MarketReview author profile
Trading and Quantitative Markets Contributor
ActiveEric Baker brings more than two decades of trading experience to MarketReview, including work with personal accounts and at a proprietary trading firm. He continues to follow and participate in markets, with a particular interest in the decisions traders make when outcomes cannot be known in advance.
His writing concentrates on process: estimating probabilities, sizing positions, comparing expected return with downside risk and deciding how much uncertainty a strategy can bear. He also draws an important distinction between decision quality and outcome. A winning trade may have been poorly judged, while a sound decision can still lose money.
Eric contributes to MarketReview’s coverage of active trading, futures, derivatives and quantitative decision-making. He explains numerical ideas in practical terms, while making clear that models and calculations are tools for managing uncertainty—not ways to remove it.
Published work
News, analysis and evergreen financial guides credited to this author.
Bank regulation combines capital and liquidity requirements, ongoing supervision, deposit insurance and conduct rules to reduce the chance that a bank’s problems spread to customers or the wider financial system.
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Commercial banks create most everyday deposit money when they make loans, but lending is constrained by capital, liquidity, funding, risk and borrower demand rather than a simple reserve-ratio formula.
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Banks operate by managing a balance sheet of deposits, borrowings, loans, securities, cash and capital while providing credit and payment services to customers.
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Banking supports payments, saving and credit across the economy, but the gains are not shared equally among households, businesses, bank owners and the public.
Read more →Derivatives are financial contracts whose value is linked to an asset, rate, index, event or other reference. They include futures, forwards, options and swaps used to hedge exposures,…
Read more →Options are contracts that create defined rights for buyers and obligations for sellers around an underlying asset, strike price and expiration date. Investors may use them to hedge…
Read more →Futures are standardized exchange-traded contracts that let participants hedge price exposure or take a market view across commodities, stock indexes, interest rates and currencies. This page explains contract…
Read more →Fixed income includes bonds and other debt-oriented investments that turn an issuer’s borrowing needs into contractual cash flows for investors. This page explains how principal, coupons, market prices…
Read more →Hedge funds are privately offered investment pools that may use short selling, leverage, derivatives and other flexible strategies across many markets. That freedom can help a manager pursue…
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