1/x The window we have been targeting for 2 months has officially opened... i Can not imagine a more textbook display of the power of Vanna at expiration as we saw on Friday. The capital building was overrun by an insurrection, but all that that meant was a bigger late day rally.

2/x that ended at ATH on the close. Between Gary the 🦍 & his RVol suppression & his hand off to late day Ivol compression & the Vanna index bid, the 🐻’s never had a chance... but Gary’s getting tired after 2 months battling complacency & Vanna’s 2 week vacation, 1 of her only

3/x 2 week departures of the year (a 5 week OpEx) is quickly approaching on 1/15 morning. That means she’ll be increasingly absent as she prepares for her trip. W/ a $59 1 week straddle & $50 1 day range on Friday, & another $30 overnight drop, it’s hard to see why you wouldn’t

4/x want to take a chance on a little long gamma at this juncture. Especially given the obvious warning signs coming from the steepening of the yield curve, underperformance of the Growth complex, complacency in sentiment & positioning, anecdotal signs of bubbles in BTC & TSLA,

5/x NTM the growing exuberance surrounding a fiscal stimulus deal near $2 Trillion. The wall of worry of 3 months ago is gone. The vaccine is being deployed, the election is resolved, fiscal stimulus was passed & w/2 Georgia 🍑 🍑, ever moar 🚁💰is on the way. But what happened

Would you start your career as a model validator in a major bank if you hope one day to become a front office quant?
@GARP_Risk @actuarynews
@Actuary_Dot_Org @actuarialpost
@iSixSigma @artemisbm @SOActuaries
@CQFInstitute @aier @CFAinstitute

Many Financial / Middle Office Risk and other Quantitative Economics/ Financial Market-led research roles interface at one level or the other across FIs.
I don't know if a bank uses Employee Rotation, to foster employee learning, training and development across the 3LOD Model?

But, most of the banks, in the Advanced Markets, to use job rotation as a tool, to disseminate professional knowledge and understanding of financial market operations, among their employees.

I started my career as a Derivatives Dealer in the front office, but later ended up in the Middle Office Risk Control Unit, and further onwards in my career, moved directly into the Front Office, as a Fund Portfolio Risk Controller

Model Risk Assessment and its Validation now exists as an independent function among most of the large banks, funds and insurance firms.

#Milan 2019/20 accounts cover a season when they finished 6th in Serie A and reached the semi-final of the Coppa Italia, but were excluded from Europe for FFP issues. Second season under the ownership of American hedge fund, Elliott Management Corporation. Some thoughts follow.

#Milan pre-tax loss widened from €143m to €192m (post-tax €195m), the worst result in club’s history (partly due to COVID), as revenue fell €56m (25%) from €228m to €172m, while profit on player sales up €3m to €15m. Expenses slightly lower, including €30m exceptionals.

#Milan largest revenue decrease came from broadcasting, down €42m (40%) from €105m to €63m, though match day also fell €10m (31%) from €34m to €24m and player loans were down €5m to €8m. Commercial was slightly higher, up €1m to €77m.

As a technical aside, this international definition of #Milan €172m revenue is different to the one used in the club accounts, which also includes €20m gain on player sales plus a tiny increase in asset values, giving revenue of €192m, down €49m (20%) from prior year €241m.

#Milan wage bill was cut €24m (13%) from €185m to €161m, while other expenses were down €7m (8%) to €88m. Player amortisation rose €14m (18%) to €95m, while player write-downs increased €18m from €2m to €20m. Net interest decreased €4m from €10m to €6m.

Amazing what is going on with narratives that justify ever more draconian policies.

1. Lockdowns China did would never be acceptable in a democracy.
2. Covid is really scary and we don’t know how badly it affects people. Maybe the chinese knows something we don’t. Let’s err on the side of caution.

3. It doesn’t seem to impact kids as much, and the figures show shielded protection is viable - but we need to protect against LONG covid. 4. The first wave outbreak seems not to be matched by same scale of excess deaths as second wave. But mutant strain now about!

5. We don’t know if mutant strain will be treatable with vaccines or if it will impact children - better to err on side of caution and shut everything down again. 6. Data suggests hospitals are within winter crisis norms - but these are not the data points you are looking for.

7. The data points you are looking for are anecdotal testimonies from mostly anonymous NHS staff as well as new regimes and protocol constraints which make all the previous data null and void.

#BombayHighCourt begins hearing the plea of Sonu Sood challenging the order of the Trial Court refusing to protect Sood against coercive action of BMC in lieu of illegal construction notice.

@SonuSood
@mybmc

Sr Adv Anil Sakhare submitted to the court that they were not served with the appeal memo.
Sakhare: We came to know through TV and news that the matter is today.

Adv Amogh Singh appearing for Sood points out that he will serve a hard copy however in the meantime Sood must be protected against coercive action of BMC.

