264: Gabriel Bullo - Contest Winner: One Trader's Unwavering Dedication

Joining me on this episode is Sudhu Arumugam, the co-founder and Chief Risk Officer of cryptocurrency futures exchange CoinFLEX. Though prior to this, Sudhu spent near 20-years in various trading roles for banks and hedge funds—mostly transacting in options on indices and single stocks, exotic derivatives and fixed income. We start things off by talking about Sudhu’s early days and experience in London’s LIFFE trading pit, meeting and trading with DRW founder Don Wilson—who he identified as a “force to be reckoned with.” Sudhu also speaks about heading a small institutional trading team within Merrill Lynch and shares insight to its OTC dealings. Then in the later part, we speak more about crypto and the efforts of CoinFLEX to become a market leading exchange. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

14 Tammi 202056min

Jaime Rogozinski, a serial entrepreneur who resides in Mexico, is the man responsible for bringing WallStreetBets to life—the infamous and wildly popular subreddit, which proudly boasts the tagline, “Like 4Chan found a Bloomberg terminal.” In other words, WSB is an online forum (on Reddit) where the majority of it’s 700k+ members aren’t looking to establish long-term, sustainable trading careers. Instead they’re buying lotto tickets on commission-free trading apps, taking almighty risks, and attempting to strike it rich fast. This is a community, of mainly unsophisticated investors, where losses of 10’s and 100’s of thousands of dollars are so common that it’s considered the norm. And although less common, there’s also the occasional member who’s handsomely rewarded for his or her audacious risk-taking. It’s kind of insane what goes on here, especially because it’s real-life (minus the odd trolling stunt). But make no mistake, I’m not throwing shade at WSB! The brazen culture is fascinating and you can’t help but appreciate the rawness of it all, not to mention the comments provide priceless entertainment value. And there just might be some insight to gleam, if you look hard enough (even if it’s do the opposite!) Sound and rationale financial advice has no place on WSB. Speaking with Jaime, he tells how the subreddit evolved and took on a life of its own, highlights from the timeline; featuring a member who exposed an ‘infinite money cheat code’ on Robinhood and the infamous ‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkrelli who was once a moderator, plus the largest gains and losses in WSB history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

18 Joulu 201953min

Mike Mangieri’s a co-founder and managing partner of Seven Points Capital—a proprietary trading firm in New York, and with several smaller offices in other U.S. cities as well as Toronto. Although Mike occasionally trades in volatility products, his days mostly revolve around operations of the firm and overseeing the traders. Therefore he has a slightly unique perspective on things, compared to the perspective of an individual trader… In our conversation we roll through subjects, such as; the birth of a trading firm, a day in the life of Mike, monitoring risk—both, on a firm and individual level, psychology and mindset, examples of general interactions that Mike has with the traders—and some of the difficult conversations he has from time to time, plus more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

28 Marras 20191h 15min

Gregory Zuckerman is a writer at the Wall Street Journal and author of The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched The Quant Revolution. For anyone unfamiliar, Jim Simons is the brilliant-minded mathematician who founded hedge fund Renaissance Technologies. Using quantitative models and with billions in AUM, Renaissance has averaged annualized returns of net 39% since 1988. And these returns only become more spectacular, once you discover that Renaissance investors pay a management and performance fee of 5 and 44—therefore bringing the gross annualized returns to 66%. Due to the superior performance, today, Jim has an estimated net worth of $23-billion. Greg describes him as being, “The greatest money maker in modern financial history.” Although journalists have previously covered the rise of Renaissance, for the longest time, much of it was still shrouded with mystery. But by gaining remarkable access to Jim and also many of the people around him, Greg has been able to tell the full story, in print, with detail and accuracy. Pick up a copy of The Man Who Solved the Market, available on Amazon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

15 Marras 20191h 7min

Nico, who goes by @InefficientMrkt on Twitter, is an intraday equities trader. His area of expertise lies in low float, micro cap stocks, near-exclusively playing the short side of overextended moves. Nico and I spoke almost exactly 3 years ago on episode 96—which was memorably titled, "An 8-year overnight success story." Now picking up where we left off, we discuss what's been happening as of late... The most notable development being; after many years trading retail, Nico has gone into proprietary trading with Seven Points Capital. Going one step further, he has also established and heads up the firms' San Diego office. During the second half of this episode (from 40:20), I ask Nico to share how he's evolved as a trader in recent years—or more specifically; what has changed, what remains the same and what's been fine tuned. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

30 Loka 20191h 16min

This episode features high-profile American businessman, Robert Greifeld, who from 2003-2017 served as the CEO at Nasdaq—one of the world's largest and widely known financial exchanges. Bob came into this role at a time when Nasdaq was on the verge of an internal crisis, he was tasked with turning it around and making transformational change. Throughout our conversation, he tells of the critical moments and drastic actions, insight to Nasdaq's many acquisitions and its business model, plus lessons in leadership and career advice. Having since stepped down from Nasdaq CEO, Bob's recently written a book that details his entire experience at the helm. The book is titled Market Mover, and you can get a copy here. Today, Bob is the managing partner of Cornerstone Investment Capital—a fin-tech investment firm, and the Chairman of Virtu Financial—a prominent trading and technology firm. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

15 Loka 201952min

There’s no other way to say it; Larry Hite is the definition of a market veteran, he’s someone who first developed an interest for trading and markets during the 60’s… Besides a reputation for extreme risk management, Larry is perhaps best known as co-founding Mint Investments—a hedge fund formed in 1981. He’s also considered to be one of the forefathers of trading systems and a pioneer of trend following. By 1988, Mint achieved an average annual compounded return of over 30%—it’s best year being 60% (in 1987, the year of the stock market crash) and it’s worst year up 13%. By 1990, Mint was the world’s largest hedge fund at the time, with $1-billion of assets under management. It was also around this time, that Mint’s performance caught the attention of Jack Schwager, as Larry was profiled and interviewed in the first book of the best-selling Market Wizards series. Now almost 30-years on, Larry has written a book of his own titled The Rule. It reflects on life experiences, trading lessons, and pretty much, how the most unlikely kid in the classroom went on to generate a significant personal fortune. During this episode, Larry and I discuss trading, risk philosophy and probability, life and memorable moments, and Larry’s work as a philanthropist too. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

24 Syys 20191h

For many, this will likely be the first time hearing about Mike Komaransky, but those who know him already, know him as a Bitcoin OG—and deservedly so, as he began accumulating the cryptocurrency around 2010. Though Mike has been a professional trader of fixed income derivatives since 2001, when he joined powerhouse trading firm DRW. Mike later became a partner at DRW, and in 2014 he launched its cryptocurrency trading business Cumberland—which grew to become one of the world’s largest market makers. After leaving the company in 2017 and a hiatus from active trading, Mike has returned as the founder and head of Grapefruit Trading. Over the course of our conversation, we chat about; Mike’s distinguished trading career, the strange ways that he bought Bitcoin in the past (when it was far less accessible), Cumberland’s participation in the auction of seized Bitcoin from the Silk Road bust, Mike’s disdain for technical analysis, and plenty more… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

27 Elo 20191h 22min