Trading & Markets

Arbitrage

A trade that produces a risk-free profit with no net capital at risk.

True arbitrage is competed away in microseconds. If you can see one, you are almost certainly missing something - transaction costs, execution risk on one leg, funding, settlement mismatch, or a borrow constraint.

The interview question is always "A and B are identical but priced differently - what do you do?" The naive answer trades it. The good answer asks why they differ and enumerates the frictions first.

Relative value is what most strategies actually do: betting on a statistical relationship reverting, with residual risk. Sizing that like arbitrage has caused repeated blow-ups.

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Arbitrage and Relative Value

True arbitrage, statistical arbitrage, and why the textbook risk-free trade almost never exists in practice.

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