Down the Rabbit Hole
I graduated with a Bachelors degree in Mathematics and spent 15 years as a trader at HSBC in New York and Hong Kong. I traded Interest Rate Derivatives and set up their USD Swaps business in Asia, before going on to co-run the G7 Interest Rates business. My final stint was on the Structured Rates desk where I traded vanilla and exotic options.
Interest Rate markets were quoted “Over the Counter”, and didn’t trade on any exchange. Prices were still quoted by voice and transactions were executed verbally. Understanding your clients and flows took experience, and it was that experience that gave you an edge. Over the past few years trading as a profession has gone through some drastic changes. Increased regulation and markets going electronic has changed how the game is played. High frequency firms now dominate the space.
With trading fundamentally changing, I decided I needed to reinvent myself. I had read some books about how big data was changing the world, especially Big Data: A revolution that will transform how we live, work and think and was inspired to understand and learn to implement some of the concepts from the book. That began a journey through the rabbit hole that has been one of the biggest challenges I have undertaken, and the most rewarding as well.
My main focus in this space is to understand the techniques and apply them to areas where I have domain knowledge (i.e. Banking and Financial Markets). Along the way I hope to blog ideas, programming tutorials and other concepts. Hopefully your mind will be as blown away by this as mine continues to be…