Whenever there is a massive stock market crash, like the one in 1987, or the crisis in 2008, it is common for investment banking quants to talk about how it was a “1 in zillion years” event. This is on account of their models that typically assume that stock prices are lognormal, and that stock…
A long time ago, I’d written about my experience as a Quant at an investment bank, and about how banks like mine were sitting on a pile of risk that could blow up any time soon. There were two problems as I had documented then. Firstly, most quants I interacted with seemed to be solving…
When I was leaving the big bank I was working for (I keep forgetting whether this blog is anonymous or not, but considering that I’ve now mentioned it on my LinkedIn profile (and had people congratulate me “on the new job”), I suppose it’s not anonymous any more) in 2011, I didn’t bother looking for…
Since investment bank bashing seems to be in fashion nowadays, let me add my two naya paise to the fire. I exited a large investment bank in September 2011, after having worked for a little over two years there. I used to work as a quant, spending most of my time building pricing and execution…
Paul Wilmott and Emanuel Derman, in an article in Business Week a couple of years back (at the height of the financial crisis) came up with a model-makers oath. It goes: • I will remember that I didn’t make the world and that it doesn’t satisfy my equations. • Though I will use models boldly…
The only time I watch CNBC is in the morning when I’m at the gym. For reasons not known to me, my floor in office lacks televisions (every other floor has them) and the last thing I want to do when I’m home is to watch TV, that too a business channel, hence the reservation…
Check out this article in the Wall Street Journal. Read the headline. Does this sound right to you? MakeMyTrip Opens Up 57% Post-IPO; May Be Year’s Best Deal It doesn’t, to me. How in the world is the IPO successful if it has opened 57% higher in the first hour (it ended the first day…
When my mother died last Friday, the doctors at the hospital where she had been for three weeks didn’t have a diagnosis. When my father died two and a half years back, the hospital where he’d spent three months didn’t have a diagnosis. In both cases, there were several hypotheses, but none of them were…
No, unlike the previous post, this has nothing to do about food. It is about Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s recent op-ed in the Financial Times where he gives his “recipe” for saving the global financial system. Two of my favourite bloggers Arnold Kling and Felix Salmon have responded to it, but I didn’t like either so…
Over the weekend I spoke to a few friends, over phone and GTalk. And enquired about their business. Some interesting insights: On Saturday, I spoke to this guy who is a banker in the City of London. He says that one major fallout of the global economic crisis is that the financial markets have become…
I remember that this time, last year, I was eagerly looking forward to the IPL auctions. It also happened to be a time when I was actively looking out for a new job (i wasn’t going to find one till about six months later). And I was secretly hoping that one of the IPL franchises…
Baada collaborated on the research leading up to his post. I hereby acknowledge his contribution and condemn his laziness for not blogging it himself. One of the major problems of the financial crisis that has been happening for about two years now is that investment bankers, as a profession, stand discredited. Before this, they used…
After the Fed bailed out Bear Stearns and arranged for its sale to JP Morgan, I blogged saying that the Fed hadn’t done the right thing, and was now creating a situation of moral hazard. When Lehman was in trouble, I said that this was a good time for the Fed to make amends for…
Or should I say ex-Lehman employees? Assuming that most of you haven’t been fired yet, I’ll drop the ex. I know that a couple of days back, I wished for your company’s demise. That had nothing to do with you. I wished for that because I thought that was the right thing to be done.…
But Lehman has to go. In the “larger interests” of continuing a vibrant, risktaking and efficient worldwide financial system, it is best that the Fed does not bail out Lehman. I had written about this a few months back, in hindsight, after Bear was bailed out by Fed who arranged for a hurried takeover by…
This is a tubelight post. Was supposed to have written this two months back. I sometimes wonder if the US Fed did the right thing by encouraging JP Morgan to buy out Bear Stearns rather than to just let the latter fail. I know letting it fail would have had significant negative impact on the…
so my favorite topic of interest rate swaps has made front page news today (in the Business Standard). apparently the food corporation of india (FCI) entered into a swap with Barclays in which FCI received fixed and paid an interest rate linked to the yield on Indian GSecs. now it so happens that reverse repo…