4 ms·

If I were a trader, I'd short McAfee right now. This probably means lots of settlements. EDIT: This could actually be a profitable venture. Somewith with at le

If I were a trader, I'd short McAfee right now. This probably means lots of settlements. EDIT: This could actually be a profitable venture. Somewith with at least basic HN-type knowledge and a daytrading account could make serious money. Finance professionals most probably have no idea how important specific IT news are during the day. One should be able to trade ahead of consensus pretty easily.

jxcole 16y ago
I will be watching throughout the day to see what happens: http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:MFE http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:MFE
cynicalkane 16y ago
You'd be making a trade based on how the market responds to news. Just because you care about this news doesn't mean the market will. Unless the settlements are enormous, the market never will.
- dsplittgerber 16y ago
  You have a point. Their market cap still dropped by 50 million in the last 40 minutes - whilst not being enormous, it's still noteworthy so far.
  - awa 16y ago
    The stock is just following S&P 500 and not dropping on its own http://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=maximized&chdeh=1&chfdeh=0&chdet=1271880000000&chddm=782&chddi=300&chls=CandleStick&cmpto=INDEXSP:.INX&cmptdms=0&q=NYSE:MFE&ntsp=0 http://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&...
    - dsplittgerber 16y ago
      S&P 500 down 1.05% today, half an hour after opening bell, MFE down 3.6%. So it would have been a nice short after all.
- andreyf 16y ago
  Unless the settlements are enormous, the market never will. Or if they lose big clients. My wife tells me all computers in PWC's NYC office are out.
  - spamizbad 16y ago
    Shame on PWC for not upgrading to Vista or Windows 7. A firm that large should have more foresight in IT planning.
    - iron_ball 16y ago
      I can't tell if that's sarcasm or not.
    - awad 16y ago
      I don't know if you're serious or not, but the largest companies are also some of the slowest moving. We had Windows 2000 machines at Merrill Lynch, running Office 2000.
- pbhjpbhj 16y ago
  I looked at this sort of thing before for tech sector - MSFT when the European anti-trust stuff came off, etc. - but it never seems to make a difference for some reason.
bshep 16y ago
Really tempted to do this...
mattmiller 16y ago
I thought about doing this a while ago, and started watching to see if I could find any way to predict stock prices based on tech news. I saw nothing I would put money behind. The stock price wont change based on news until after that quarters earnings are released, and for a big company one technical glitch won't effect those.
gorm 16y ago
This could be the most costly consumer software blunder ever? Imagine all the consultants called in for duty.
mynameishere 16y ago
Finance professionals most probably have no idea how important specific [fill-in-the-blank] news Yes, they do. There are lots of hedge funds that do nothing but analyze news feeds and trade on them all day long.
- dandelany 16y ago
  ...unless their computers are down. :) Seriously though, although there are plenty of algorithms that crawl news all day and trade accordingly, I still think there is money to be made by watching the news with a financial eye. After reading Google's "A New Approach to China" post (which I saw on HN minutes after it was posted), I specifically remember thinking it would be a good time to go long BIDU. And of course, kicked myself after the stock gained ~15% over the next three days. The market responds fast, but consensus is not always reached immediately. I think the opportunity exists because events like this are like tiny "black swan" events, the lasting effects of which are not immediately perceptible to most people, let alone a computer algorithm. It's easy to write a script to trade on something like "expected earnings were 3c/share, actual earnings 5c/share" but this is complex information. The ability to put the pieces together and realize what a significant outage this is, why it is significant, why there is not an easy fix, and what most companies will do about it (prolly sue 'em or switch to Symantec) is more than a computer can do. And I'm sure hedge funds are doing the math right now, trying to estimate the possible damages from lawsuits and how it changes the company's value. But remember, you don't have to beat the fastest hedge funds, you just have to beat most of the market, and you'll still make money. Anyway, it will be interesting to see what happens at market open tomorrow :)
  - paraschopra 16y ago
    By definition itself, you can't predict black swan. As they say, day trading is not about making successful moves. It is about making successful moves even when you account for commissions. Reasons everyone is not doing automated trading is because commissions eat up any profit that you can expect to make.
    - 16y ago

jxcole 16y ago

I will be watching throughout the day to see what happens: http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:MFE http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:MFE

cynicalkane 16y ago

You'd be making a trade based on how the market responds to news. Just because you care about this news doesn't mean the market will. Unless the settlements are enormous, the market never will.

