Given it’s the 9 year anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers this week, I thought I would republish an article I wrote on the subject, which first appeared in Business Insider on 30 Sep 2014 It has been six years ago this week, when I could say that green was our color. It wasn’t a bright…
Category: General
General
Keeping a market perspective
by Saeed Amen •
When I was a kid, there was something distinctly exciting about flying by plane.Whilst perhaps this might be skewed by pangs of nostalgia, I think the main reason, was simply that airports were less busy and it was relatively novel experience flying (well, at least for me). With the reduction in airfares, perhaps unsurprisingly we…
Foreign Exchange, General
What price action do you remember from memory?
by Saeed Amen •
Over the years, you begin to build up a mental historical picture for price action. It seems reasonable to expect that we might remember certain market moves better than others and also what were the events which accompanied them. However, which ones do we remember? 2008.. let’s just say I remember the price action quite well…
General
Experience counts in coding
by Saeed Amen •
Life is change. I’m not sure if that’s a quote, or something I just made up. However, over the past few decades, the pace of technological change has seemingly accelerated. Does that mean that if you are a coder, for example, your experience can quickly become outdated or does experience count? Just hold that thought,…
General
Learning from 4 years of working independently
by Saeed Amen •
I spent most of my career working on FX desks in banks. Exactly 4 years ago, I resigned from my job at Nomura to start working independently. For the first 3 years I worked at the Thalesians, a quant think tank which I had co-founded. I am still involved with the Thalesians, helping to organise quant…
General
Choosing books to read and markets
by Saeed Amen •
Sometimes I wish I could sweep up every book in bookshop into a magic carpet. Then somehow I could read them all in an instant. Alas, this will never be the case. So instead, for avid readers like myself, we always have the difficult decision of choosing which book to read. For every book which…
Data, General, Python
Quant skills for discretionary traders
by Saeed Amen •
Fashion is one of those things I think I might follow. In practice, the only times I end up being fashionable, is when the fashion world somehow meanders back to my taste. I used to wear a Casio G-Shock watch for many years, which I admit was hopelessly unfashionable for most of that time. Then…
Data, General, Macro
The gorilla & Radiohead in the backtest room
by Saeed Amen •
A couple of years ago I remember visiting the opening of an art exhibition in Amsterdam, with a few of my friends from university. I can’t really recall many of the paintings, probably more a function of my memory, rather than the art itself. One thing I do recall was a painting a living room,…
Data, General
Mistakes when backtesting trading strategies
by Saeed Amen •
You know how it feels. Time has come and gone, and still no progress. Then hours later, you’ve found the mistake, and you’re absolutely kicking yourself. Coding is very much a case of trial and error. You just need enough stubbornness not to give up to get your code to run properly. Most of the…
General
What did I learn from a year in Starbucks?
by Saeed Amen •
“Wake up and smell the coffee” so the cliche says. When I quit my job in a bank, nearly four years ago, one of my first decisions I had to make was where I would work on a startup idea. Initially I had thought of working at home on it. Yet, somehow, moving from the trading…