My Latest Cover Letter (Part 5)

I maintain this blog to hold me accountable for work and related projects. It shows good insight into my activities, my trading, and my related thoughts/education over the years. If presented effectively, I think this blog could be my entire job interview.

At the risk of being repetitive, I am going to include an e-mail sent to the CFA institute in March 2021. Earlier this year, I contemplated taking CFA Level 1. I looked at the CFAI website and scrutinized the criteria to earn the charter. One thing I questioned was my work experience since I technically have not worked in the financial industry proper:

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…the reason for my contact is because I know enrolling to prepare and sit for the CFA exams will take a great deal of time, effort, and money. I hope I can pass them all and should that be the case, I would be heartbroken to be denied a charter because the Institute wouldn’t approve my self-employed work experience.

My résumé outlines much of what I have done as a full-time trader since 2008. I have spent many hours watching trading videos online, attending investment and trading Meetups, attending seminars and webinars, participating in online trader forums, and communicating/collaborating with other retail traders. I have also spent many hours backtesting trading strategies and analyzing performance. I have read and taken copious notes on tens of books related to trading and quantitative finance. I log time in a spreadsheet, which totals over 21,000 hours to date. Although I trade only for myself, I have treated this as a full-time job from the very beginning. This is my passion and my business.

In 2009, I created a trading entity (LLC). My tax returns have listed me as “Trader in Securities” for at least the last 10 years.

I led an options trading group from 2013-2016. We had a handful of regular members. It’s very hard to find other full-time retail traders like myself, which is one reason I have given thought to pursuing formal employment in the industry.

I blog about my work and finance-related topics regularly at http://www.optionfanatic.com. What follows is a sampling of over 1,000 total posts I have written since May 2010:

• Can a Retail Trader Succeed at Algorithmic Trading? (Part 1) (2021)
• Attacking the Python (2020)
• Why is Curve Fitting Such a Bad Word (2020)?
• Testing the Randomized OOS (Part 1) (2019)
• The Trader Meetup Dilemma (Part 1) (2018)
• Beware Fraudulent Claims (2016)
• The Southeastern Michigan Trading Collective (2016)
• Weekly Iron Condor Trade #1 (Part 2) (2015)
• Why Options? (Part 1) (2014)
• Weekly Iron Butterfly Backtest (Part 1) (2013)
• Truth in Backtesting (Part 1) (2012)

The blog is not monetized and from what I can tell, it garners little traffic. I maintain the blog to keep me on track with trading and with related thoughts and projects. It’s a way of holding myself accountable for the work that I do.

Thank you for looking into this! Let me know if I can provide anything else.

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I will conclude next time.