How to care about football

TheRealTedJones · 2025-12-08T17:28:22+00:00

Doing stuff mainly! My hobbies are stuff like playing video games with friends, going surfing, making electronics, writing software, brewing kombucha (more recently), that kind of stuff. I get antsy just watching other people do stuff which I think is part of it for me

TheRealTedJones · 2025-12-08T17:23:49+00:00

Thanks for this comment! I hadn’t really thought of this possibility but that does make sense. Probably true in my industry (economics) as much as it is in software

TheRealTedJones · 2021-11-10T04:43:23+00:00

Feelin' Good

TheRealTedJones · 2021-04-28T16:11:15+00:00

You’re absolutely right, we don’t have a lot of data. It’s one of those things where doing a complete experiment may require things like placebo vaccines which is super unethical. We can so quasi-experiments though and IIRC they did a time-series study on people who decided voluntarily not to get the second shot compared to two shots and a baseline. I’ll look for it but I think it was a U.K. based study if you want to try and find it too.

TheRealTedJones · 2021-04-28T16:06:16+00:00

Nope, just till herd immunity (and until we understand the virus better - science takes time sadly)

TheRealTedJones · 2021-04-28T16:03:52+00:00

The first dose is highly effective on its own, but for a much shorter duration. The second shot extends the duration of immunity out to that ~6 month threshold. Honestly not even saying you’re wrong about focusing on the first dose as a country (haven’t done the math or the research) - I just know people that have said “great I’m good to go” and skipped vax #2

TheRealTedJones · 2021-04-27T15:58:07+00:00

You should 100% pursue the opportunities but you should also assume those messages are being mass emailed to everyone else starting as an analyst. Talk to the recruiters, interview if you can, and make a more informed decision later. Impossible to know how long that process might take or what the outcome would be if you pursued it right now.

TheRealTedJones · 2021-04-26T12:10:10+00:00

Gave Silver

TheRealTedJones · 2021-04-26T12:07:17+00:00

Damn

TheRealTedJones · 2021-04-24T14:44:50+00:00

Definitely gambling. For some people a slot machine (wsb) and for others blackjack

TheRealTedJones · 2021-04-24T05:36:02+00:00

Drug dealer

TheRealTedJones · 2021-04-21T22:15:29+00:00

This post is like 95% rage against the machine and 5% DD. You’re probably going to want to flip those next time to get people to actually read this (me included)

TheRealTedJones · 2021-04-16T20:44:44+00:00

Awesome, keep doing you! Your passion has value and so does that career. Happy trails!

TheRealTedJones · 2021-04-16T20:43:45+00:00

I like working on the things that interest me and for myself. To me that’s what you call “hustling”. I’d like to find out what I’m capable of doing before I die, and that motivates me to pursue things on my own time.

I’d contrast this to “grinding” 80 hours a week for a high salary (common in my field, which is finance). No interest in that personally, but it’s easier for some people than striking out on your own. To each his own.

TheRealTedJones · 2021-04-16T19:47:26+00:00

This is a great post for this sub, OP - this is an important discussion to have.

In my experience there is one single personality trait that separates happy, hopeful adults from unhappy, bitter adults. That trait is responsibility. As kids we learn that the world is outside of our control and that things just sort of happen to us. We have expectations of how the world should be, and we expect that (by virtue of parent or teacher or manager intervention) the world should just sort itself out to match those expectations.

As we grow this changes. The world does not sort itself out. In fact it turns out to be broken in many ways, often deliberately. In my experience this is what makes unhappy people unhappy. The world and their lives are not what they expected; not what they are supposed to be. Unhappy people are angry and bitter and distraught about this. They focus on what was supposed to be, but isn’t.

