data, General
The cloud and higher level managed services
by Saeed Amen •
In the good old days (well, perhaps they weren’t always “good”), you had to build most things yourself, rather than buy them off the shelf. You had to make your own burgers. Ok, I made up that specific case…. However, when it came to technology stacks, there was less available than today, and you…