|
On November 08 2011 13:16 reincremate wrote:Show nested quote +On November 08 2011 11:32 BrTarolg wrote:
So i'm chasing my dream. I'm putting everything aside to do it. I'll be sitting in front of a screen every day, for long hours, for the best years of my life.
Nobody is ever going to hear about me, i'm not gonna become famous. I'm not gonna contribute to society.
I'm going to be the scum whos gonna make my fortune from the next financial crisis and global recession.
And i'll be damned, i'm going to put my heart and soul into it. I'm going to work the hardest i've ever worked in my life. I'm going to work so hard its going to be more important than eating, more important than sleeping. The guys i know who work at these places sleep about 4 hours a night.
The absolute key to success is working hard. You don't need talent, you don't need gifts, contacts or luck. You need to work hard, and work your damn ass off.
I'm going to work so hard, and why? Because i'm chasing my dream. What if I wrote a blog post with the exact same kind of cheesy hollywood chasing a dream crap except I said wanted to be a successful serial killer? Or something more innocuous but nonetheless unethical like world's greatest pickpocket? Or maybe something legal like the CEO of Monsanto or Nike or dictator of some country somewhere? Would people find that endearing or inspirational?
Because in the stock markets, the other investors who you steal ladder points money from are not unwilling innocent victims.
True though, trading is mostly zero-sum and traders could contribute so much more to society with their intelligence, but greed wins in the end, and I wish the OP well.
|
Damn man, good luck, I'll be looking for updates from you. I'm still too chicken shit to cut my nets. Maybe sometime in the next few years. Or the year after that. Or the year after that.
|
No offense, but I find this entire thread extremely ironic.
Wall Street is made of people like this. And I'm not saying this in a bad way. I mean that a majority of people on Wall Street are as hard working, as driven, and as passionate as this guy, and he acknowledges that. And then we laud this guy.
Yet the next day we go back to criticizing Wall Street for trying to be as successful as they can within the rules that they play in.
World of irony.
I wish people could just wake up and realize that the people on Wall Street under criticism are mostly passionate people who have incredible work ethic and sacrifice their lives in order to achieve their goals and own successes... and that the problem lies in regulation, not with Wall Street themselves. Literally, the people who "gambled away our economy" are EXACTLY like the OP: prop traders, hedge funds, investment management shops. Repeat, EXACTLY. Yet people never realize that that is exactly the way the economy needs to work in order to grow... the problem exists because of a huge number of small problems invisible at the individual level that compounds into an enormous crisis. And it's not like these people TAKE the money from you and gamble them. They are eagerly GIVEN the money IN ORDER to gamble with it. In summary, it's like if someone gave you a few $100 bills at a door at a Vegas Casino and asked you to go gamble and try and make as much money as you could. It's not their fault that they're gambling it, because they're paid to gamble.
Sigh.
|
|
|
On November 08 2011 11:32 BrTarolg wrote:
The absolute key to success is working hard. You don't need talent, you don't need gifts, contacts or luck. You need to work hard, and work your damn ass off.
I'm going to work so hard, and why? Because i'm chasing my dream.
This hurts to read, really. That paragraph... I've been there, I've done that... I ended up in a deep dark depressed hole after about 5 years of working my absolute ass off (indie games) and getting nowhere, I lost friends, I alienated family, I ended up in a shit load (excuse my french) of debt.
And then in a strange twist of fate, everything I ever worked on was lost in a bushfire. It was the exact opposite of my dreams (which were just to make enough money off indie games to be able to continue making indie games  )
You are right though, the key to success is working hard, I agree, but from what I've learnt, it is not the end all be all, and IT DOES HURT when shit goes pear-shaped after years of working hard. I can't imagine anything in life hurts (apart from loss of family) as much as admitting defeat when you have gone all in on life on something that doesn't work out.
I'm not saying you wont be successful, in fact from the things you have done, the people you know, your knowledge of your industry, I'm almost certain you will be. But be careful with the "all I need to do is work hard to be successful" mantra.
Always prepare for failure, but never expect it.
