Category: General

General posts about markets

Working with time series in Python

In the dim and distant past (let’s call this 2007!) if you wanted to work with time series, you might have to resort to writing your own time series library. When I say a “time series library”, I’m not really talking about any sophisticated techniques for manipulating time series. Instead, I’m talking about ways of…

Quantifying Politics

We all know that politics impacts markets. However, it can be tricky to understand how to quantify political risk and use it as an input in the investing process. Here we take an updated look at the returns from applying Thorfinn’s political indices to trade a basket of macro assets. During our sample period from…

Investing as football

It’s Euro 2020. Suddenly, everyone (including myself) is temporarily a football expert. I pretty much know nothing about tactics when it comes to football, but I do know something. You have to score goals to win. However, even that needs the caveat that, this needs to be done, whilst preventing the opposition from scoring. Ok,…

Budgets and alternative data

We all have budgets in mind for certain things. If someone offered me a burger for 1000 GBP, well, I’d probably have to politely decline. If someone offers me a house for 1000 GBP, well, that seems like good value! Our budgets are related to what we perceive as being “good value”. Ok, that’s fairly…

Forecasting or nowcasting?

We all want to forecast what’s around the corner? However, perhaps a more pertinent question, which we might seek to ask is the following, is this actually a corner? In a nutshell, that is the difference between forecasting and nowcasting. Forecasting is all very well and good, but it isn’t particularly easy. Nowcasting is more…

S3 less Audi more Amazon

When I hear S3, I still think of the Audi S and RS models, those high performance variants and Audi’s versions of the BMW’s M series. I’ve got to admit, there is something a bit more special about a BMW M5 compared to an RS6, but I’ve never driven either to confirm that (any comments…

Download tickers from many sources

Whenever you cook, do you use one ingredient? You could do, but the results are going to be pretty bland. A burger, without bread, or a patty, is a bit of a non-starter. It’s all about finding the right mix of ingredients and then cooking up a storm (if you’ll excuse the pun). Analysing financial markets…