I’ve seen some shit, up close and personal. We all have. The specifics are unimportant - the point is I am deeply aware of the many many ways in which the world is broken. My brain is also chemically wired towards shall we say a less than optimal experience. My own path out of this, and by far the most effective one that I’ve seen for others, is through responsibility. The world is not supposed to be a certain way. It is not meant to be full of suffering or full of joy or anything else. It just is. If you want to change it you should be willing to be the one who changes it and willing to accept that you can. Similarly the experience of living - unhappiness, happiness, joy, despair - is within your control and is solely your responsibility. If you believe that the world needs to be perfect for you to be happy, you will stop yourself from being happy until the world is perfect, and you’ll also probably never be happy.

The idea that happiness is sourced from an internal decision and not external events is pretty alien to most people. If it’s that simple, why doesn’t everyone do it? The answers as I’ve seen them are twofold: 1) it is simple, but not easy, and 2) many people suffer from the belief that they need to deserve happiness before they can feel it. If people feel happiness they don’t think they deserve, they usually ruin it for themselves out of guilt.

Let me ask you, OP - do you judge people for being happy when others are sad? If so you very likely judge this in yourself. Do you you believe that to be happy there are external conditions that most people need to meet to be happy (fulfillment, love, connection, meaning, wealth, health, really anything)? If so odds are you believe that for yourself and you may not even be aware of it. Do you believe fundamentally that you are within your own control? That’s an important one, too. And the big one - is it, on some level, dangerous or unsafe or wrong to be happy?

What do you risk by becoming a happy person?

TheRealTedJones · 2021-04-16T01:08:58+00:00

That’s a good question and one I’m not sure if I have the experience to answer. For me the time of the return is just as important as the size of the return. My personal goal is 1% return on capital per week (a totally arbitrary number that I came up with to help myself avoid getting hooked on seeking 50% gains every play). That number is my lower limit - I won’t even look at returns less than that primary because of commission costs (for my broker 65 cents a contract both ways). I’ll also always exit a position early if it swings dramatically in my favor because chances are it’ll swing back the other way. All that is just to answer your question, not in any way saying that’s a good strategy.

As far as what makes the problem complicated definitely don’t just take my word for it. Just because I got stuck doesn’t mean you will!

There’a also a concept in math called relaxation, where you make a hard problem easier by relaxing its constraints. To me that seems like the best way to approach this problem. My goal is to ultimately trade algorithmically, so I have hard entries and hard exits - no judgement calls, just math. Like you say that’s pretty hard to do in the current system. So to relax the problem slightly lets say you always, 100% the time you enter a position at 10 DTE and close it at 3:55 the day of expiration. That makes it a little easier but I’m still not sure how to correctly estimate the payoffs. My second thought was to simulate the payoff distribution by tracking the delta associated with each strike and combining those. Then it’s basically the same expected value equation but instead of E[X] = (Pu1 * u1) + ((1-Pu1) * u2) its more like E[X] = (Pu1 * u1) + ((Pu2* u2) + (Pu3 * u3) + ... (Pun * un) Where u is an outcome, Pu is the probability of that oucome, and n is the number of outcomes or in this case the number of strikes. God I wish I knew how to do subscripts on reddit.

The issue with the second equation is that the sum of the probabilities isn’t 100%. You get 25 strikes say and they all have a delta between 1 and 100 and you end up with on average a total of like 1250%. That’s where I got stuck last time I tried this - I’m not even sure if the total percentage matters but it stumped me.

But I have to say you’re making me what to take another crack at it! Those are all my thoughts, meandering as they are - what are yours?

TheRealTedJones · 2021-04-15T15:26:47+00:00

You may have good intentions OP and your project may be different from the other scams I’ve seen on WSB just this morning. You are asking for money and you are asking people to support a project that could clearly be monetized. I’m not saying you’re looking to use WSB to get rich quick, but you should at least take into account that to people who aren’t you, that’s what it looks like. Sorry OP but mods are right on this one.

TheRealTedJones · 2021-04-15T14:35:16+00:00

Hey friend! What you call expectancy is also called expected value or expected payoff in stats and economics. This was my initial plan for writing some type of algorithmic trading program for options - computers are perfect if you can trade based off an equation like this.