Sakhare: This is what they do. City Court gives them time to approach the High Court and they come at last minute.

Singh: Milords the Trial Court failed to consider my reply on the notice and they proceeded to pass a speaking order.

Sakhare: Milords he is running a hotel in those premises without the requisite permissions.

How the 36 Nigerian states got their names. A thread 🧵

1. Abia

Abia is an acronym from the four main groups of people in the state as at the time it was formed in 1991: Aba Bende Isuikwuato Afikpo.

2. Adamawa

Adamawa was named after a warrior, Modibbo Adama Bin Ardo Hassan, that conquered the region in the beginning of the 19th century.

3. Akwa-Ibom

Akwa Ibom is named after the Qua Iboe (or Kwa Iboe) River.

4. Anambra

The state got its name from the corrupted version of Oma Mbala (Ànyịm Ọma Mbala), a popular river in the area.

Three hours and seventeen minutes.
If you have any doubt Donald Trump INTENDED for violent insurrectionists to attack the Capitol Wednesday, meditate on 3:17 instead.
That’s the time between the beginning of thesiege and the Trump's 4:17 ordering everyone to go home.
/1

Maybe you believe you can argue away Trump's rally words.
Maybe you’re like Mick Mulvaney, and you can still pretend to be “shocked” anybody took Trump literally.
But you can't argue away 3:17.
(I call bullshit “We didn’t know they’d take us literally," btw)
/2

Ask yourself: How did it take a President 3:17 to ask a group of his own followers to stop attacking the Capitol?
What does that say about HIM?
What does that say about his intentions?
/3

The deafening silence of that 3:17 minutes is all the evidence you need that Donald Trump intended to incite insurrection and violence against the United States. It should be an exhibit in the impeachment against him.
/4

The facts are these:
1. 1 pm, first rioters attempt a breech at the Capitol.
2. 1:30 pm, there are reports of lockdowns at many Federal Buildings, due to confirmed pipe bombs. That moment SHOULD HAVE BEEN enough to push the President to say to everyone “please go home.”
/5

Our pretensions to civilization have become very thin. Political violence was legitimized last year and is spreading wildly now. "Might makes right" is clearly the only "principle" behind freedom of speech. That's why Chinese Communists will never be censored by Big Tech.

When every "principle" becomes nothing but a ruthless exercise of power, it's not surprising that a growing number of people conclude they must demonstrate some sort of power in order to be taken seriously. Violence is the crudest exercise of power.

A well-run civilization makes it clear *universally* that violence is absolutely unacceptable. Giving free passes for irresponsible rhetoric and destruction to groups favored by the dominant political ideology of the State undermines that message.

We must also people peaceable means of expressing themselves and controlling their own lives, to relieve the pressures that can lead to violent outbursts and other forms of lawlessness. The less healthy discourse and freedom of action you have, the more pressure builds up.

It's dangerous when large numbers of people begin drawing the conclusion that might makes right, that laws and principles bend easily for those who have the political strength to bend them. Might makes right is the code of anarchy and barbarism, the antithesis of civilization.

Subjectivity in risk management --

I would like to briefly talk about risk mgmt in this thread (something that is not talked about much anywhere else)

The whole question of risk management is far from an objective subject.

1/11

One need at least one subjective piece of the puzzle to put it together, and that is an individual’s acceptance to risk.

Now that is subjective, meaning there is no rule that says how risk averse you should be. That is an integral part of your emotional makeup 😊

2/11

The problem is, human nature does not operate to maximize gain, but rather to maximize the chance of gain, i.e., maximize the # of winning trades & minimize the # of losing trades.

The result is, not only is risk controlled, but profitability is also controlled 😆

3/11

In other words, playing it safe can be just as bad as taking too much risk, because you are not optimizing your winning trades nor the days with extended ranges.

Sure, it's possible to develop trading idea based on tick charts(scalping) that will on average be profitable

4/11

However, the average profits on individual trades from such methodologies are microscopic, and the trades they generate are so many that it not reasonable to scale up these strategies.

Dont even get me started on costs and slippages here 😊

5/11

Over the last 72 hours, a wave of silence crashed over Donald Trump and MAGA, Qanon psyops. One day I hope to know the story of how this happened. Would not have been so sudden and neat all at once had there not been intimate and urgent contact between feds and tech companies.

None of us know how it went down. I am absolutely dying to know how it went down. Truly.

1/ Woke up to find Arnold Schwarzenegger released a powerful video regarding recent events, revealing personal pain having growing up with an abusive father. He skirted around the details.

This is what he’s done all his life in order to ascend to power.

In the 80’s we all knew.

2/ Before the internet it was hard to track down info, but there were fewer political elites, people knew each other-secrets couldn’t be kept, they left paper trails, many Nazis were still alive and victims who witnessed events confirmed relationships.

Schwarzenegger had a plan.