Good luck.
|
Rule #45 Never tell anyone your dreams.
|
Buy low, sell high, bro.
Way to take the high road.
|
Katowice25012 Posts
Love to hear this kind of passion 
|
Amazing read... Some insights into realms usually just cast aside as TheEnemy here...
|
the best way to work hard as a goal is to not tell anybody about it. telling people about your goals and your intentions will most likely squish them as you'll already feel a sort of accomplishment.. or something like that. I read something about that.
|
Thanks for the great blog - your passion was infectious while reading, but I have to admit that I cannot condone your dream when comparing it to my life.
I work as a software developer for major banks and insurance companies around Europe, and have done my fair share of 60+ hour weeks when approaching major deadlines as all programmers have. But I also maintain a decent work life balance by being home based when I am not on site with a client, and enjoying that time with my wonderful family. You make absolutely no mention of what your life at home is like, or whether you actually have any life outside of work at all!
Trading sounds like it will suit your personality as a driven and focussed individual, but you WILL burn out after a few years and it will put the rest of your life into sharp relief when you suddenly realise you have nothing else. The same thing happened to me in 2007 after a long hard stint at a Swiss bank - when I finally finished I realised I had no friends, no girlfriend and I was living in a bedsit like a hermit even though I was pulling in £100k+ a year. It took me a long time to come out of the hole I had worked myself into and sort out my personal life outside of my job.
I wish you all the success in the world, but I hope that when you are done that you can come to realise that there is more to life than work!
|
Hey guys. Wow, the response to this has been absolutely phenomenal. For years i've been writing little tidbits here and there (mostly random crap in the ADT), sometimes something i felt was insightful, but i've never quite had a response like this - I even got spotlighted! (tick off one "todo" thing on TL)
I thought i'd use my next few posts to make some responses to some of the stuff thats been posted here. A general theme seems to be "why trading, why not something more useful" and that "traders are scum/bad for society etc."
The first one is pretty simple - it's kinda the same reason i got into poker. Its a mass multiplayer computer game (prop houses are commonly called arcades  ) where the goal is to get the highest score (ladder points). In simple terms, i just enjoy it. Some people thrive in an environment where they interact with people, feel like they are making a difference etc. Some people thrive in an environment where they are left to their own devices to do their own thing. Trading isn't for everyone. Even at that point, traders come from different walks of life and all sorts of different traders do different kinds of things.
A lot of hate at traders and financial institutions i feel comes from a few reasons. Probably the biggest reason is its "unfair" that these guys make vast sums of money, more than everyone else. Actually, trading is just a meritocratic system. If you're good and work hard, you get paid more. Most of life works like this. If you wanna be an ultra-billionaire, don't get into trading, just be an entrepreneur and startup some companies instead.
Trading pays out exactly how much you are worth, no more no less. This is quite something if you think about it - there are plenty of professions which pay out way more absurd sums of money - footballers, musicians, being born on an oil field.
Probably the greatest reason is that people don't actually understand what trading IS. So let me help you out a little bit here.
In economic theory there is something known as the efficient market hypothesis. That is, markets (and in many ways, life) is efficient. If you had the choice to farm on 2 patches of land, you'd pick the cheaper one. That's why farms exist in the countryside, where land is cheap, and you don't see any farms in the middle of the city, no matter how fertile the soil there is. It's because somebody else will get more utility out of that city land than the farmer and is willing to pay more for it.
Traders and markets are pretty much the epitome of the efficient market - traders MAKE markets happen. And markets have to happen - people rarely understand just how important markets are to the world's growth and success.
Traders can make markets because they are not perfectly efficient, there's mispricing or risk premia to be had.
The thing is, trading will always be there, because its not some magical financial construct poofed from thin air, but it's actually a genuine profession.
Think about a fishmongers - they sell fish. They get the fish from the port, buy it at a low price, and then sell it at a high price to you guys. Somewhere along the line, someone sees this as a good idea, and does exactly the same thing, but prices it slightly lower, and still makes money. This process eventually repeats itself until people have priced the fish exactly what its worth (usually, the convenience of going to a fishmonger as opposed to buying a fishing rod and getting the fish yourself)
This is great for the consumer - he gets fairly priced fish. If there were only a few fishmongers, they could charge arbitrarily high prices.
