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Catastrophic event planning. Just do it!

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 private private,

 Monday, November 28, 2016

Heavy responsibilities lay upon many funds managers to prepare for catastrophic events. Safeguarding the algo. Portability and peace of mind trading algo's, can be obtained if you can get everything into a spreadsheet. You will also need to have an alternative data source which will populate your spreadsheet preferably more than one. Have the algo on a laptop and ready to go at a moment's notice. I took a month and manually entered data every hour in a system that I was trading just to get use to doing it so that it would be very familiar to me. Account and contact numbers. I was working with a fund where for many years the phone banks had been programmed with all necessary phone numbers for trading. No power outages had ever happened at this fund for they had well thought out their computer room and physical location within the city which had two separate main electrical feeds from two different power grids. Even with all that planning one day everything went out both power grids and the emergency generator failed as well. The trading computers and satellite feeds continued to run thanks to my UPS buying addiction, however the phone system was not on a UPS it was hardwired into the building somewhere. We discovered really quick that none of us knew any of the numbers to any of the pre-programmed phone system speed dial buttons. Panic set in as we used our cell phones to desperately contact clearing firms to manage positions. It was not a happy day. But what come out of that event was a multi fold laminated card with all the major phone numbers on it which we all carried on us from that day on. When you start thinking and planning about all the things that can go wrong including the often asked question in due diligence now days, what happens in the event of a principles demise. You start to realize just how unprepared and negligent no preparing really is. Mark


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2 comments on article "Catastrophic event planning. Just do it!"

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 Marc Clingaman, Seeking opportunities in Mexico City Area for new business or partnership.

 Wednesday, November 30, 2016



Very Good advice. Although, my algo was killed by incompetence of one employee of the clearing firm, Assent, which was owned by Sunguard. Sometimes, even the best laid plans comes down to the competence of the people working for the firms you do business. This employee didn't follow our agreed upon protocol, failing to confirm all of our orders were concealed on NYSE's SDOT system. We called him several times to confirm. We received a panicked call from them 4 hours later, informing us of several thousand orders being filled worth over $360,000,000. If this employee would have done his one responsibility of calling the NYSE directly even an hour late, we wouldn't have gotten filled on one order. Instead, Assent shut us down for a week to review the breakdown. Even after we were given a green light, they restricted our trading levels so much that it eventually killed our program that had operated for 8 1/2 years without a losing week and a 97% profitable trading day record.


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 private private,

 Wednesday, November 30, 2016



Marc I had a similar event where we doing trading on give -up accounts and the trader at the other firm decided not to take a trade at his own discretion. Of course it was big winner and the trader wound up compensating the clients out of his own pocket. But it was not the size numbers you were talking about. When you let something out of your own control - well lol it's just that.

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