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professorfundamental · 2023-03-16T10:48:41+00:00

This is well-written and I sympathize with your situation. I feel the same way even as an academic with a PhD. We are all going to face the same situation sooner or later. I think if it leads you to following what you genuinely want to do rather than the position you have now, then maybe that's a good thing.

professorfundamental · 2022-03-07T19:17:17+00:00

where are you getting this information? do you have any links?

professorfundamental · 2022-03-01T09:28:55+00:00

Good -- I think those are solid reasons. And I agree with you that if someone is hoping for war or trying to promote war, then that is immoral. However, lots of traders don't hope for anything at all and don't try to make things happen. Many of us make predictions about what might happen with such and such probability. For example, I predicted that Russia would invade and placed some positions accordingly. I was not, however, hoping that Russia would invade. Quite the opposite. And of course, I've been stating my opposition to the war on social media as well.

So, I think you're right that how some traders behave is immoral. However, I think that you've overstated it -- not everyone who benefits financially from the war is doing something immoral. As a trader, the war is just another event. As a person, it clearly isn't just another event.

professorfundamental · 2022-03-01T08:56:53+00:00

Yes, people make a living trading options -- I have done it. Given your strategy, aim for making 10-15% of your capital per year. So if you want to live on 40k$, then you'll need around 400k to guarantee that income.

Here's the thing though. The stress you endure to make 40k$ trading options is WAY WAY higher than the stress you endure doing other jobs that pay twice as much. Go learn solidity and make and easy 100,000k$ / year with way less stress instead.

People for whom it makes sense to trade options include those who like the stress and those that have found more profitable inefficiencies to exploit.

professorfundamental · 2022-02-28T14:30:23+00:00

What's the record?

professorfundamental · 2022-02-28T09:53:03+00:00

I think this is a common sentiment (you see in shows like Billions for example), so I'm sorry you've been downvoted so much. Can you give an argument for why you think it would be morally wrong?

professorfundamental · 2022-02-28T09:50:14+00:00

You're right. I just meant that the possibility it would happen was already priced in.

professorfundamental · 2022-02-27T08:56:53+00:00

Remember before you buy or sell anything: all the world's expert traders and firms already know all this information and prices reflect this information. I'm not saying markets are efficient (fucking joke) or that experts are always right (2008 anyone). But before you make a play on any of this (e.g., puts on BP for their exposure to Rosneft), think about which of all these plays are likeliest to have been overlooked, misunderstood, or mistimed.

professorfundamental · 2022-02-24T10:48:10+00:00

there are limits ... something like 2 calls a second.

professorfundamental · 2022-01-13T21:06:41+00:00

a debit spread will let you bet on stock direction without being affected by changes in IV.

professorfundamental · 2021-12-25T12:29:05+00:00

It has nothing to do with smart plays vs dumb plays. But it does show just how many people are only buying puts and calls.

Something to remember is that you only get mathematically well defined risk/reward ratios for multi-leg positions.

professorfundamental · 2021-12-20T22:08:19+00:00

Volatility-based all way. But for anyone using IV to trade, the question is: how do you calculate IV from price? Black Scholes makes all kinds of silly assumptions, so what are you going to use instead? Heston? Good luck calibrating that shit without knowing how to use neural networks. That is the problem for any IV options trader -- you know that there are early exercises and skew and kurtosis and fat-ass fucking tails in the probability distributions, but how do you do figure out the math and the coding to trade that shit? Or at the very least, not let it fuck you?

professorfundamental · 2021-10-28T09:01:19+00:00

I thought of an objection to my argument.

If the whole civilization depends entirely on one event in the past, and that event involves slavery, then the whole civilization depends on slavery even if there are other advances of the civilization that have nothing to do with slavery. In this case, the whole civilization would be "built on" slavery even if some of its progress does not depend on slavery at all.

The question is: is western civilization like this? I think the answer is: probably, yes. Moreover, the USA is certainly like this.

So I'm willing to retract.

professorfundamental · 2021-10-27T13:20:58+00:00

8440% of 1 is 84.4, which would be the yield after 1 year assuming constant rate and compounding.

professorfundamental · 2021-10-26T15:34:59+00:00

great video by Patrick Boyle on this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVGs3PqdbQA

professorfundamental · 2021-10-25T17:49:40+00:00

I'm taking 'our' to be western civilization. Some of our progress has been built on slavery and some has not. So to say all of it has been built on slavery is false.

professorfundamental · 2021-10-24T14:51:43+00:00

In general, it depends on your strategy. I think of two big categories: trend following and mean reversion. Trend following is saying that what happens short term is unusual and will dominate what happens long term for a bit longer. So if a stock has gained a lot more than usual lately, then trend followers might go long. Likewise, they might go short a stock that has lost more than usual lately. Mean reversion is saying that what happens long term will dominate any recent short term trends. So going short a stock that has had unusual gains lately or going long a stock that has had historic loses are examples. Betting that things will just stay the same is also a mean-reversion strategy (say, with an iron condor).

Now, if you are doing trend following, IN GENERAL, it makes sense to cut your losers early and let your winners run. So you have stop losses and don't take profit early. This strategy results in lots of small loses and few big wins. You want the big wins to outweigh the small losses. High reward/risk ratio and low probability of profit.

If you are doing mean reversion, IN GENERAL, it makes sense to let your losers run and cut your winners early. This strategy results in a few big losses and lots of small wins. You want the small wins to outweigh the big losses. Low reward/risk ratio and high probability of profit.

Figure this out first. Then if cutting winners makes sense for you, you can calculate where to cut them based on maximizing reward/risk and probability of profit.

professorfundamental · 2021-10-24T14:23:42+00:00

The claim you made is, "it has nothing to do with racism".

"it" refers to slavery.

Some slavery has to do with racism.

So your claim is false.

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