Shravan Venkataraman Profile picture
software engineer @ a payments co. | building @earningsq with @hemis_research on weekends

Oct 4, 2020, 6 tweets

Guys, learn about negative and positive skew in trading and strategies. From yesterday's post's comment section, it looks like most people are ignorant about skew. It will do you so much good to learn about it and use the knowledge to your advantage. Start with Taleb's books.

@nntaleb and his "AntiFragile" "BlackSwan" books deal with exactly this. So many ignorant comments yesterday, like "only someone who is unprofitable would say that a consistent trader will blow up". Read that whitepaper I had attached, and educate yourselves.

My post wasn't a sour grapes tweet, but a famous quote from trading floors. High win rates are often associated with negative skew strategies which have tail issues associated with blowing up. Attempting trading as a profession without the basic knowledge about this is imprudent.

Also, it would help with a thing or two to understand that mathematically speaking, a statement being true doesn't necessarily mandate that a statement's converse being true. Just because I said consistent traders have higher odds of blowing up, doesn't mean the converse is true.

So many comments from people thinking they are highIQ and intelligently commenting went "so, an inconsistent indisciplined unprofitable trader will end up profitable and make windfall?"

No wonder with this kind of perception and lack of understanding most traders fail.

If you're going to survive in trading, you're going to learn what possible ways you could get screwed in the market. The first place to begin with is to understand what a skew is, how it works with trading strategies, how it can work for or against you. EDUCATE YOURSELF.

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