Surfing the Tsunami, New York Mag, Feb 2 issue

Evidently this is news to the magazine but from my vantage point, this is no different than the desk I ran or the early firms I traded with – Bright Trading, Schonfeld and ETG. There were others, lots of others, in the 1990′s – but the idea is the same – exactly the same. It is funny to read about head and shoulders patterns in New York (not to be confused with The New Yorker) but it is also a bit instructive – favorite stocks, last minute moves, the thrill of the chase….

The markets are ALWAYS a bet against what other people are going to do and Milman, the trader in the magazine, gets that.

The atmosphere is also the same as I remember it at all but Sharpe Capital where my desk was housed within a true market-making firm. Or at Schonfeld… where the wallpaper (and lunch) was amazing.

Entertaining and instructive… when you want to know who you are trading against.

Richard Bookstabber in Demons of our Design had it right when he described how interconnected all trading and all markets are…. the only part he didn’t really cover in detail is this:

it is NOT fear and greed – it is fear and fear2. Fear2 is the fear of missing out….and this matters because fear of missing out drives lots of trades. Now today that probably made you money – but we don’t get 90% days very often. … well wait, maybe that isn’t true. we sure have had lots of them lately.

In either case, it pays to understand the emotional backdrop to every trade – there ALWAYS is one… not matter how many people have told you there isn’t or shouldn’t be. They don’t know what the neuroecon guys know!

… and in the comfort food department… a grand up sure feels good for a change! now if i could just remember if it was Petula Clark or Nancy Sinatra who sang “up up and away in my beautiful balloon?” …. it sure wasn’t Alice Cooper…. Pink Floyd? … no that was “Money” …. okay – a little giddiness going on here on the shores of the East River (tidal estuary).