Traders, Guns, and Money

This is an offensive book.

P. 20: “I know you believe you understand what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant. If I have made myself clear, then you have misunderstood me.“ Das quoting Greenspan.

P. 24: “I knew more than the audience did--the only known criteria for being an expert.“

P. 30: “If you lost money you speculated. If you made money you were investing. Or was it the other way around?”

P. 33: “Derivatives have always been about knowledge. If you didn’t know then somewhere along the line you would pay school fees to learn about the other side of derivatives.”

P. 54: "Large ambitious trading rooms always presage decline and disaster."

P. 128: "In life as we know it, it is better not to believe in your own sales pitch."

P. 136: "A deep-rooted fear of poverty shapes my every financial decision."

P. 147: "Experienced traders feign nonchalance [about year-end bonuses]."

P. 150: "It is always good to be paid to learn."

P. 162: "What is often forgotten is that Gauss originally intended the normal distribution as a test of error, not accuracy."

P. 189: “Extrapolation is more daring. This is joining one point to--well--nothing else. In dollars, euros, and pounds it is sometimes necessary to extrapolate rates out to 40 and 50 years. The good thing is that if you are wrong (which is almost guaranteed), then it is unlikely that you are going to be around to see the mistake.”

P. 203: “I spring into action, recommending to my boss that he recommend to the CEO that he recommend to the board that we buy some options to hedge.“

P. 204: “Success always attracts paternity suits in life while failure remains an orphan.“

P. 208: "Every week, there is a drip this conference somewhere in the world: seminar firms stage them to make money. Sometimes, they are labeled ‘roundtables’, although the tables are inevitably oval.“

P. 209: “The irony of trying (?) chaos, the finding of order in complete disorder, is lost on most quants.“

P. 211: “If swaps are sex, then structured products are kinky sex.“

P. 287: “unfortunately, risk and return are related.“

P. 292: “I was waiting for the UFOs (unspecified fund obligations). It would be a tranched portfolio of unknown assets. It was designed as a surprise for the investor.“

P. 292: “anything with a Re in the front means that you are paying two lots of fees.“

P. 293: “They started each paper with the familiar greeting to fellow queens, ‘assuming the following, we can show that…’”

P. 310: “The position presented, well within the range of feasible interpretations, is one that in the present circumstances it is not entirely consistent with the facts as I understand them.“ Das mocking polite experts that rarely attack others’ opinions."

P. 344: “Faced with a choice between changing one’s mind and proving there is no need to do so, everyone gets busy on the proof.“ - Das quoting Galbraith