Strategy

The heuristics in this post are practical strategies that build upon the foundational concepts in my Withering Trader’s Illustrated Primer. going to talk a bit about some things I’ve learned about rigged markets, signal extraction and how to fit market manipulation into your overall mosaic Rule 1: understanding you’re a gremlin not a genius. if you’re reading this chances are you’re not as smart as quants so don’t try to be. I practice a very special variety of quantitative trading, called “find someone rigging a market and front-run them”. Leave other quant strategies (like stat arb, or complex machine learning alphas) to PHDs. What I do is not even quant trading. It just uses quantitative methods to express a view that an asset is being rigged. ...

My investment philosophy is a direct extension of my broader life philosophy, which I call The Blackprint. It’s about applying a systematic, algorithmic approach to markets. For a more detailed, practical guide on how I apply these ideas in trading, see A Withering Trader’s Illustrated Primer. My Investment Philosophy as Best as I can explain. dfuq do I actually do A lot of people think I’m “insane” or “on drugs”, per Twitter discourse .I want to explain what I do for a living and how it all fits together. ...

My analysis of the super bubble is based on the trading framework I outline in A Withering Trader’s Illustrated Primer. George Soros wrote a book more people should read, “The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The 2008 Crash and What It Means”. I’ll summarize the salient points here and apply it to what’s happening with my own interpretation. Soros thought that his “Theory of Reflexivity” was a good way to make money in markets but might not have any broader application to society. That is until 2008 when he came out of retirement to manage his own money during the Crash. ...

This is a deep dive into crypto market structure, building on some of the core ideas from my Withering Trader’s Illustrated Primer. Escaping the socio-spiritual prison from the starting position of a speculator Sidepots in the Asylum When I started trading, I was in it for money and pride. My father lost a lot of money starting a hedge fund and we lost our house when I was a kid. I got into trading as some kind of redemption arc. ...

This primer is a distillation of the market-related aspects of my personal framework, The Blackprint. For a deeper dive into the principles that guide my trading, you can read my investment philosophy. A core concept I frequently apply is understanding market momentum, which I call The Mo. the Last Samurai, Darth Vader, the world of entertainment bleeding into the world of things I want to tell you about something I’ve noticed. “There are only two industries. This has always been true….There is the industry of things, and the industry of entertainment….After people have the things they need to live, everything else is entertainment. Everything.” ― Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer ...

Achieving a state of “Stress Zero” is a core objective of the mental and psychological modules of The Blackprint. how to use CBT augmented with accelerationist religious fanaticism to improve your work performance Atheism is a Base Case But Its Vibes are Not Immaculate Below I’m going to talk about Stress Zero - an approach I use to actively cut my stress levels to zero on a daily basis. Usually before sleep, or at night time. But sometimes, in the morning. Fundamentally Stress Zero supercharges CBT with religious zealotry to immediately kill all your bad feelings. So if learning about that doesn’t appeal to you, you should stop reading. ...

This post continues the discussion on evolving my personal and project strategy, a core tenet of The Blackprint. minimum viable execution marching towards the singularity Minimum Viable Execution Below I want to outline the list of Diet, Exercise, Mental Health and Personal Automation tactics I’m implementing until at least January 5 2024. This post is meant to be an addendum to my previous post “Firing Myself” where I zone in specifically on Personal Automation tactics. That post, in a nutshell, talked about how to use AI tools like GPT4 to make better regular decisions with less energy. ...

My thoughts on radical personal change, a practical application of the philosophy outlined in The Blackprint. deprecating Alex 1.0, applied accelerationism, ego death with a postgres backend Encountering the Power of AI in Financial Decisions Algorithms from social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram, along with the whole digital marketing industry, work non-stop to hook us on products and services that aren’t good for us. AI differentiates itself from Tech 1.0 by giving users the power of algorithms to improve their lives, rather than be victimized by them. ...

This analysis of FX and interest rate volatility is a specific application of the global macro principles discussed in A Withering Trader’s Illustrated Primer. extreme FX and interest rate volatility paints a picture of 2 very different worlds. which shall we step into? Let’s start with a question. If Japan has rock bottom risk-free rates, shouldn’t its companies command higher multiples? Shouldn’t Japan be a global hub of innovation - because low rates and structural deflation allow for investment in growth? ...

This post marks a new phase in the project, guided by the principles of The Blackprint. one last musing before the descent into the digital colosseum Digital assets and the political media have wrapped around each other, a double helix of increasingly epic proportions. It has not always been like this, but a glimpse of where we are today, before discussing the portal that’s opened behind my casomputer chair that I am about to step through - ...