Planning My Next Meetup [hopefully not MIS] Adventure (Part 6)

I will conclude the mini-series with this post to muse about a couple loose ends.

On January 25, I spoke with someone who has connections at the business school. I told him I have interest in forming a group to research, discuss, and teach option trading (see here). I said this would be great information for business students. He gave me a couple names and asked me to let him know if I have any trouble making the connections.

I need to be clear about my endgame in order to take these steps forward.

I have many research questions in need of answering to further my own personal trading. I can’t believe everything I see on TV because people get things wrong (see past blog mini-series here, here, and here). Long-time readers will recognize this as one of my fundamental theses (it’s #2 here). Doing this research should give me the confidence required (see second-to-last paragraph here) to stick with trading systems through challenging times (third-to-last paragraph here).

Others can certainly benefit from this research along with me. Many conclusions will be clear to all, and different individuals will draw further conclusions particularly meaningful to them.

The additional piece I would enjoy throwing into the mix is time spent teaching. I tutored math in high school, and I have often thought that in another life, I was probably a math teacher. This would absolutely fulfill that desire: nothing selfish about it. I don’t want to change the world (probably couldn’t even if I tried), but people have a ton to learn when it comes to options (e.g. mini-series here and here) and from what I have seen, the old-school financial industry isn’t helping much.

On a different note, Michigan Option Traders—while not a complete misadventure—was my group that did not last. In the second paragraph here, I discussed issues I had with the other experienced trader in the group and thoughts about failing to discuss losses in general.

My advanced-level compatriot never talked about large losses, which should have occurred due to volatile markets at that time. I interpreted this as a reflection of inflated ego. You can only get lucky so many times. Over the years, I have often heard things like “I wasn’t around in August 2015 because I was on vacation” or “I didn’t trade in February 2018 because work was too busy and I had scaled back.” Survivorship bias may explain it: those stepping forward to present successful trading are those lucky enough to have missed the rough markets. I do not pretend to have missed them (e.g. here and here) and I think most pretenders will eventually meet their maker and [all too often] disappear from the landscape altogether (third-to-last paragraph here).

While perhaps a slight oversimplification, as an innocent bystander the trader services/education landscape appears to be different strategies pitched by a relentless march of traders who are either lucky enough to miss ugly market environments or who have (inadvertantly?) inflated performance by curve-fitting measures.