Category: General

General posts about markets

Historical context and markets

Look at a painting, and you can have a view of whether you like it or not. Something might catch your eye, perhaps it’s the style of painting. Maybe it’s the colours. Could it be the subject topic? However, without any context about the artist and the period in which it was painted, it can…

What time frequency to trade?

Do you like having snacks regularly and forego regular meals? Or do you prefer to have 3 meals a day? It’s simply that the snacks you have, are going to be smaller portions compared to a full meal (at least I suppose that is the idea). I’m not a doctor, so I have no idea which is…

The digital nomad?

The idea of being a digital nomad is somewhat seductive. Work on a laptop wherever you want, in a coffee shop, in a park, or perhaps in a different country. Obviously, it can’t be anywhere at all, free WiFi is the bedrock of any sort of digital nomadic existence. That of course, and the bane…

Thoughts on the market sell-off

When I’m hungry, I tend to think of burgers. I should add, that this doesn’t imply that I eat a burger every time I’m hungry (even I recognise that would be a suboptimal solution health-wise!). Similarly, in markets, when there’s a move, particular a large one, market participants want to find a reason. Sometimes there…

Fooled by randomness?

Nassim Talib’s book entitled Fooled by Randomness, is a great read. The central premise is the idea that people mistake randomness for something meaningful. We always want to find an explanation or a cause for something, even if there isn’t one. Markets are inherently noisy. It isn’t always possible to understand “why” a market moved…

A startup as an options trade

A trader spends inordinate amounts of the day looking at a screen, continually monitoring how assets react to events, seeking a signal amid a considerable amount of noise. At the same time, a successful trader needs to have the ability to correctly scale their risk. In a sense it doesn’t matter how often a trader…