Trading is basically this. Everyone is a trader. Have you ever wanted to buy a house? You're going long the housing market. Are you gonna buy your house when its cheap or expensive? Of course you want to buy it when it's cheap - and when is this? Right after a recession of course! Recessions happen because markets are full of inefficiencies and stuff is overpriced more than it should be.
And people don't just buy houses, they sell houses. They sell houses when prices are high, and then buy then when prices are low. Sound familiar? And what is the result? People get fairly priced housing.
Sometimes, this isn't the case, for example, the housing bubble. Now, traders didnt' "cause" the housing bubble. What caused the bubble is that people tried to spend more than they had, artificially inflating the price. All the traders were trying to sell houses during the bubble because they knew that they were overpriced. However, the bubble was caused by normal, regular, non traders, being very greedy and trying to buy houses when they couldn't afford it. Traders didn't cause the price of houses to go up and then crash, YOU did. Normal, regular people created a huge inefficiency in the market, and some (smart) traders made an absolute killing from the fallout - the bigger the inefficiency, the more money there is to be made!
So fast forward to modern day trading, all full of funky derivatives and electronics. You might say "all that stuff above you talked about, thats OK, but this electronic derivative, that CANT be good for us"
All derivatives are constructed the way they are because there is a demand for them. Futures and options and other crazy things exist because people want them, because there is market inefficiency and they help fix that.
Billions and trillions are traded over futures markets every day, and its a zero sum game (unlike stock's which aren't). It's the hunting ground for many prop shops and can be seen as a bunch of guys gambling against each other.
What people don't realize and forget is that, futures markets are there for a reason.
Futures exchanges were originally created as a way of finding an efficient way to sell things like commodities - wheat, corn, cattle, iron, copper etc.
In fact, a lot of modern day agriculture wouldn't be able to survive without these things. For example - a wheat farmer needs to make a certain amount of money to survive, say 100$ a year. He farms enough to make 150$ of wheat a year, so he is mostly safe, but the price of wheat changes. No, not because nasty traders are manipulating the price of wheat, but because demand goes up and down in a normal world. Sometimes theres a drought, sometimes theres a particularly good harvest. Bread might go out of fashion, etc.etc.
Now, the price of wheat is expected to be higher than 150$ a year, but hes worried - wheat is a very fickle commodity, and the price goes up and down a lot - for example, that 150$ might rely on the fact that a lot of wheat farmers around the world are going to face a drought, pushing up the price of wheat. However, if one year, magically not a single place on the world has a drought, and all of a sudden theres too much wheat in the market and it sells for 90$ - he loses his home!
A future is a contract or agreement that allows you to sell your wheat at some pre-determined price in the future. If the price of wheat right now is high, a wheat farmer can short a futures contract, locking in the price. He won't benefit from the potential upside of wheat prices going through the roof, but he secures himself from losing his home. He might only short enough futures to make that 100$, and leave the rest of the wheat to float, because he thinks the price in general is going up.
Now, one of you might say - but what if HE suffers a drought, then not only does he lose his wheat, but he has to sell wheat he doesn't have! What happens in this case is he has to buy wheat at the market price and sell it at the futures price, losing EVEN MORE money (evil traders!)
Then in comes the option! An option allows you to pay a premium to have the OPTION to buy/sell wheat in the future at a certain pre-agreed price. Not only can the farmer lock in the price of wheat, but if his wheat disappears, he doesn't lose out.
Then from here, come even more complex derivatives which i won't go into. Either way, derivatives exist because there is a demand for them - someone out there finds them useful. A trader's job is to make these derivatives happen, and create a market for it so that you can trade it!
Ultimately, traders make sure the price is fair. If the price is unfair, that isn't the traders fault, that's YOUR fault. The housing bubble was caused by regular people becoming greedy. The tech bubble was caused by normal people throwing all their money into stocks at wild abandon without any concern for actually what a fair price is (all the good traders knew it was overpriced!)
