I trade options and other volatility products across several underlying asset classes. I don't give investment advice, just my personal opinions. DMs open.
I just had another DM asking for rec'd sources in the FICC space, so I am going to put this here for reference:
FX:
Jewitt, FX Derivatives Trader School;
Clark, FX Option Pricing
(both Wiley)
Rates:
Tuckman, Fixed Income Securities (Wiley)
Darbyshire, Pricing IR Derivatives
1/n As a so called "financial professional" and options trader both on market making and PM side, I want to give what will be the only advice I will give to those who want to be a "trader."
If you're not sitting in a bank, broker -dealer, HF or real money investment house...
Would anyone be interested in a Twitter Spaces where professional vol traders talk about what they do, common strategies, and how it's just *not" what retail thinks it is?
Please retweet if you can. Thanks
@Chris_arnade
@ChewyYorkie
@andreavhowe
4:30 AM in NYC is when the *real" rush hour begins. All the folks that earn $15-$20/hr making your coffee and baking your muffins or slicing your deli meat are traveling from Christ knows where and deserve a decent and safe ride.
Twitter is amazing. One can go back and read through years of someone's tweets, and in many cases, witness the disintegration of their personalities. Overall, the tragedy of the pandemic is not only physical but also psychological.
It's been just a few hours more than a week since my boy passed and I wanted to share one of my favorite photos of him.
The life of a risk manager is stressfull. You need your sleep.
So a few hours ago, I spoke to my father, 87 years old. Tomorrow I am obligated by decency and law to put him in a home or mental institution for the rest of his days. May God forgive me for what I am about to do.
Ad maiorem Dei gloriam.
Peace be with you.
A close friend and semi-retired derivatives trader, FX and macro, well into 8 figures net worth, entirely made by trading (ex IB and HFs) and I had a long conversation on Sunday after I posted my thoughts about futures open and the events of the coming week.
than the MFin type programs. I could very well be wrong, but they seem optimized for a business environment of 2017, not 2027.
So you wanna be a trader? Great, but whatever that job is now, it's not going to look anything like what it is now in 5 years time.
3/n ... sitting around in the yard and talking about stocks and drinking beer after work.
But it can also lead to isolation, pain and unhappiness. People think they're "traders," becoming delusional to varying degrees. It's hard to reach them, because they don't want to listen.
Trading is still a business, but let's face the fact that the Golden Age of Markets ended in 2008. Setting aside crypto for the moment. How many new, innovative products have been invented and successfully sold since then? Like almost none. How many new ...
2/n ...you will very likely never find it financially worthwhile. It can be fun, an interesting hobby, like playing poker or bridge, it doing puzzles. You can join an investment club, like older guys did back in the 70s when I remember the engineers and assembly line workers...
When I posted this he was on his walk with my mom.
He came home, drank some water, an then passed away before he could walk out of the kitchen.
Unexpected.
@therobotjames
@nope_its_lily
@Galois_Capital
Alrighty then. This might turn out to be a hash but let's see.
There are two problems you have here. The first has to do with what you need to do as a market maker at expiration. Let's say that options market makers run delta neutral books, at least to the first local approx.
My post of my late bff generated almost 400 likes and any many, many
very kind offers of condolences.
You've all meant the world to me.
Thank you, thank you so much!
It's made all the difference in the world.
...your way into blowing your whole load than making it big.
The good news for the youngs is that the Boomers are going to start croaking in droves, and that wealth has to end up with someone.
They tell him is lying. He is either a fraud, or he is keeping his tricks secret because retail traders will steal them to make fortunes, and -- the best part -- they know this from Reddit
The capacity for self-delusion is staggering.
There was a book written called, I think, "Where are all the clients yachts." Nothing really changes, ever.
Maybe it would be a better investment strategy to use a robo advisor to help you pick a mix of stuff...like $VTI and just settle down a bit.
innovations have there been in derivatives pricing and risk management? Almost none. Why?
My theory is that there is no real appetite for them. That should tell us something.
Last points. My peers and I grew up in a time when the astronauts were heros. My nerdy friends..
I heard a lot of stories about people using their stimulus checks to ape into calls and crypto? I have been wondering what the real success ratio is. It's hard to say, since people who lose money don't like to admit it, but it's probably pretty low.
There were literally no jobs for Physics PhDs for while in the 80s.
But the society went thought a realignment. The zeitgeist changed. I think this has been happening over the last decade. Core STEM, the general MBA, seem to me to be more valuable in the future...
I know that a lot of young people feel like they got a bad deal, and think if they don't YOLO they're "ngmi" as they say.
Having been around long enough and being close enough to khow the sausage is made in the Financial Services industry, IMO you are more likely to YOLO...
My BFF, his first hsrvut after COVID lockdown.3 years ago today.
He will be 13 years old in less than two weeks.
I get sad thinking about the inevitable😭
Pro tip for those Americans living in the Midwest.
Get an EV, throw some solar panels up on the roof, and replace your gas stove and furnace. This will lower your carbon footprint.
You will die in the next storm and you will no longer produce any CO2.
I just came back from a funeral today.
