Movies Watched -- Diary of a Lost Girl (1929)

Added on by C. Maoxian.

This version 113 minutes long, cobbled together and thought to be close to Pabst’s original intention … his last silent picture … another great movie from the Weimar era (I guess the greatest? was The Blue Angel (1930)) … Louise Brooks, so beautiful and a talented actress to boot … morality tales well told … lots of ascending and descending stairs, money changing hands, and a firm grip on shoulder or back of neck (!) if you enjoy your obvious symbolism. John Farr liked it (“arch condemnation of moral corruption at the heart of the German soul“), and I too give it a green-go rating.

Ein wenig mehr Liebe und niemand kann verloren sein auf dieser Welt!

Ein wenig mehr Liebe und niemand kann verloren sein auf dieser Welt!

Notes for Chat with Traders, Episode 198

Added on by C. Maoxian.

Episode 198 ... Christina Qi

  • "That's a really great question."

  • Went to MIT

  • Dormmate staked $100K by rich kid roommate at Harvard, made $40K with it

  • Didn't like environment/culture (hazing) at place she interned (Goldman), wanted to start her own place

  • "No thought leader in the space."

  • "That's a great question."

  • Had no money, no credibility, no connections [except for MIT/Harvard]

  • Raised venture capital, built all technologies from scratch, create operational side

  • People invest in people at the angel/seed stage

  • Raising money for the fund another matter, you need numbers, backtests at least

  • No one has ever seen a bad backtest

  • "What's interesting, Aaron, is that...."

  • "That's a good question."

  • HFTs changed language post-Flash Boys to "low latency trading" or "electronic market making"

  • Their highest trading volume this year (2020) was 7.1 billion shares in a day

  • They don't buy order flow

  • Took two and a half years to build the system

  • Felt like a fraud up till launch, no track record

  • Everyone at domeyard was called a partner, free food, unlimited vacation ... all bad ideas, naive mistakes

  • Giving people too much choice is a bad thing

  • On average, recently, they do 2,500 trades per day ... could be 25,000 depending on environment

  • Holding periods are microseconds to hours (latter called mid-term strategies)

  • Flat at end of day, always

  • "Good question!"

  • One losing day can wipe out 29 days of profits

  • They mainly trade futures and forex, not equities

  • Aim for 1-3% of average daily volume of the products they trade

  • They try to predict market a few seconds out

  • Mainly use order book market data

  • Half life of a strategy could be one to three months

  • "That's a really interesting question."

  • Trading strategies are constantly being monitored by humans, tweaking the code

  • They don't play the hardware game ... next year there will be a new FPGA after all

  • "That's a great question."

  • Not many HFT firms that were around a decade ago are still around

  • Can't talk about returns, considered marketing

  • Also works on a project called databento

  • domeyard dot com is a suspended webpage?

  • Twitter: @christinaqi

FOMO Inducing Tweets for June

Added on by C. Maoxian.

A collection … if I missed any, please send them to me and I’ll add them:

Sweet Songs and Empty Tummies

Added on by C. Maoxian.

Warren Buffett in 2019:

“In the end, it all goes back to Aesop, who in 600 B.C. said that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, and when we buy Amazon we try to figure out whether there’s three or four or five in the bush, and how long it will take to get to the bush, how certain are we going to get to the bush, and who else is going to come and take the bush away.”

The original:

Luscinia, ab accipitre famelico comprehensa, cum se ab eo devorandam intellegeret, blande eum rogabat ut se dimitteret, pollicita pro tanto beneficio ingentem mercedem sese relaturam. Cum autem accipiter eam interrogaret quid gratiae sibi referre posset, “Aures,” inquit, “tuas mellifluis cantibus demulcebo.” “At ego,” inquit accipiter, “malo mihi ventrem demulceas. Sine tuis enim cantibus vivere; sine cibo non possum.”

Movies Watched -- Charley Varrick (1973)

Added on by C. Maoxian.

110 minute running time so about ten minutes too long … clearly inspired the Coen Brothers’ when making No Country For Old Men and mad genius Tarantino’s “getting medieval on his ass” … Walter Matthau the least sexy man in the world, but I guess they had fun with that … Joe Don Baker plays a good psychopath, slapping the ladies and telling them “he don’t sleep with whores, at least not knowingly.” It wasn’t a terrible movie, in many ways it was good, but I’m not going to put it on my Top 500 list or give it a green-go rating. There’s a rare anti-Semitic jibe where Norman Fell is called a “bright little bagel snapper.” John Farr liked it and I must have gotten the reco from him.

He says his name is Sally.

He says his name is Sally.

AIDS Alarmism

Added on by C. Maoxian.

From Michael Fumento’s interview on Booknotes:

“… your average white, heterosexual, middle-class person … their chance of getting AIDS is actually lower than their chance of either being struck by lightning or drowning in a bathtub … your typical heterosexual AIDS victim … is a black or Hispanic female who's living in the New York-New Jersey area whose steady sexual partner--we're not talking promiscuity here--steady sexual partner is an intravenous drug abuser. And for these women, they probably have a better chance of dying of AIDS than anything else …  I think we're being horribly cruel when we pretend that we're all at equal risk. You're lying to people or deceiving them at any rate, and I think at the margin, people will die because we're giving them this false, `everybody's going to get it,' or `everybody's at risk' message.”

I remember I had to take an HIV test in 1988 to get a visa to study abroad in China, and the dumb woman doctor who got the test result back said, “take a look at the result here on this paper,” which sort of alarmed me (of course I was negative), but I realize now that she was caught up in the whole AIDS hysteria at the time.

Movies Watched -- Tully (2018)

Added on by C. Maoxian.

95 minute running time … I loved this one … Charlize Theron is a special woman (born in 1975 so she’s a tail-end Xer). She’s beautiful and smart and chooses to participate in really good, interesting movies. I don’t know why this movie was in my queue (obviously not a John Farr reco since it deals with a heterosexual woman and motherhood and mental health), but I’m glad it was! Green-go, highly recommended, I haven’t seen many movies from 2018, but this would obviously make my top 10 list for that year.

I see now that the director (born in 1977) directed “Up in the Air,” which I hated, and the writer (born in 1978) wrote “Juno,” which I also hated. But they made a winner here, probably due to Charlize’s input. (Ah, they also made “Young Adult,” which I loved.)

Rex didn’t like it, but of course he’s gay. (I still love Rex: “I kept wishing Marlo would dump her deplorable life and marry Tully.“)

… he’s ruining it for all the other kids in the class who are reading like, The Iliad or whatever?

… he’s ruining it for all the other kids in the class who are reading like, The Iliad or whatever?

Movies Watched -- All That Jazz (1979)

Added on by C. Maoxian.

123 minute running time so 20 to 30 minutes too long, but this was an unusual movie, very interesting in parts … if it were edited, which would be easy because it’s just a series of set pieces, and ran 90 to 100 minutes, I would give it a green rating, Top 500 movie for sure … a fan edit of it is called for … anyone in show business will love it despite the length. Been awhile since I’ve seen a movie as unusual as this one, but not unusual in a bad way. I think it inspired the creators of The Singing Detective TV series, which I loved. Anyway, I’d do a fan edit of it if I had the technical skills.

There’s no people like show people

There’s no people like show people

Autumn Leaves of Red and Gold

Added on by C. Maoxian.

Skip to 0:29 … I like this cover of ‘Autumn Leaves’ sung at Anthony Benedetto’s 90th birthday party … Leslie used the Johnny Mercer lyrics: