Options Trader Quotes

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You can overintellectualize these Greek letters,” Pflug reflected, referring to the alphas, betas, and gammas in the option trader’s argot. “One Greek word that ought to be in there is hubris.
Roger Lowenstein (When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management)
Grazer and Cohn - two outsiders with learning disabilities-played a trick. They bluffed their way into professions that would have been closed to them. The man in the cab assumed that no one would be so audacious as to say he knew how to trade options if he didn't. And it never occurred to the people Brian Grazer called that when he said he was Brian Grazer from Warner Brothers, what he meant was that he was Brian Grazer who pushed the mail cart around at Warner Brothers. What they did is not "right," just as it is not "right" to send children against police dogs. But we need to remember that our definition of what right is, often as not, simply the way that people in positions of privilege close the door on those on the outside. David has nothing to lose, and because he has nothing to lose, he has the freedom to thumb his nose at the rules set by others. That's how people with brains a little bit different from the rest of ours get jobs as options traders and Hollywood producers-and a small band of protesters armed with nothing but their wits have a chance against the likes of Bull Connor
Malcolm Gladwell (David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants)
the split-strike conversion strategy. Option traders often referred to it as a “collar” or “bull spread.” Basically, it involved buying a basket of stocks, in Madoff’s case 30 to 35 blue-chip stocks that correlated very closely to the Standard & Poor’s (S&P) 100-stock index, and then protecting the stocks with put options. By bracketing an investment with puts and calls, you limit your potential profit if the market rises sharply; but in return you’ve protected yourself against devastating losses should the market drop. The calls created a ceiling on his gains when the market went up; the puts provided a floor to cut his losses when the market went down.
Harry Markopolos (No One Would Listen)
Diversity of opinions is essential for generating ideas and options. Contrarian thinking is essential to innovation. A plurality of opinions among movie critics is a feature, not a bug. Disagreements among traders make markets. Strategy differences among competing start-ups enable markets to select the fittest. In what we call matters of judgment, however, system noise is always a problem. If two doctors give you different diagnoses, at least one of them is wrong.
Daniel Kahneman (Noise)
we asked the options exchange to let our traders use programmed hand calculators on the floor. Our request was denied. The newcomers were not to have an advantage over the established old-time traders. We then asked for the next best thing, to be allowed to communicate by walkie-talkies with our floor traders. Denied. It reminded me a bit of what I had run into in Las Vegas with card counting. We then supplied our floor traders with printed trading tables that covered the ever-growing number of listed options. These were run off overnight on our high-speed printers and express-mailed to our offices in Princeton and Chicago. That served nearly as well as hand calculators would have.
Edward O. Thorp (A Man for All Markets: From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market)
Add your typical shower and claw feet Owners claw foot tub, consider incorporating the most traditional sense of joy in the ease and comfort revolutionary shower, governments are mainly engaged in the race just to check in early for power within very ready. Clawfoot tubs wear’s now includes a shower; there are many strategies to use the shower in the bathroom now. Even if a person must be determined in those particular individual hairs, can be costly and impractical. Although the site has a separate shower grow, keep in mind that you want the products and save more modern maintenance. Value management easier and more efficient to add a shower curtain and bath address. The information is not expensive, there are some ideas that you can include in the acquired shower. Contractor or plumber can provide ideas and even to make for you. The original can take water heater shower bath in the direction of the feet and the creation of a rod with an en suite shower room, and when the curtain. Shower curtains apartment surrounded significantly reduces splash of water leaks. Another option would be surplus tiles on the long term, the use of H2O "enemy" and shower rod and curtain also furnished, "L" of the aspects described in determining the bath. What will be more expensive and bathroom alone for a long time, some people are afraid of this option. On the way to the drain in the shower, you could be the cables hidden in the bathroom near the wall. The second course in the HVAC responsible for pre-tube immediately describes the bath to the option in the direction of the traditional classical appearance. There are several different types of decorative lighting and lids which are made in such a way that appears to choose in the hoses pin and presented a lot of good taste on the market. For those who are willing to deal with their own tasks, traders improving the registered owner of the Depot and Lowe's contain a number of "do it yourself" kits are unique measurements. Such kits are barrels and other containers, as defined above use’s shower built for joint legs. Everything requires a few simple policies and lower resistance to the purchase is detected. This kind of "precursors" of the water, you can judge for yourself in the shower longitudinal shower, shower curtains and thoughts. If you take even more concerned that the easiest only independent bathroom each provider in the health of office workers only in the direction of the support of others and crank implementing rules. Have a good friend or spouse and children of a member who keep an eye on your health, as it is commonly known. No need for the resolution, that the decision to migrate to an item in the shower of his classic bathroom was somewhat effortlessly came to rise. It goes in the direction of maximizing claw foot tub, or take an impressive ease of use aerosol own desire. Many decisions wonderful shower curtain in the direction of the changes the rest of the room was coming towards a holistic view of their cosmetics, and a lot of fun to drive in the direction of your claw foot tub.