The eurozone crisis? Traders didn't "cause" it. Greedy governments who thought they could liive beyond their means did. Its the people that voted them in. All the normal people were greedy and wanted big houses and a comfortable lifestyle, and they said they were going to vote out a government who wouldn't give them that.
In the UK, people are scathing and hate our prime minister (David Cameron) because hes making cuts to the public sector and being evil and taking money from the poor. Actually, the UK is going to do well in this next recession - why? Because we MADE these cuts in time. Somehow as British people, we managed to accept we shouldn't spend more than we have, and the government enacted it as such - we the British people, voted in Cameron knowing that this was what we needed for our country
The rest of Europe however, didn't seem to catch this drift. Their governments were pressured to live beyond their means, and so thats exactly what they got. They borrowed money they didn't have, and started spending it, and now it's catching up on them.
And so the Eurozone is the next big inefficiency. My job as a trader is to make that market, and find a fair price for Europe. You're not gonna like it, and i'm gonna make an absolute killing off it. But my job is to make sure the prices are fair for everyone, and its traders that allow the world to function efficiently and globally.
----
Ok, so i replied with another wall of text. Hey that's my style i guess, i have a lot of things to say. I'm only ever satisfied if i feel like i've covered enough so that the post has logic and makes reasonable sense
To save yourself (and myself) from more of these walls, i'll just make a poll of what i should write next
I can either answer some questions and make some more responses to individual posts in this thread
OR
I can tell some evil, controversial trader stories that will blow your mind
I'll probably do both at some point but one first. Give you the illusion of choice
Poll: What now?Tell me evil controversial trader story! (20) 74% Answer questions in thread (7) 26% 27 total votes Your vote: What now? (Vote): Answer questions in thread
(Vote): Tell me evil controversial trader story!
|
On November 08 2011 13:13 cmgillett wrote:
"So i'm chasing my dream. I'm putting everything aside to do it. I'll be sitting in front of a screen every day, for long hours, for the best years of my life.
Nobody is ever going to hear about me, i'm not gonna become famous. I'm not gonna contribute to society. I'm going to be the scum whos gonna make my fortune from the next financial crisis and global recession."
Yea fuck everyone else right? I admire your work ethic mate, but I wish you'd apply it to something else. We dont need more "scum", i think we have enough as is.
Who cares? This is the world we live in. I find it really weird how people look down on the people making a lot of money just because they aren't making that money "in the right way".
If trading is what the guy wants to do why shouldn't he? What else can he "apply" himself to? We're on a forum used by people following ESPORTS in some way or the other. Is it okay to make money playing Starcraft 2? Playing Starcraft 2 does in no way contribute to society.
Same thing with regular sports. What does Wayne Rooney contribute to society? Nothing, and yet he makes obscene amounts of cash for kicking a ball with his feet into a square net.
Sure, they might all be "scum" but then again, I see pretty much every human being as "scum" so I don't really care if some of those "scum" are also rich "scum".
|
3030 Posts
Holy walls of text! Tell the story about the airline stock you were mentioning on IRC =\
|
On November 08 2011 19:44 phanto wrote:
the best way to work hard as a goal is to not tell anybody about it. telling people about your goals and your intentions will most likely squish them as you'll already feel a sort of accomplishment.. or something like that. I read something about that.
http://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_keep_your_goals_to_yourself.html
|
Thanks for sharing man, I never thought I'd read something inspirational about finance :D
Good luck, I really hope it works out for you!
|
Did I meet you at the Singapore TL meetup?
I'm glad you have a sure direction for your life
|
Great Read first of all, but i must agree that kind of passion and all of it applied to financial system, thats is useless and broken and all that had done nothing good for this world. I mean , i admire the way you can sacrifice your free time, sleep and else just to get it done because is your dream, but be carefull about what you wish for. Good luck for you whatever your decision may be, but think about it. Its like the story that compares the life to a cup of cofee, just find in youtube. Thanks for sharing this again.
|
How can you live with yourself?
|
Great read...that's all I can say!!!
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
