The Schwab StreetSmart Edge ramp up continues

Schwab continues to roll out more information about its new trading platform.  This website adds some demos, system requirements, some FAQs, and an invitation to join a live webcast on March 8th. In the FAQs, Schwab says there are no plans to retire StreetSmart Pro, but there are no such assurances about StreetSmart.com.   Hopefully Scwhab has designed StreetSmart Edge so that it can evolved …

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Tax information from the CBOE

The CBOE publishes a guide titled “Taxes and Investing” targeted the individual investor.  It addresses some of the finer points of tax law regarding dividends, options, and other securities. See below for the table of contents.

Backtesting data for volatility ETN and ETF products

If you want to backtest various volatility products like VXX, VXZ, XIV, CVOL, IVOP  (see volatility tickers for my complete list) I offer a set of spreadsheets that give the underlying rolling index values from March 2004.  See this post for details. Bloomberg offers charts that go back 5 years for the related indexes.   My thanks to “~” from Volatility Futures and Options for …

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Redirect to VIG Vanguard ETF ex-dividend and distribution dates

Apparently Vanguard likes to keep their ETF ex-dividend and distribution dates a secret until just a couple days before the event.  It has that old mutual fund feel to it—”we’ll give you a quote after-market and allow you to buy or sell our stuff at the end of the day, otherwise go away…” As a result, the dates below are just guesses, based on previous year’s …

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