Are You Getting Better Everyday?
Hey traders, I spent the weekend in Chicago. My wife and I have an upcoming anniversary so we decided to get extra romantic and go to a Bears game. Before the game we met up with a few friends, notably my long time friend and one of the co-founders of Option Pit, my friend Adam. […]
The Broker They Called the Widow Maker
Dear Traders, When I was a market maker on the floor, my primary job was to… well, make markets. My real job was to make money. Allegedly, we did that by capturing the bid-ask spread (the small gap between what a market maker pays for an option and what he sells it for). On a […]
I Named AKAM Hours Before the Deal
Hey Traders, Market in a tailspin: that's the headline I keep expecting to see in the coming days. It keeps not happening. There are plenty of reasons the market should be falling apart: Iran, inflation and, most of all, the bond market. Over the last few weeks, yields (the interest rate the government pays to […]
What 1962 Tells Us About the AI Scare
Dear Trader, Does the monster under your bed still scare you? Me neither. But you know who it scares? My youngest, along with plenty of other little kids. I'd bet at some point in your life you feared the dark, monsters under the bed, the water in the pool, or some other silly thing. I […]
Everybody in the AI Fight Has a Point
I love my cousin to death, but she has a problem… She'll ask you a question, one that ends with her giving you the answer she wants to hear. Then I respond in a nuanced way. Maybe I disagree with everything she just said, or maybe I partially agree and think parts of her question […]
“That Wasn’t So Bad”
Hey traders, Back-to-school is over, which means the real school year has started. The kids aren't excited to go anymore. Ask how their day went and you get "fine," and of course we've started fighting over homework. Tonight I had my first homework fight of the year with my fourth grader. We told him to […]
Why I Finally Walked Into the 9/11 Museum
Hey everybody, Twenty-five years ago, I stood on Greenwich Street next to Tim Colby, watching the first tower burn. Then we heard a screaming sound and the ground shook. The second plane had just hit the World Trade Center. The Amex, where Tim and I got our start, sat a little over a block from […]
Old Friends Don’t Let You Fake It
Dear Traders, This weekend I'm heading to Chicago. I land Thursday, spend the night at my parents' house, then pick up my buddy Pat at the airport and head to Michigan to spend the weekend with my high school friends on a lake. We'll share old stories, make fun of each other, party on the […]
Why Last Week Didn’t Count
Hi there, First, happy Labor Day. I hope you're enjoying the weekend! Second, I want you to watch the short video below before the open on Tuesday. In it, I explain why I don't put much weight on anything the market did between the end of August and today. And I lay out the events […]
Three Phases of a Trillion Dollar IPO
Good morning everybody. Good afternoon to my friends on the East Coast! Are we in the golden age of IPOs? Coming out of COVID, SPACs made headlines bringing company after company public. Lucid Motors (LCID) came out that way. So did what became Trump Media (DJT). Some of those names are still around. Others aren't. […]