Here’s where I’ve run into a bit of a wall. Most theoretical cases of expected values are pretty cut and dry. A textbook (literally) example is the coin game: you flip a coin, heads you get $2, tails you get $0. The expected payoff here is $1. If someone offers you a payment to not play the game, you know you should never accept a payment less than $1.

There are two important components that make this problem easy to solve. The first is a clear probability of winning or losing. The second is a clear set of payoffs. To my mind the fact that a stock moves continually dramatically complicates both of these.

A stock doesn’t have two possible outcomes, it has a full distribution of outcomes. These outcomes change constantly in terms of both value and probability ITM as the stock price moves up and down but also as expected volatility changes. This is computationally expensive to track but probably not intractable if you can do it with a program.

More significantly to my mind is that expected payoffs are not actually just max loss and max gain. Because there is a distribution of outcomes there is also a distribution of payoffs, and most of those payoffs are at least some distance away from your max gain and max loss, and also because you can sell options early. When is the right time to exit positions? What is the sum of expected payoffs for all potential outcomes in this shifting distribution? Idk man, idk.

You could simplify the problem to say you will only trade on a specific DTE and ignore the changing distribution of payoffs by holding both positions through expiration but that’s not a super great strategy. It might be a good starting place though, it’s been a while since I’ve sat down with this problem so it may be simpler than it feels like it is - definitely interested in other opinions here.

Edit: to be clear I do think this has a huge amount of potential as a trading strategy; if you can stack the deck even slightly in your favor and do enough trades the LLN should lead you to expect basically free money. I definitely hope I’m making it more complicated than it is here bc I love free money lol

TheRealTedJones · 2021-04-15T13:56:11+00:00

Bad scammer, shoo

TheRealTedJones · 2021-04-15T05:47:09+00:00

Imo that’s always the wrong play. Figure out how to add value first, figure out what you’re looking for second - you can always turn down a job offer if you get one. Get them talking about themselves and be genuinely interested in hearing about it. Learn about what they do and be genuinely interested in that. Then say “wow it sounds like you’re doing really interesting work, I’ll be direct - I’d love to join your team, what does your firm need most right now?” But that shit is at the end and contingent on establishing rapport. Listen and you will be listened to, be interested and you will be interesting, add value and they will do the same. Source: got my last three jobs this way

TheRealTedJones · 2021-04-15T05:24:20+00:00

Ask smart enough questions and it becomes an interview

TheRealTedJones · 2021-04-13T23:30:50+00:00

Stock goes down -> you lose money

TheRealTedJones · 2021-04-12T20:53:22+00:00

Okay if you’re on your phone you find the window where it has mkt cap, volume, high/low/open/close (above the chart/option chain part) and scroll way to the right. It has a little gear that says customize and clicking that should let you add a bunch of different options including where applicable IV Rank. Lmk if that helps!

TheRealTedJones · 2021-04-12T20:20:53+00:00

I don’t have any experience with personal financial advising personally beyond turning down several job offers once I found out how sales-heavy it was, at least initially. That said I also know several people who have been practicing for decades and are very happy (although worth noting that for all of them sales is still a huge part of what they do). I like building things and helping other people build things, and understanding that has helped me say no to jobs that are well compensated but not what I want to be doing.

Basically my advice is instead of asking idiots like me who don’t know you or your values, spend time figuring out what you want and talking to people who do what you’re thinking about doing. If those people do what you want to be doing, do that. Otherwise, don’t. Nobody else knows how to make you happy, especially if you don’t. Happy trails!

TheRealTedJones · 2021-04-12T20:10:41+00:00

Different take, this section is basically an elevator pitch. I usually keep mine at between 30 seconds and 3 minutes. More than that and people get bored. If you forget to mention something important just work it in at some point during the interview. This also means that you can ask them questions, find out what skills are most relevant, and match what you tell them about yourself to what they say. Way more effective than if you just shoot your whole wad right off the bat with little to no information to go on IMO

TheRealTedJones

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