3/ He said once when young and not yet living in the US, his aim was to to move here, marry into an elite family and govern. He did just that.

He used bodybuilding as an entry into crappy sci fi films,acting became a ladder. He campaigned for Reagan, networked the Rep pol clique

4/ Meeting Maria Shriver he saw his chance to snake his way into a important politically connected family, he used her to ascend then discarded her.

Since the bodybuilding years he was known as a notorious womanizer, a habit which never stopped during the marriage, or after.

5/ He was also known for admiring Hitler, and smoking pot (a pol career killer) as seen in the 1977 documentary Pumping Iron and the outakes. In 1991 he paid 1.5mil for the film rights, purchased from producer director George Butler,to sanitize history by editing out the bad bits

I took a drive down the 22 yesterday to check out a #monolith that popped up in the Crowsnest Pass area! Went to investigate, left realizing the @UCPCaucus is likely involved, in a bad way, as usual

More in thread 🔽

#monolithmystery
#FiretheUCP #ableg #WaterNotCoal #Alberta

If you haven't driven down the 22, it is gorgeous - rolling foothills, streams cutting through picturesque ranch land, and a rugged mountain landscape background. Near Maycroft provincial park, right near the Crowsnest pass is where this thing stands, approx. 12 feet tall.

It sounds like the Tin Man from Oz when you knock on it and looks to be made of shiny sheet metal. Seems to be mounted firmly into the ground, with no visible supports

Its similar to others I've seen, only in pictures, but has an additional feature: what appears to be an extra component that seems to indicate the monolith is 'pointing' to a larger swath of area, rather than strictly in the direction of the acute triangle shaped object's 'point'

If that is the case, it looks to point towards a chunk of the eastern slopes of Southern Alberta. A chunk that happens to be where the proposed Grassy Mountain Coal mine would be located.

The problem with (and for) #SiliconValley is their lack of #entrepreneurship. Yes, really: they're bad at being entrepreneurs, at providing the entrepreneurial function in the economy. To put it differently, they are technology driven in their profit-seeking but not consumer

driven. The difference is monumental both for the economy and the companies, and this is why they're failing. No, failing doesn't mean they are necessarily losing money, but that their profits are short-term and that they are undermining their own market positions. The business

they are in is not sustainable. This goes way beyond the selling of eyeballs, which is the focus of Facebook, Twitter, Google, and others. As it's often said, if you are not the paying for the product you *are* the product. Facebook is selling you, and your future purchases, to

their advertisers. The service the company provides is to lure you in, keep you busy, and make sure you don't leave while they feed you ads and collect data on who you are. It's the same with Google's search, maps, etc. But my point is not this, but that the focus by these

technology companies, more broadly, is unentrepreneurial--that they have lost sight of the consumer and, therefore, the real value they facilitate. They're not entrepreneurial. This, in turn, explains their behavior in everything from attempting to steer, direct, if not censor

The Elon Musk BS about indentured servitude on Mars, this was bothering me the other day before I read that quote and I didn’t tweet about it, but yeah I have thoughts about capitalists planning to “save humanity” by leaving earth...

The idea that it is somehow an easier feat of engineering to leave our planet and terraform another planet, than it is to fight climate change on Earth is a load of horseshit. So why is it billed that way? Why convince people that space travel is “our only hope as a species”?

When I played Horizon Zero Dawn, one thing that really, really upset me was the quest where you discover the classrooms intended to educate future humans, and there is a Faro logo on *everything*.

It’s not about saving humanity, it’s about being acknowledged as a “saviour”

You can’t save “humanity” by fleeing the Earth, leaving billions to die and the biosphere to collapse. And you can’t create a utopian society elsewhere by exporting the same sociocultural mindset and capitalist ideology that destroyed our planet, you can only delay the inevitable

It’s one big fucking vanity project entirely devoid of merit, and a society with a literal saviour is not going to be one where shit like equality is possible. Without dissenters, it’s going to be a perfect distillation of everything already wrong with our present society

1/9 A thread of testimony submitted by experts in psychiatry, paediatrics & cognitive neuroscience from around the world to the High Court in the Tavistock Puberty Blockers case.

2/9 One expert said it had been left to those coming to the end of their careers to speak out because the atmosphere of hostility & intimidation facing critical voices made it impossible for younger people to do so

3/9 A global expert on autism reported that girls with autism or anorexia were much more likely to say they wanted to become boys; all young people with difficult childhoods were more likely to say they wanted to transition

4/9 The same expert said autistic teenagers seize on the promise of online sites suggesting their life-long problems will be resolved by transition. Up to 26% of the trans population have Autistic Spectrum Disorder

5/9 A Swedish Psychiatrist reported research saying if left alone, dysphoria usually resolves & girls want to live as women, also that he had treated autism in girls for 45 years and rarely saw gender dysphoria before 2013