diba

I quit my job at a top-tier HFT firm to travel the world while working on a pet project. This was an extremely difficult decision since I really enjoyed my job/friends and was setup to do quite well financially. The main reasons I pulled the trigger were:

1) A strong thirst to experience more of the world (and knowing it would be more difficult when I'm older (I was 26)).

2) The desire to run my own show on a project I felt like I was born to do.

I received a 1-year paid non-compete, so the plan was to give the project a shot while traveling, and if it wasn't panning out, to get back into the HFT industry. I was very fortunate to have earned enough to where budget was a non-issue (though I've managed to live quite cheaply) and I had my brother and good friend joining me on my travels and helping out with the project for the first couple months.

I could write a lot, but here are the highlights after spending time all over Europe, USA, Mexico, and South Africa.

The good:

- Seeing more of the world and experiencing new cultures has been an amazing and rewarding experience.

- Working on my passion project has been a blast, and I've thoroughly enjoyed the freedom and flexibility it has allowed.

- I've grown a ton both as a person and as a coder/statistician (it's nice to have the freedom to spend large segments of time learning new skills.)

- Adopting a minimalist lifestyle has been cathartic and rewarding.

The bad:

- It's really hard to balance time between work and travel/leisure. I've opted to spend long periods settled in one place while focusing on work, "living like a local", etc., and then taking pure leisure trips where I hop around to many nearby places.

- Hard to stay connected with friends and family back home.

- Hard to make lasting relationships while traveling, especially when english is not the country's primary language.

- Learning a new language (beyond common phrases) takes a lot of time, and doesn't give much bang for your buck (beyond a challenging mental exercise) when your spending less than 6 months someplace.

My 1-year is almost up and it's still unclear whether the project will pan out, but I'm planning to continue my work/travels as I'm still enjoying the experience, learning a lot, and there's more of the world I want to explore!

Do you have the results of that research project available somewhere?

Yeah, my friend who is more knowledgeable than myself in equity trading said this a few days before apple reported earnings:

"The reason is so that on earnings day, AAPL can crush "consensus" earnings estimates and have their stock price increase. This is what Steve Jobs wants to happen, and the street analysts are happy to fall in line so that he'll continue to meet with them (or their clients) and/or do business with their firm if Apple ever needs investment banking advice

The next question you might ask is: doesn't this look bad for Apple if people are projecting worse earnings into the future? Don't stocks trade loosely on things like P/E ratios?

The answer is that if you look out a full year, the effect is actually the exact opposite, analysts tend to be way too optimistic (link<http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2010/06/mckinsey-equity-analyst...; ).

You can see how this would work. You look at earnings estimates a year out and think: "man, this stock looks pretty good if earnings are going to grow X% over the next year". And then you look at the next quarter results and say "man they did better than expectations! This stock must be REALLY good. Maybe they will grow at X+5% over the next year!".

What you failed to realize was that earnings estimates will be decreased over the course of the year like clockwork, and eventually that yearly estimate that was too bullish will turn into a quarterly estimate that is too bearish.

The result of all this is the the graph above, with amateurs forecasting an extra 10% in quarterly revenue and extra 20% in EPS."