Plugged Back Into THe Matrix

You Know You’re Seriously Old, When You Ask For A Book on Quant Trading for your 18th Birthday Present

February has been a month composed of all sorts of fun and formal education related stress of mock examinations. You’re 18 now, and you hit that moment that man, in about 6 months, you’re going to go to the other side of the world to embark on a whole new book (not a new chapter) of your life. It’s exciting, but in all honesty, quite the thought to ponder on as well, family friends and important people you’re leaving considered! I’ve always felt like I’ve got the right balance of thinking forward and living in the present, and it’s quite a tepid balance to really safeguard, especially when you want to make the best memories before leaving etc etc mushy stuff.

You’re also thankful you’ve got 5/5 of uni offers on UCAS, but of course, the next step is to actually meet the offer grades. I’m the believer that success is part luck and part effor. Last year’s excellent grades had a little too much luck composing the good result, and hence I’ve got to steroid-inject much more effort so that in case luck wasn’t so kind this year. I’d still in short, (hopefully) do well.

You also face a somewhat identity crisis of what career you exactly want to jump into. (No I didn’t just switch from finance to pet hospitality). Seeing the importance of possessing a quantitative skillset for a career in trading/market-making, well, I’ve consciously decidee d to up the amount of time I invest in to learn R and Excel, and stats in general. Then there’s the regret of doing AS Maths this year. And I did not apply for maths/compsci/engineering courses, simply because I can’t (‘could have’ perhaps having taken better decisions before), so the pipe-dream of working at Jane Street or SIG might stay a dream. Looking at how it goes, i think I’ve taken the right decision to keep ahead by gradually becoming more quantitative, but career-wise dear Buena. it has to be a hybrid of discretionary and quantitative. Going pure quant is just impossible. because you didn’t want to do AS math. Punk. Maybe it was never my fated career destination, and maybe it’s just jealousy that those guys can go to work with smart-casual outfits!

Levels Under Threat of Breakout on Further USD Strength

Anyways, markets considered, post NFP (of the many I missed due to school), USD strength seems here to stay and possibly even continue as markets price in the long-awaited Fed rate hike in early summer. The pre-emptive chase to returns I think, would stay until the Fed actually hikes, and then we can probably expect some profit-taking in the USD run to occur, more significantly than usual. The GBPUSD for example, looks under threat of a short-term breakout of the 1.5000, and the USDJPY as well of 122.50, and etc for other pairs. With a strong NFP possibly not depicting job losses in the oil industry yet, we might see some less than robust data for the months to come, and these might be good ‘buy the dip’, ‘fade-the-spike’ opportunities as such factors become priced in to the market.