dsplittgerber 16y ago
You have a point. Their market cap still dropped by 50 million in the last 40 minutes - whilst not being enormous, it's still noteworthy so far.
- awa 16y ago
  The stock is just following S&P 500 and not dropping on its own http://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=maximized&chdeh=1&chfdeh=0&chdet=1271880000000&chddm=782&chddi=300&chls=CandleStick&cmpto=INDEXSP:.INX&cmptdms=0&q=NYSE:MFE&ntsp=0 http://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&...
  - dsplittgerber 16y ago
    S&P 500 down 1.05% today, half an hour after opening bell, MFE down 3.6%. So it would have been a nice short after all.
andreyf 16y ago
Unless the settlements are enormous, the market never will. Or if they lose big clients. My wife tells me all computers in PWC's NYC office are out.
- spamizbad 16y ago
  Shame on PWC for not upgrading to Vista or Windows 7. A firm that large should have more foresight in IT planning.
  - iron_ball 16y ago
    I can't tell if that's sarcasm or not.
  - awad 16y ago
    I don't know if you're serious or not, but the largest companies are also some of the slowest moving. We had Windows 2000 machines at Merrill Lynch, running Office 2000.
pbhjpbhj 16y ago
I looked at this sort of thing before for tech sector - MSFT when the European anti-trust stuff came off, etc. - but it never seems to make a difference for some reason.

bshep 16y ago

Really tempted to do this...

mattmiller 16y ago

I thought about doing this a while ago, and started watching to see if I could find any way to predict stock prices based on tech news. I saw nothing I would put money behind. The stock price wont change based on news until after that quarters earnings are released, and for a big company one technical glitch won't effect those.

gorm 16y ago

This could be the most costly consumer software blunder ever? Imagine all the consultants called in for duty.

mynameishere 16y ago

Finance professionals most probably have no idea how important specific [fill-in-the-blank] news Yes, they do. There are lots of hedge funds that do nothing but analyze news feeds and trade on them all day long.

dandelany 16y ago
...unless their computers are down. :) Seriously though, although there are plenty of algorithms that crawl news all day and trade accordingly, I still think there is money to be made by watching the news with a financial eye. After reading Google's "A New Approach to China" post (which I saw on HN minutes after it was posted), I specifically remember thinking it would be a good time to go long BIDU. And of course, kicked myself after the stock gained ~15% over the next three days. The market responds fast, but consensus is not always reached immediately. I think the opportunity exists because events like this are like tiny "black swan" events, the lasting effects of which are not immediately perceptible to most people, let alone a computer algorithm. It's easy to write a script to trade on something like "expected earnings were 3c/share, actual earnings 5c/share" but this is complex information. The ability to put the pieces together and realize what a significant outage this is, why it is significant, why there is not an easy fix, and what most companies will do about it (prolly sue 'em or switch to Symantec) is more than a computer can do. And I'm sure hedge funds are doing the math right now, trying to estimate the possible damages from lawsuits and how it changes the company's value. But remember, you don't have to beat the fastest hedge funds, you just have to beat most of the market, and you'll still make money. Anyway, it will be interesting to see what happens at market open tomorrow :)
- paraschopra 16y ago
  By definition itself, you can't predict black swan. As they say, day trading is not about making successful moves. It is about making successful moves even when you account for commissions. Reasons everyone is not doing automated trading is because commissions eat up any profit that you can expect to make.
  - 16y ago