Deus Ex Trader @deus_trader

1. See my backtests at @quant_porn. They account for significant slippage, and many reveal similar mechanics despite looking quite different on the surface. That makes them less overfit than most of what it's out there. 2. The skew combined with volatility can provide a decent edge, sometimes an extreme one. 3. Many of my call setups consistently lose less on the downside than they make on the upside. With puts, the directional asymmetry flips. This can be an incredible edge. Many of my trades and structures pay 3:1, sometimes 10:1, while maintaining a win/loss ratio of at least 50/50. The math can look better than anything on the casino floor in Vegas, where I live. 4. There are real market inefficiencies out there. I sometimes find arbs or near riskless trades where I cannot identify a practical path to losing. Just a few years ago I was finding riskless arbs that most people would dismiss as impossible. I even posted some here on X. Since then, I have shifted more toward low-risk vol and skew arbs, and they still work well. 5. I have managed teams of 50 people and had to solve problems others considered unsolvable. I think slowly but keep analyzing a problem until it's solved. 6. When I look at an options chain, I can come up with several new ideas in a day. Thousands over the years. When one works, I add it to my scanner list so I can catch similar setups when they appear again. 7. I may have some protection against cognitive bias because every time I learn something, I soon forget about it and later have to figure it out again on my own. When everyone says "I know", I am often clueless. "Not knowing" may be an immense advantage as I'm unable to dismiss ideas that others "know" to be unviable. 8. I am lazy, so I constantly improve my systems and code to replace hard work. I now have 10+ scanners producing over 1 million trade suggestions per day internally. (internal, nothing public) 9. Anyone smarter than me would make 20x during the same time, using the same methodologies. 10. I've likely forgot 5 more reasons why it's 14x :-)

Quick update: My account has grown 14x from $245K three years ago to $3.6M today. This is from equity options/volatility trading based on unpublished research on hedging options with options, rather than delta hedging with shares. I don't chase trends and spread risk across hundreds of underlyings. But it’s still a grind. I'm slowly cutting down on trading to focus on math ontology and a framework for classifying numbers by their semantic kind. Reverse engineering nature's mathematics machine, so to speak. It’s unrelated to trading, but it's more fun than staring at P&L charts.

@Ponzi_machine It's hard to replace Schwab's commisions, margin treatment and options order fills. While I believe they do not own my equity and options positions, so they couldn't be transferred to Schwab's creditors. Though I may need to buy $SGOV more often with excessive cash.

There is too much to cover. A box spread or conversion would be a trivial example (though I recently traded some on $STRC). A skewed/unbalanced butterfly with delta near zero may be another example. A series of butterflies with delta~=zero, or with the total delta~=0 may be another. A ratio or backratio with delta~=0 could be another (or it could be adjusted to delta zero using an extra option). The point is that when your options inventory is near delta zero then you don't need shares to hedge further. Though I specialize in calendar spreads/ratios/diagonals that can also sit near delta zero. I especially like combining calendar ratios with calendar back ratios, each with different expiries. Also, I do count on delta to flip between negative and positive. And I often have single-directional risk. For example I may have call-only positions with $10K at risk to downside but +$15K upside, or more if vol explodes. I trade put-only setups separately. I may just assemble such positions initially at delta near zero. And each entry is opportunistic, meaning I don't trade any strategy repeatedly. And this is a vast topic. I produced a few billion backtests and over 1000 PowerPoint pages analyzing various setups and ideas over the years.

@ian_sales2030 Great points, thanks. She did spend several years working for various attorneys prior to the law school, plus internships during schools - they’d all want her back. And she talked about being an attorney since childhood, which puzzled even myself.

My daughter’s finally out of law school so no one mess with me, lol. Bar exam next, but already got a job with big law at starting quant salary ($225K/yr), so AI hasn’t destroyed all jobs yet.

@maebrusselhead2 Congrats. As a new grad, or after how many years?

@drew25694 There are limited number of grad quant roles and not every grad gets hired. Many end up at banks getting abused for less than $200K.

@n_codetradez I’m a quant and there may be less than 2000 grad roles that may pay above $250K. The industry is small with a few firms who definitely can’t accept every quant. Most will be jobless and switch careers.

@jfosback Yes, law firms compete for talent and offer/guarantee a job once bar exam is passed.

@JonKladVanDamn I asked her first if it’s ok. And this info is public, but not everyone knows and people are always curious about current salaries.

@graf_trading It’s one of the biggest law firms. In the US they’re called big law in general.

@coolbandit00 The base may be up to $250K at a bank or smaller firm, not at Citadel, I guess.

@predict_addict It’s JD going specifically for law. The MBA was an added track and likely more competitive job-wise. Google shows starting salary at $125K for MBA grads.

@davidbessis @stevenstrogatz That’s an amazing read about the soul of mathematics, what it means to solve math, and how AI may solve math while undermining it at the same time. It also explains why it’s so difficult to write about math as not just a theorem producing mechanism.

@vikascoolkarnir @thsottiaux I also needed one, so I made a Codex mobile app/gui. It's free on Github: github.com/deusexnatura/C… @dalers @iampiny @MisterSchalex

@gundam777777 Personal development: understanding where mathematics comes from and why/how it describes nature/universe. Unrelated to trading.

Recently I’m mostly working on math ontology. Codex is helping formalize a Lean framework where every number in every equation is tagged with its kind, type, and ontological source. The aim is to know exactly where numbers come from, distinguish different families of integers, rationals, and reals, and bridge discrete and continuous math, symmetry, topology, geometry, and dynamics.

@AppleMath7 @QuanquanGu This will be mostly solved with formalization where AI will be forced to trace and identify the source of numbers in every equation. Experts will have an intellectual role, but they’ll be consuming more than producing, as they’re already using AI to speed up years of research.

This might be a sure play on crude oil using $GUSH. It has to go either direction. Being leveraged, $GUSH will get decimated by 2028, but if it explodes up first then you may get a free bet on subsequent drop. I got both of these orders filled at the prices shown.