Elite Shower
headquarters permanently to Rome. Rome was at the center of world affairs, as it was also the center of world corruption. Where else could be better suited—especially now that Monteriggioni was no longer a viable option? He also had plans for a system of distribution of the Brotherhood’s funds in response to individual Assassins’ successfully completed missions. Those diamonds he’d taken from the slave traders had come in very handy, a welcome addition to the campaign fund. One day… But “one day” was still a long way off. The Brotherhood still had no new elected leader, though by common consent and by virtue of their actions, he and Machiavelli had become its temporary chiefs. But they were still only temporary. Nothing had been ratified in formal council. And Caterina preyed on his mind. He had left Claudia to oversee the renovation of the Rosa in Fiore without any supervision or interference. Let her sink or swim in her own overweening confidence! It’d be no fault of his if she sank. But the brothel was an important link in his network, and he admitted to himself that if he really had had absolutely no faith in her, he might have leaned on her harder in the first place. Now was the time to put her work—what she had achieved—to the test. When he returned to the Rosa in Fiore, he was as surprised as he was pleased. Just as successful, he hoped, as his own previous transformations in the city, and at Bartolomeo’s barracks, had been (though even for those he was modest and realistic enough not to take all the credit). But he hid his delight as he took in the sumptuous rooms hung with costly tapestries, the wide sofas, the soft silk cushions, and the white wines chilled with ice—an
Oliver Bowden (Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood)
It takes money to make money. It should be obvious that the more money you have, the more money you can make. “The rich get richer.” This is especially true for rich traders. As your account grows, you’ll be able to trade both bigger and safer. By trading more contracts, you can settle for lower premiums much farther out of the money to minimize your exposure to risk. Selling 10 contracts for $0.30 premium at a 15% Probability ITM is considerably better than selling 5 contracts for $0.40 premium at a 30% Probability ITM.
Russell A. Stultz (The Only Options Trading Book You’ll Ever Need: Earn a steady income trading options)
Human being have emotions that influence the decisions they make every day. These emotions influence the human judgement, and in most cases; the feelings cloud a person’s judgement and reasoning capacity. Since we have analysed the human psychology to a great length, let us shift our focus to Binary Options Robots. Binary Robot is a software that makes trading decisions on behalf of a trader. Binary Robot eliminates the aspect of emotion in the trade, because it makes it decisions by following a predetermined logic sequence. Find more information on the Binary Robots.
