My Latest Cover Letter (Part 2)

Last time, I presented a job listing I recently stumbled upon. My cover letter follows.

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To Whom it May Concern,

Applying for this job is a reach for me. I believe I fall short of your job requirements. I also believe I am one of the more unique candidates you will find.

I resigned after several years as a staff pharmacist and pharmacy manager to start a securities trading business at the age of 36. This has been a journey without clients or co-workers that has required extensive self-study, intrinsic motivation, and outside-the-box thinking. I have since learned a great deal about the mechanics of trading and investing. I have truly risked my own hard-earned capital to learn the craft.

My ultimate goal is to significantly improve risk-adjusted return. I want to be investing with insurance, which will leave me somewhat worry-free in the face of drawdown. I have seen enough to know this might be possible. I have a rough draft of a complete portfolio plan in mind.

I hope to do extensive backtesting to develop this approach, but I feel I need more programming and statistical expertise. Working with a team could help. A team is also advised to validate results. Confirmation bias dictates that once something seems promising, the rose-colored glasses slide in undetected. Critical peers can help to defend against this.

I have always been excited about the prospect of learning. I would be happy to get the Series 3 license. With your support, I would also welcome the challenge of pursuing the CFA designation.

I am not so excited about tight deadlines or loads of stress. For the vast majority of my 13+ years working alone, I have done sufficiently well without them. For long intervals, the trading component of my work has been like watching paint dry.

Working without pressure does not mean I lack with regard to discipline or determination. My approach has evolved over the years through backtesting and live trading. While I have slightly outperformed the indices, untapped potential remains. Good ideas have come from casual online/voice communications with other retail traders. Some ideas have been researched and many others discarded. I maintain a list of hypotheses to test and explore.

All this is what I stand to bring to your firm if you believe what I seek for myself can also satisfy your clients. You “are beholden to returns above all else.” I would simply add the words “risk-adjusted.” I suspect some sort of hedging is in order.

I fall just short of the listed job requirements in areas I would hope to grow in working for you.

Despite these shortcomings, I have succeeded as an independent retail trader by replacing my previous pharmacist salary. I think the MSFEs and M.S. in Data Science students graduating today have the additional expertise that I seek while being short on actual trading experience: my teacher and continuous motivator for better than a decade.

I graduated with the Pharm.D. in 2002 and in hindsight, I retired in 2007.

I never really thought of myself as retired, though.

I still have so much more to accomplish.