Last Thursday, my cousin's husband was crushed to death in an industrial accident.
He was an industrial electrician, and his career for decades was repairing large electro-mechanical machines.
and I didn't want to be Steve Austin in "The Six Million Dollar Man" but Oscar Goldman, the guy who engineered him. All the boomer quants cane out of programs in science and engineering funded by the DOD and the DOE. But when all that dried up, they ended up on Wall St.
This is Ralphie, currently of London. He is the SRM's bff.
He can't believe I am 58 years old today. Nor can my mom, who is still well at nearly 86 years old
I am truly blessed.
This platform is really broken. I don't see as many Tweets from many people I have followed for years and I question if mine are reaching many at all☹️
@peer_rich
Maybe we like it here, and the rigid class structure of the UK and most of the EU is unappealing and limits individual potential. Or the widespread anti-American sentiment.
Besides if I wanted either of those, I'd just move to Canada.
My views on FX, for what they're worth, just my opinions. Not trading advice.
The BoJ has a history of success in FX intervention, especially when they coordinate with the other CBs. Many times, it's not the abosulute level they target, but the *rate* of change of the JPY.
So live your life, and love your family the way they love you.
We don't know when we are going to go, but make that whole as big as you can.
Grief is just love that can't find it's way to where you want it to go
(The following is not advice)
I am notoriously bad with direction, buy my old trader's intuition tells me something is wrong out there. So boldy I will proclaim SPX prints 3000, maybe 2700 by end of Q1.
Vol here is really cheap IMO....
The whole fiaso of $SIVB has led me to the realization that I will never, ever again be depositing funds into any financial institution *not* deemed "systemically inportant (SIFI)"
There is no reason for you to do so either.
The regulation below the SIFI level is shocking.
Credit Suisse screwed the pooch when they hired John Mack. And then let Alan Howard, and about another half dozen guys walk away. It took them 20 years and countless billions, but, congratulations for building a bank even UBS won't buy. Mazel Tov.
December 12, 1988 was my first day in the FX market. I found the toilets and went to the company Christmas party, so overall it was a great success!
Below👇, note the HFT operatooors of the day, hard at work.😉
(It's the Harlow Meyer Savage spot USDJPY desk at 2 WTC).
For those who quote VIX in % moves: you wouldn't make in swaptions trading, where they make you get a PhD in Astrophysics to quote vol in daily bps breakevens 😂
His experience meeting people IRL parallels the kind of feedfack I have seen on this website.
When they find out what he did, they want him to teach them the secret sauce, esp how it applies to cryto. When he says it's hard...
Don't sell options because "you want to own it at that level" or buy OTM calls because "it's going there." As market maker maker, I loved both of those types of trades because I set the price of the leverage I provide
Feeling a bit blue. There is so much pig piling and self-destructive behavior on this site. And it's actively encouraged, anonymously. I like financial markets, specifically vol markets, and a good laugh. I find most pepole good heated and generous, do WTF is up here?
I am very surprised more than two people were interested in this.
Are there any other obscure topics in the world of obscure shit that maybe 100 people on Earth trade that you'd like to know about?
I happy to blather on.
@therobotjames
@nope_its_lily
@Galois_Capital
Alrighty then. This might turn out to be a hash but let's see.
There are two problems you have here. The first has to do with what you need to do as a market maker at expiration. Let's say that options market makers run delta neutral books, at least to the first local approx.
"One day, we will see our animals again in the eternity of Christ. Paradise is open to all of God's creatures".
-- Pope Francis
See you on the other side, Fau.
A.M.D.G.
Some idiot tried to hit the Senior Risk Manager with a big stick when he tried to say "hello" and was on a leash.
There was almost blood. Nobody hurts my doggie. I will *die* on this hill.
Let me tell you, friends, aging and seeing other age is difficult. Seeing your family and friends reduce in numbers is difficult. But seeing your family and friends rejuvenating and making new life is affirming.
A. M. D. G.
I just want to publically apologize to
@quantian1
for being an obnoxious horse's ass. I was totally out of line.
I'm sure Q. couldn't care less, but here it is: I am sorry.
A Portrait of the Risk Manager as a young Analyst, July, 21, 2013.
He is 11 today.
Happy Birthday and congrats on your promotion to MD!(Major Dog in rrrrrrrrrisk) :)
@rachdele
Why do grad students wear such horrible shoes when they spend all their time staring at them while socializing? This has been bothering for decades
Even after a 12 hour night shift at the hospital last night, my wife still has the energy to shovel the driveway. God bless her and all our frontliners. Time to make her some breakfast. 🙏🏽
Like, duh. Park Ave co-ops are priced in $$$, not Sharpes. So are your kids' schools, your place in the Hamptons, and your third wife.
Hedge funds are compensation schemes not investment vehicles.
"The difficult part is not to make some money with high sharpe - it's to make A LOT of money with sufficiently high sharpe.
15 million dollars a year with 30 sharpe, who cares.
15 billion a year with 2 sharpe, that's hard."
This is honestly the biggest take-away anyone that's
The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.
-- Ernest Hemingway