Signe J. Petersen
Dans son rapport inaugural, le Forum, à propos de la mondialisation qu'il a symbolisée sous ses formes les plus conquérantes et sûres d'elles-mêmes, évoque avec un sens exquis de l'euphémisme "un risque de désillusion". Mais dans les conversations, c'est autre chose. Désillusion ? Crise ? Inégalités ? D'accord, si vous y tenez, mais enfin, comme nous le dit le très cordial et chaleureux PDG de la banque américaine Western Union, soyons clairs : si on ne paie pas les leaders comme ils le méritent, ils s'en iront voir ailleurs. Et puis, capitalisme, ça veut dire quoi ? Si vous avez 100 dollars d'économies et que vous les mettez à la banque en espérant en avoir bientôt 105, vous êtes un capitaliste, ni plus ni moins que moi. Et plus ces capitalistes comme vous et moi (il a réellement dit "comme vous et moi", et même si nous gagnons fort décemment notre vie, même si nous ne connaissons pas le salaire exact du PDG de la Western Union, pour ne rien dire de ses stock-options, ce "comme vous et moi" mérite à notre sens le pompon de la "brève de comptoir" version Davos), plus ces capitalistes comme vous et moi, donc, gagneront d'argent, plus ils en auront à donner, pardon à redistribuer, aux pauvres. L'idée ne semble pas effleurer cet homme enthousiaste, et à sa façon, généreux, que ce ne serait pas plus mal si les pauvres étaient en mesure d'en gagner eux-mêms et ne dépendaient pas des bonnes dispositions des riches. Faire le maximum d'argent, et ensuite le maximum de bien, ou pour les plus sophistiqués faire le maximum de bien en faisant le maximum d'argent, c'est le mantra du Forum, où on n'est pas grand-chose si on n'a pas sa fondation caritative, et c'est mieux que rien, sans doute "(vous voudriez quoi ? Le communisme ?"). Ce qui est moins bien que rien, en revanche, beaucoup moins bien, c'est l'effarante langue de bois dans laquelle ce mantra se décline. Ces mots dont tout le monde se gargarise : préoccupation sociétale, dimension humaine, conscience globale, changement de paradigme… De même que l'imagerie marxiste se représentait autrefois les capitalistes ventrus, en chapeau haut de forme et suçant avec volupté le sang du prolétariat, on a tendance à se représenter les super-riches et super-puissants réunis à Davos comme des cyniques, à l'image de ces traders de Chicago qui, en réponse à Occupy Wall Street, ont déployé au dernier étage de leur tour une banderole proclamant : "Nous sommes les 1%". Mais ces petits cyniques-là étaient des naïfs, alors que les grands fauves qu'on côtoie à Davos ne semblent, eux, pas cyniques du tout. Ils semblent sincèrement convaincus des bienfaits qu'ils apportent au monde, sincèrement convaincus que leur ingénierie financière et philanthropique (à les entendre, c'est pareil) est la seule façon de négocier en douceur le fameux changement de paradigme qui est l'autre nom de l'entrée dans l'âge d'or. Ça nous a étonnés dès le premier jour, le parfum de new age qui baigne ce jamboree de mâles dominants en costumes gris. Au second, il devient entêtant, et au troisième on n'en peut plus, on suffoque dans ce nuage de discours et de slogans tout droit sortis de manuels de développement personnel et de positive thinking. Alors, bien sûr, on n'avait pas besoin de venir jusqu'ici pour se douter que l'optimisme est d'une pratique plus aisée aux heureux du monde qu'à ses gueux, mais son inflation, sa déconnexion de toute expérience ordinaire sont ici tels que l'observateur le plus modéré se retrouve à osciller entre, sur le versant idéaliste, une indignation révolutionnaire, et, sur le versant misanthrope, le sarcasme le plus noir. (p. 439-441)
Emmanuel Carrère (Il est avantageux d'avoir où aller)
Keith was sophisticated enough to understand the inherent risk of options; buying options wasn't as dangerous as short selling, because your potential for loss was capped, because you could always let the options expire. You paid a fee for the right to buy a certain number of shares of a stock at a certain price by a certain date. Sold in 100-share blocks, the fee was based on demand, which related to where people thought the stock price was going. Because the fee you paid for those 100-share blocks was a fraction of the pegged price, you could leverage yourself into a very large position with a relatively small amount of money. If the price went up, you could make a lot; if it went down, your options were worthless, but you only lost what you initially paid. A full 80 percent of the options bought by retail traders like him expired worthless; but when you only had a little to work with, there was no better way to shoot for the moon. Fifty-three thousand dollars was a lot, considering he had a two-year-old, a house, a wife. It was as much money as his dad earned in a year when he was younger. But Keith was that sure, even when the stock was hovering around $5 a share, that he had found value that others had missed.
