Quotations

Just about everyone loves a quotation.

• A penny saved is a penny earned. (I just made a penny!)
  
• Follow your heart. (Yay, I love not going anywhere)
  
• Live for the moment. (I was alive every moment writing this blog)
  
• And a trading favorite, balls to the wall. (There are too many walls!)
  

''Keep it simple, stupid"
Imagine following your heart and living for the moment. You see a delicious apple and since you are hungry, you eat it. You see a beautiful girl and you walk up to talk to her. You feel like reading a book or writing a blog. And you rack up points.

"I'm kind of a big deal around here"
You rack up points -- big time -- because everything your heart desires not only helps you in the present, it makes your life better in the future. An apple a day, anyway. And maybe the girl wanted to seize not only the day with you. Sometimes, there is no trade-off between the present and the future. Sometimes, seizing the day is what it's all about. Big opportunities are captured when a person is trying to capture opportunities. That rarely happens when practicing long division.

More likely than not, saving pennies is not something your heart truly desires. Is that how Bill Gates made his money? Certainly, it's not how Trump made his money. It's better to be dollar smart and penny foolish. After all, the more you spend, the more you save.

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work"
Opportunities can only be seized when they come. Fortunately for you, opportunity can only be seized by those who prepare. So figure out when your opportunity is coming and prepare for that time. It would be hard to do many good trades when the market is closed. Saving that penny in preparation for a once in a lifetime investment; learning how to put on makeup without looking like a prostitute and meeting the love of your life; practicing that jump shot for hours for the important three seconds you'll remember for the rest of your life -- that opportunity will come.

"In a minute there is time / for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse"
All men are not created equal. In fact, some mothers smoke or drink while pregnant. There are fathers who did not want to create anything at all. The nature is different, the nurture is different, and the randomness is -- random. Minutes in my life were not created equally either. My time was worth about $7 / hour when I was 16. I was just as good at reading Shakespeare then as I am now, but I get paid slightly more these days to focus less on shakespeare and more on trading. Is this the most I will ever make? Are my minutes now deserving of thinking only about the short term?

"To perceive evil, where it exists, is a form of optimism"
My time right now is every bit as important but not every bit as useful ($ / hr) as it will be in the future. When a person thinks like that, he makes his thoughts a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you are in college, invest in yourself and take a harder class. Calculate your grocery bill in your head and add tax. Commit yourself to not borrowing from tomorrow. Debt, anorexia, not putting away the dishes, drugs, and laziness is borrowing from tomorrow. I am an optimist; I think your opportunity will come tomorrow.

"Equality of opportunity is freedom, but equality of outcome is repression"
They say, the gap between the haves and the havenots is growing. I am not sure if that is true on percentage terms, but I am sure that the gap grows between people who live for the moment and people who prepare for their moments. If you have spent your life preparing, we'd love to have you at Optiver trading.

You've worked hard, why not let your investments pay off. Email me.