How institutions trade, a free Data Visualization course, and more.

A very informative thread about institutional trading, an in-depth data visualization course, and more.

Hey friends,

The last week was a busy week for the markets with a lot of fundamental incidents around the globe.

FOMC happened, 75bps rate hike with potential for another 100bps rate hike and then no rate cuts for another year.

ECB’s announcement also came. Dollar index broke out to new highs, and USDINR is at 81 odd rupees now.

In European STIRS, a few of my colleagues got stuck with big positions when liquidity was pulled and had to book significant losses.

Usually when this happens, the next few weeks they make way more than what they lost as the volatility increases in those markets. So, interesting weeks ahead.

This week I have a lot of very good resources to share.

1/ A free, open source data visualization course.

Ujaval Gandhi @spatialthoughts

Happy to announce my new course Mapping and Data Visualization with #Python. This has been in the making for over a year and excited to be able to share it with the world! The full course is free for self-study and shared under an open license. An overview thread below 👇 1/n

2/ How large institutions execute their trades:

Benn Eifert (🧙🏿‍♂️, 🥷) @bennpeifert

ok this is a good one and self contained enough to do on a recovery pton ride. the tl;dr is that large sophisticated prop firms and hedge funds running volatility arbitrage strategies in listed options effectively look like market makers in how they execute and manage positions.

Alex Good @goodalexander

@bennpeifert it would actually be enjoyable to hear about how you think about accumulating options positions effectively (limit orders, intraday modeling). how much work is done on execution trading side / broker interaction. just trading tactics i guess to manage high bid-ask

3/ Found a tweet which had very good recommendations on books around understanding Macro, Hedge Funds, and Portfolio management.

Here are the books:

• The Front Office - Tom Costello

• Quantitative Portfolio Management - Michael Isichenko

• Geopolitical Alpha: An Investment Framework for Predicting the Future - Marko Papic

• Fed Up! Success, Excess and Crisis Through the Eyes of a Hedge Fund Macro Trader - Colin Lancaster

4/ UC Berkley has launched a crash course on Machine Learning. Check it out here:

Santiago @svpino

Free, Machine Learning Crash Course from Berkeley: ml.berkeley.edu/blog/tag/crash… No registration, no bullshit. Just go to the site, and start learning from the very beginning!

5/ If you ever have a PDF file with data in tabular format, and you want to convert it to CSV/Excel, follow this video.

Excel Dictionary ☕️ @exceldictionary

How to import PDF data into Excel. 🤯 #excel

6/ I have been meaning to try Sam Parr’s “Copy That” course. Finally, gotten a chance to look into it. It’s quite good!

https://www.trycopythat.com/ → This is the link.

If you want to better your writing, you should definitely check this out.

FYI - it’s free.

As for what I am reading, this week I started going through few books I had shortlisted last month end.

Mark Minervini’s “Mindset Secrets” - initially I thought what would Mark write about mindset, psychology, etc., that others haven’t written before.

Boy, was I wrong!

Here are some of the passages I loved reading, and made me feel like a dam was opened.

He’s simplified things that I have “known” but haven’t “realised” - and I was able to “realise” those things consciously.

Definitely give that book a try.

Another book I started reading yesterday is the Michael Covel book “Momentum Masters” (one in which Minervini is featured).

It has very sensible trading wisdom. You should check it out.

That’s a wrap for this week.

These should keep you busy for another few weeks at least.

If you have any comments, or suggestions - do DM me on Twitter.

Until next week,

- Shravan.