There was an excellent article written over at the TechRepublic highlighting 10 IT health risks and offers some advice on how to combat them. The ten key issues that were highlighted include:

1. A slug’s life.
2. SIT happens
3. So many headaches
4. The bobblehead syndrome
5. Hurting Hands
6. Relax Harder!
7. Noxious invaders
8. Eye Strain
9. Heavy lifting
10. Something in the air

This is defiantly food for thought as a lot of traders spend countless hours in front of their computers and Bloomberg terminals. I have assembled some useful links on various health topics that might be of interest to traders. Remember your health is the most important thing and all of us should take steps to ensure we maintain a healthy balanced lifestyle.

Health Links

• 23 simple health tips for bloggers.
• 25 health and fitness tips that the health professionals wish we all knew.
• Stealth health get healthy without really trying.
• Do your eyes hurt now?
• 10 essential health tips.
• How to go from sedentary to running in five steps.
• Four best and worst health habits. 
• 15 tips to restart an exercise habit.
• All the best tips on getting in shape in one handy list.

What are you still reading for? get off the computer and go out and get moving. It might just save your life.

Popularity: 2% [?]

After reading fooled by randomness, I was very keen to read Taleb’s follow up The Black Swan. I really had high expectations of The Black Swan it was one of the best selling non-fiction book on Amazon.com for 2007. After reading The Black Swan it is very evident that no words I can write in this review will do the book justice. It is once again very thought provoking and confronting materiel that Taleb presents. This really is a must read book not just for pseudo financial professionals.

Contents

Prologue 

Part One - Umberto Eco’s Antilibrary, or how we seek validation

• Chapter One: The Apprenticeship of an Empirical Skeptic
• Chapter Two: Yevgenia’s Black Swan
• Chapter Three: The Speculator and the Prostitute
• Chapter Four: One Thousand and One Days, or How Not to Be a Sucker
• Chapter Five: Confirmation Shmonfirmation!
• Chapter Six: The Narrative Fallacy
• Chapter Seven: Living in the Antechamber of Hope
• Chapter Eight: Giacomo Casanova’s Unfailing Luck: The Problem of Silent Evidence
• Chapter Nine: The Ludic Fallacy, or The Uncertainty of the Nerd

Part Two: We Just Can’t Predict

• Chapter Ten: The Scandal of Prediction
• Chapter Eleven: How to Look for Bird Poop
• Chapter Twelve: Epistemocracy, a Dream
• Chapter Thirteen: Appelles the Painter, or What Do You Do if You Cannot Predict?

Part Three: Those Gray Swans Extremistan

• Chapter Fourteen: From Mediocristan to Extremistan, and Back
• Chapter Fifteen: The Bell Curve, That Great Intellectual Fraud
• Chapter Sixteen: The Aesthetics of Randomness
• Chapter Seventeen: Locke’s Madmen, or Bell Curves in the Wrong Places
• Chapter Eighteen: The Uncertainty of The Phony
• Chapter Nineteen: Half and Half, or How to Get Even with the Black Swan
• Epilogue: Yevgenia’s White Swan
• Acknowledgements
• Glossary
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index

Popularity: 3% [?]

Popularity: 2% [?]

NinjaTrader is a broker independent trading platform. This means that you can use one piece of software with several different brokers. NinjaTrader is available as a free download (after providing your email address). The free download version can be used for simulation and testing. Before you download this software you should ensure your computer meets the minimum system requirements shown below:

NinjaTrader 6.5 Minimum System Requirements

• Operating System: Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista  or Windows XP.
• Monitor Resolution: Minimum of 1024 x 768.
• CPU: Minimum Pentium 4 or higher.
• RAM: 1GB RAM or higher if you are running Windows XP and 2GB or higher if you are running Windows Vista.
• Additional Software Requirements: Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0.

NinjaTrader has a vast number of brokerage and market data providers for you to connect to these include:

• Barchart.com
• eSignal
• FuturesBetting
• GAIN Capital/FOREX.com
• Interactive Brokers
• IQ Feed from DTN
• MB Trading
• OpenTick Patsystems
• PFGBEST.com
• TD AMERITRADE
• Track Data
• TradeStation
• Trading Technologies
• Yahoo
• Zen-Fire
• Text file based historical data import

It is due to these large amount of providers of data and brokerage services that I have decided to use NinjaTrader as my main trading platform. I will test it solidly for a month and then purchase a Live trading licence if it meets all my needs, which at this stage it appears to do.

I found the download and install process to be seamless, you will need to enter your free licence key on first use. One thing you will have to do is allow NinjaTrader to send and receive data over your network and you may get a dialog box like the one below whilst using Vista.

After loading  NinjaTrader you will be greeted with a screen similar to the one below. This is NinjaTrader’s control center, as the name suggest you will launch most of NinjaTraders functionality from here.

The first thing I did after installing was to add my demo MB Trading account details. This is a very simple process to setup and with in no time I was receiving currency data. Another great feature of NinjaTrader is that you can enable the MB Navigator window this allows for easy transition for users that are used to Navigator. At the moment I am still getting to grips with NinjaTrader so far I am very impressed. I will post some more info and tutorials as I come to grips with all the functionality. You can download the free version of NinjaTrader here. Below is my current workspace setup as I learn more about NinjaTrader I am sure this will change.

UPDATE: I have noticed slow load times and sometimes NinjaTrader stops responding all together whilst Outlook 2007 is open. I am not sure if this is a widespread issue or not however I will be looking into it. I am sure this is probably just a issue related to my configuration but would be interested to hear if others have problems.

Popularity: 5% [?]