Intercontinental Exchange’s (ICE) Board of Directors has approved pursuing an effective five-for-one stock split of ICE’s common stock that will be distributed in the form of a four share stock dividend per share.

We jumped into the oil patch for the April issue just as crude oil was making 15-year lows. Despite this, not everyone was convinced the low of the move was in. Energy markets analyst Dominick A.

It has long been the case in the world of investing and trading that being an accomplished trader with a verifiable edge is only one component of a successful trading business. More nascent money managers have been tripped up by a lack of proper business infrastructure — be it accounting, back office, risk management strategies or compliance teams — than a faulty trading strategy.

Back in the heyday of the trading floor the evolution of trading was simple. Someone came down to the floor as a runner. That person immediately fell in love with the markets and knew what he wanted to do. Perhaps that person had an affinity for math or charting.

The University of Chicago’s Financial Mathematics program, FinMath, was founded in 1996 at the tail end of a period of rapid change in the world of trading that had been revolutionized by accessibility to ever faster, cheaper c

For many years Futures/Modern Trader annually profiled the top commodity trading advisors and top emerging managers in the industry. It was always fascinating to hear the stories on how traders got started in the business.

An alternative industry truism is that it takes capital to raise capital.

Quant trading is taking over Wall Street. Gone are the days of discretionary traders manually entering trades. According to Knight Capital Group’s 2015 annual report, algorithmic trading has grown 29% from 2014 to 2015 amongst the 25 largest U.S. asset managers. Average daily U.S. equity share volume went from 43% from the 25 largest U.S.

On Aug. 11, Twitter  (TWTR) issued a public statement to address yet another company rumor: “There is absolutely no truth to the claims whatsoever,” the social media firm told Reuters.

NetSuite was acquired by Oracle (ORCL) for $9.3 billion, LinkedIn (LNKD) will be acquired by Microsoft (MSFT), who outbid Salesforce.com, for $26 billion. And that’s just weeks before it outbid others for Demandware in a $2.8 billion acquisition. 

The Cycle Projection Oscillator (CPO) is a technical tool that uses complex algorithms to filter multiple cycles from historical data, combines them and gives a graphical representation of their productive behavior. The CPO methodology employs proprietary statistical techniques to obtain cyclical information from price data.

As technology continues to propel the markets higher, the social media company with the best growth potential is Facebook (FB).

Just four years ago, the stock was trading under $20 per share and some were suggesting that CEO Mark Zuckerberg couldn’t correct the ship.

Social Media companies have been all the rave due to their growth prospects and the likelihood of merger and acquisition activity in the space, but one firm stands out. SINA Corporation (SINA), via its subsidiaries, operates as a significant social media content provider within the People’s Republic of China.

The British pound/Japanese yen (GBP/JPY) and the GBP/U.S. Dollar currency pairs tanked following the Brexit vote, falling 20% and 15% respectively after the June 23 referendum. The prospects of further declines of the same magnitude may have receded, but what about the Euro/GBP rate?

Social media names have been some of the best and worst performers from a fundamentals perspective over the last year. Facebook (FB) continues to be the darling of the space, growing revenues by 50% or more quarter-after-quarter — an impressive feat for a company with a market capitalization of $365 billion.

In July, CBS Corp. (CBS) — trading at $52 with a market cap of $23.2 billion — took the first step toward taking public its flagging radio business. CBS Radio plans to raise about $100 million in an IPO. At its peak, CBS, which began in 1927 as a radio company, owned close to 200 radio stations. 

The post-Brexit and non-FOMC action in the U.S. interest rate futures clearly shows that commercial traders are expecting the yield curve to begin steepening towards the fourth quarter. We’ve seen this through the ramping up of open interest in Eurodollar futures as the market tests the long-term averages now between 98.60 – 98.80 in the December contract. 

Watching the run-up in social media stocks in 2016 is eerily reminiscent of the late 1990s with technology stocks trading at seemingly outrageous valuations, but it’s hardly “dejavu all over again.” Back then, software was king and Microsoft (MSFT) was the dominant tech company, but in 2016 the powerhouses are social media stocks with Facebook (FB) surging past Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B)—the an

The Global X Social Media Index exchange traded fund (SOCL) provides investors access to Social Media companies from around the world. Its objective is to provide investment results that correspond generally to the price and yield performance, before fees and expenses, of the Solactive Social Media Total Return Index.

Rarely do you see an industry with a clean slate, i.e., nothing but analyst upgrades. But that is the case for the U.S. integrated oil industry.  This is a Zacks Industry niche with big U.S. names most retail investors look into or own already.  

What are you reading now? “Life,” Keith Richards’ autobiography. 

The classic Martini is one of the oldest cocktails in history, originating in the United States sometime in the 1870s. Where the recipe came from is a story of much debate.

It is a question seldom asked: Just because you can trade something, should you?

Festival creator Perry Farrell and his band Jane’s Addiction brought a full-fledged rock show to Grant Park in Chicago to celebrate the festival’s 25th anniversary, which lived up to the hype. 

Some American companies aren’t that American anymore.

Options traders struggle with the conflict between conservative hedging strategies and shorter-term speculation and swing trading. One strategy reconciles these two conflicting purposes in a way that combines swing trading with conservative risk hedging.

Social Media stocks have provided investors with strong performance in 2016. As of mid-August, the Global X Social Media Index ETF (SOCL) had delivered a year-to-date performance of 18%, easily outperforming the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite indexes, which have returned 6.85% and 4.5% respectively.

The moving average convergence divergence (MACD) indicator is both a momentum oscillator and price-based oscillator and is one of the more reliable studies that we have. While it is a lagging indicator, it works well in all time frames and with all stock or futures contracts.

The Head and Shoulders pattern is one of the most popular and recognizable technical trading patterns. The pattern forms near market tops in established up trending or bullish markets. The Head and Shoulders is a reversal pattern because it signals a change in an uptrend and forecasts a downtrend from its breakdown.

The close connection between rates and yields on three-month Eurodollar interest rate futures and the U.S. Treasury yield curve makes it possible, in turn, to relate Eurodollar futures to Federal Reserve policy because one of the Fed’s main tools is control of short-term interest rates. 

Supervised learning methods include back propagation neural networks, support vector machines and machine induction algorithms such as C.4.5 and rough sets. These are all examples of supervised learning because they require having a target answer to teach the classification or model predictions. When it comes to trading applications, these areas are relatively unexplored. 

Tomorrow’s trading all-stars need to acquire a plethora of skills to compete, but there is nothing like getting your hands dirty in an actual trading environment. MMspire is an enhanced algorithmic trading firm run by interns from back to front office.

It was somewhat of a surprise to see that October rates were somewhere in the middle of the pack in terms of historical monthly performance in the major stock indexes since 1950, as October is famous as the month that the market crash occurred in