Interesting study about trading and social network

The Dedicated and the Dabblers: How Social Interaction Propagates Active Investing

Our analysis of a new dataset on the activities of retail foreign exchange traders who are participants in a social network supports our hypothesis that social interactions promote the growth of active investment strategies. We apply a population evolution model in which strategies are transmitted through communications between investors and their adoption is motivated by the promise of high returns. The model predicts that the average individual employs increasingly active strategies so long as the propensity to reveal one’s strategies is increasing in realized returns, receivers of communication increase their trading intensity in response to hearing of higher returns, and the volatility of returns for those who are characterized as being active traders are greater than those for whom are not. We confirm the predictions of the model by documenting two novel empirical findings: on average, individual investors are more likely to initiate communications with other investors the greater their returns and they increase their trading intensity upon hearing of good returns.

While in most standard theory the flow of information within networks leads to better performance among market participants, we find that communications between investors may reinforce and even promote reckless trading behavior. This is largely driven by bias found among traders in which they develop forecasts of future returns that are merely extrapolations of the recent performance of assets. This leads them to follow strategies with occasional outstanding results, but that are less protable on average.

During the last 10 years Mataf was my playground. I worked with search engine optimization, online marketing, community management, creating orginal content… I think Mataf was unique in the forex space, most of the trading tools were done before for my personal trading. I developed content I didn’t find somewhere else. And it worked very well, last year I welcomed almost 1 million unique visitors per month in january and march.

The number of visitors was enough strong to take a risk without endangering the future of the site. I decided to build a brand, as the domain name mataf.com was not for sale I completely changed the brand name for ForexTicket. I was aware that this change could drop the number of visitors.

And the number of visitors dropped by 30%. But, thanks Internet’s God, the fall was stabilized and 2012 started -very- well.

Forexticket is a worldwide website. Europe represents more than 50% of the whole visits but Asia (Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, India…) become more important every week.

The mobile version of Forexticket is growing very fast. In december more than 6% of visits are from a smartphone or a tablet and I could reach 7 or 8 percent in january.

So, today we have a new brand, the website should recover all its visitors in the following months. We are strong on mobile and web.

And tomorrow we will be better on mobile and I will try to enhance the brand. We have one distinct website per country, ready to be compliant with all the regulations… And to become an independant broker! … okay, it’s probably a joke, I didn’t plan to transform ForexTicket as a forex broker, I lack some skills and motivation to do that.

• How EURUSD moves during the US session?
• How USD index moves on Monday?

I didn’t find the answer, then I developed the tool. Now I know that EURUSD is moving up during the US session and down in the European night.

That’s cool isn’t it? You can test here: Forex Session

I thought it was an other change in a search engine’s algorithm. But I looked closer where I lost visitors and I can easily concluded that it’s localised in muslim countries.

It’s “Eid-al Adha” from november 6th to the 9th. An important religious day celebrated by muslim.

Eid al-Adha or “Festival of Sacrifice” or “Greater Eid” is an important religious holiday celebrated by Muslims worldwide to commemorate the willingness of Abraham (Ibrahim) to sacrifice his son Ishmael (Isma’il) as an act of obedience to God, before God intervened to provide him with a sheep— to sacrifice instead. (from wikipedia)

Today I learned a new thing… I love web analytics.

Sometimes I should concentrate myself on “non-quantifiable factors” instead of opening Google Analytics.

You vs. The Data: When to Stop Optimizing and Start Thinking.

The availability of data drives us towards optimization. We push towards our goals with pinpoint precision based on specific metrics, relentlessly focusing on squeezing every percentage point out of the online experience. But is there a point where external factors outweigh the direction in which the data pushes us? When these “non-quantifiable” factors like brand values, aesthetic, staff retention and corporate strategy (to name just a few) bump up against what the data is telling us, what should we do?

French: The Most Productive People In The World

Think about it. Nationmaster ranks France as #18 in terms of GDP per capita, at $36,500 per person, yet France works much less than most developed nations. They achieve their high standard of living while working 16% less hours than the average world citizen, and almost 25% than their Asian peers as per UBS. Plus, if you visit France you’ll also realize that their actual standard of living is probably much higher than GDP numbers would indicate.

Thus, if one were to divide France’s GDP per capita by actual hours worked, you’d probably find that the French are achieving some of the highest returns on work-hours invested.

• hire people
• raise funds
• work 24/7 (maybe the easiest option
• ???

When I read the following article I thought about the opportunity to move definitively in Ireland…

€10m start-up fund to draw entrepreneurs to Ireland

A new €10m International Start-Up Fund is aiming to encourage overseas entrepreneurs to locate start-up businesses in Ireland.

Enterprise Ireland will administer the fund, which will be open to company promoters anywhere in the world, but will be targeted particularly at the Irish diaspora, international expatriates, the “New Diaspora” (people from overseas who have previously worked or studied in Ireland), as well as serial and mobile entrepreneurs.

Key geographical targets will include North America, the UK, Europe and Australia, and the fund will focus on the internet, gaming, med tech, cloud computing and financial services sectors.

The fund will also target investor-ready projects seeking between €200,000 and €500,000, and funding will be in the form of an equity stake taken by the State in the company.

Spain leading the smartphone revolution in Europe

Did you know that 33 % of the Spanish population actually has a smartphone (Ipsos GmbH & TNS Infratest)? Through the recently released research site ourmobileplanet.com we have seen that among major European countries Spain is now leading the smartphone revolution. The study reveals that in terms of parallel media usage, 50 % of Spanish smartphone users are actively browsing the Internet while listening to music and 35 % of users are in fact using the Internet on another device simultaneously.

Although we have these great examples of companies who are embracing mobile, our internal data shows that only 10 % of large companies in Spain have developed a mobile website.

Coming Soon: Mobile Intel Series: Finance
Finance is a vertical with a variety of subsets (i.e. banking, insurance companies, stock trading firms, etc.), and the report will contain an in-depth look at what the industry is doing in mobile.

Some initial findings from the data really stand out:

• 80 percent of mobile financial users own a smartphone, which is more than double the overall mobile population.
• The mobile finance audience is 76 percent more likely to own a tablet or e-reader, when compared to the mobile audience.

This shows that mobile finance consumers are looking to engage with content on next generation devices, and there is an opportunity for brands to reach consumers through apps or the mobile web. The stat about connected devices also shows that mobile plays a huge role in these consumers’ lives, as many mobile finance users have both a tablet and smartphone.