The Market Participants

I'll start this page with two quotes, one from Tony Hsieh of Zappos.com, and the other from Jesse Livermore:

Tony Hsieh:
Through reading poker books and practicing by playing, I spent a lot of time learning about the best strategy to play once I was actually sitting down at a table. My big “ah-ha!” moment came when I finally learned that the game started even before I sat down in a seat.

In a poker room at a casino, there are usually many different choices of tables. Each table has different stakes, different players, and different dynamics that change as the players come and go, and as players get excited, upset, or tired.

I learned that the most important decision I could make was which table to sit at. This included knowing when to change tables. I learned from a book that an experienced player can make ten times as much money sitting at a table with nine mediocre players who are tired and have a lot of chips compared with sitting at a table with nine really good players who are focused and don’t have that many chips in front of them. [Underline added]

Source: http://www.deliveringhappiness.com/what ... -business/

Jesse Livermore:
[Livermore describes how a winter coal miners' strike and railroad shopmen's strike, combined with a projected larger-than-normal spring harvest, would likely lead to a sudden oversupply of wheat and therefore lower spring wheat prices.] Such being the facts of the case--the obvious probabilities--the traders, who would know and figure as I did, would not bull wheat for a while. They would not feel like buying it unless the price declined to such figures as made the purchase of wheat a good investment. With no buying power in the market, the price ought to go down. [Livermore then shorted wheat and made a lot of money] [Underline added]

Source: Reminiscences of a Stock Operator; you can find the quote via Google Books if you want to read the parts I summarized

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_ ... rticipants

One of the things that I was really struck by while reading Reminiscences of a Stock Operator was the huge importance of understanding 1) who else is investing in the market and 2) how those other investors go about making decisions. It seems that there was no way Livermore could have gotten rich without being very familiar with those two things. Over and over again you see him use those two things to make a decision about a particular speculation.

This page will be where i try to compile a list of all the market participants and various info about them

I want a big poster that shows the size of the different entities in these markets in terms of the number of employees they have. But I'm more interested in analysts; I don't care about tellers working at a local Bank of America branch.

I want another poster that shows the size of the different markets out there in terms of the amount of money changing hands.

check out Deutsche Bank’s annual alternative investment survey

tips for getting a big-picture view of the markets:
- check out the Fed's "Flow of Funds" report
- search Google Scholar for research on "retail investors"
- contact big retail brokerages like E*Trade to see what data they have on their customers, or search for research that was done in conjunction with them
- the SEC put out a report for Congress describing the CDS market, so look for gov/think-tank reports prepared for Congressmen on the other markets out there
- check the CFA textbooks for the data they have and see what their sources are
- check trade groups for reports
- SIMFA
- Bank for International Settlements
- Guide to Financial Markets by Marc Levinson

Hedge Funds

2003.09 - SEC - Implications of the Growth of Hedge Funds
http://sec.gov/news/studies/hedgefunds0903.pdf
- includes a summary at the end of all the previous studies done of hedge funds by the SEC

"At the end of 2011, single-manager hedge funds with at least $1 billion under management accounted for just 3.9% of the 10,007 active funds, but controlled 60% of the aggregate $1.726 trillion invested in single-manager funds."
http://www.pionline.com/article/2012043 ... 12-pertrac

Pension Funds

2012.03.29 - 90% of Japanese pension fund managers have no previous investment experience
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-2 ... shows.html

The Credit Default Swap Market

The SEC produced a report that described the CDS market based on data from the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation’s Trade Information Warehouse (DTCC-TIW)
http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2012/2012-47.htm