Investment banks have been hiring titled chess players since the 80’s.
peak6 is an options trading firm I worked at and while I was there the guy below was the head of their trading department (from quick google of him seems like he’s making some mobile app now)
He hired about 7-8 poker players to become traders back when I was there although from what I saw only a couple were good at it
One fun thing they did every year was have a company wide tourney series where there are 8 tournies and the top 10 in points make the final tournament where the winner got a free seat into the WSOP main and travel covered. I got 3rd and 7th for my 2 final table appearances when I was there, the 3rd place finish was sick because I lost a huge hand with KK against T8 lol
DE Shaw also recruits poker players, it’s been common on Wall Street since the 90s.
Also the removal of the electric vehicle tax credit ceiling that Congress will likely ditch as part of the infrastructure plan.
One of my college roommates works for Peak6. I’ve worked in Derivatives trading for 9 years now, pretty natural transition from online poker. In both jobs you basically just sit in front of a bunch of screens, click buttons, and try to make money clicking buttons.
Nice! I worked in accounting while I was there so no trading for me but I did get to see all the numbers for how well the traders did. And yeah it’s just a lot of screen time and I’ve heard being good at pattern recognition helps a lot
lmaooo Morgan Stanley said let’s fuck over some of our clients they have no choice but to stay with us
Sure, but what’s the alternative? Be good-guy Credit Suisse and say, “Brothers, we are in a rough position and face very large potential losses. If we were all to try to sell immediately to limit that risk, surely we would end up cannibalizing ourselves and all suffering. But if we can collectively exercise patience and keep a stiff upper lip, surely these risky positions we have been endowed with can be prudently reduced without any undue harm. I beseech you therefore, brethren, that you join with me and act by not acting, and that we only reduce these positions with the most thoughtful caution and patience.”
Goldman and Morgan Stanley are like “fuck those morons” and exit their positions while Credit Suisse is still blathering on, and next thing you know Credit Suisse loses like $5 billion and the CEO and Chief Risk Officer are (appropriately) fired.
Oh of course, I understand why they did what they did, that’s just the way the games played
Credit Suisse, Deutchebank and UBS are all the same bank in my mind, absolute behemoths that continuously break the law and have a multibillion dollar scandal every few quarters, yet just keep miraculously chugging along and somehow making money.
I keep waiting to brag about being up 100% since last May and the fucking market swongs right when I get to 99%.
By the way I’m up 99% since last May. Or I was a couple days ago.
Congrats.
I am shorting the s&p sometime tomorrow for 2-3 weeks. No idea how that will play out but something that I have to do based on “reasons”.
so this guy was leveraging his bets by 5x or more lol. its a good thing congress is using their time on interrogating random reddit users instead of these guys who actually have the potential to crash the market.
U.S. rules prevent individual investors from buying securities with more than 50% of the money borrowed on margin. No such limits apply to hedge funds and family offices. People familiar with Archegos say the firm steadily ramped up its leverage. Initially that meant about “2x,” or $1 million borrowed for every $1 million of capital. By late March the leverage was 5x or more.
He also was using swaps so it wasn’t even necessarily shares that were accounted for. It was sketchy as fuck, but nothing will happen.
Imagine having billions of dollars and thinking “I think I’ll risk going bankrupt by piling leverage onto my already risky positions.” What a moron.
Part of it might be hubris, if thousands of people make random bets in the market the couple that make a billion dollars will attribute that to skill.
Another possibility - if he was trading on insider information (which is very common with hedge funds) then the temptation to 2x or 5x or 100x those bets would be massive.
“With a million dollars and enough inside information you can be broke in a year.” – Warren Buffett
My dad is about to retire with a pension and 401K. He doesn’t know what to do with his money. He’s 64. So like 64% bonds , and 36% vanguard index fund?
Certainly seems reasonable but of course there are tons of variables depending on how much of his nut need to come from the investments relative to the pension, etc.