Ben Mezrich (The Antisocial Network: The GameStop Short Squeeze and the Ragtag Group of Amateur Traders That Brought Wall Street to Its Knees)
Track Your Favorite Instruments I have met so many traders whose trading journey ends up looking something like this: One month they’re trading stocks (“we’re in a bull market, man!”) When that didn’t work out, they jump to options (“strangles and spreads, that’s where it’s at, baby!”) When that didn’t work out, they jump to forex (“I just bought this forex robot, it does all the trading for me!”) When that inevitably didn’t work out, they jump onto Bitcoin (“it’s gonna replace money!”) When that didn’t work out, they jump on social media (“I saw this ad on Facebook about trading binary options…”) By now, they have to go back to work, because they have blown up whatever trading capital they had left.
Simon Ree (The Tao of Trading: How to Build Abundant Wealth in Any Market Condition)
As a result, private traders have a slightly higher annual loss rate of about 65%, but certainly not 95%, not even beginners.
Johann Christian Lotter (The Black Book of Financial Hacking: Developing Algorithmic Strategies for Forex, Options, Stocks)
One of the attractive aspects of my profession as a quantitative option trader is that
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets (Incerto Book 1))
The common thinking is that you can’t possibly sell something before you own it, and even if you could, some interest likely would be charged for borrowing the asset that you intend to sell. Although that might be true in stock trading, that logic doesn’t apply to the futures markets.
Carley Garner (A Trader's First Book on Commodities: Everything you need to know about futures and options trading before placing a trade)
The term rolling, or rolling over, is commonly used to describe the practice of offsetting a trade in a contract that is facing expiration and entering a similar position in a contract with a distant expiration date. Rolling over is simply offsetting one position and getting into another.
Carley Garner (A Trader's First Book on Commodities: Everything you need to know about futures and options trading before placing a trade)
If you can take advantage of a situation in some way, it’s your duty as an American to do it." —C. Montgomery Burns (from The Simpsons)
Carley Garner (A Trader's First Book on Commodities: Everything you need to know about futures and options trading before placing a trade)
Just as you pay a commission to the retail broker who took your order or provides you trading access via an electronic platform, the market maker must be paid in the form of the bid/ask spread. Think about it: If as a retail trader you are always paying the ask and selling the bid, you are a net loser even if the price of the futures contract remains unchanged.
Carley Garner (A Trader's First Book on Commodities: Everything you need to know about futures and options trading before placing a trade)
While traders might have seen what was coming, it appeared that the general public did not. O’Neill saw a gap in the market in early 2000. A giant gap. The price of gas options was cheap—too cheap to account for what was apparently coming down the road. In other words, the insurance policies against a sudden price spike were not as expensive as they ought to have been. So O’Neill started snapping up the options and holding on to them, knowing that they would become more valuable. As usual, he wasn’t just making a bet that prices were going to go up. He was primarily betting that markets were about to become more volatile. He built up a large position with his natural gas options and underliers that was “long volatility,” meaning that he bet volatility would increase. He assumed that the positions would provide a good return for Koch Industries. He was wrong. He grossly underestimated the riches that the coming volatility was about to deliver. Senior executives in Koch Supply & Trading realized that they could no longer pay their traders like engineers. There was a competition for talent, and too many well-trained people were bleeding off the Koch trading floor. There was one person who seemed to resist big paydays for the traders: Charles Koch. The business failures of the 1990s impressed on Charles Koch the need for humility among his workforce. The thinking went that it was the high-flying ambition and loose planning that led to many of the business losses at Purina Mills.
Christopher Leonard (Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America)
Despite arguments against speculation and its place in the commodity markets that shape our economy—and, therefore, our lives—without it, producers and users of commodities would have a difficult time facilitating transactions. Thanks to speculators, there is always a buyer for every seller and a seller for every buyer. Without them and the liquidity they provide, hedgers would likely be forced to endure much larger bid/ask spreads and, in theory, price volatility. Consumers would also suffer in the absence of speculators simply because producers would be forced to pass on their increased costs to allow for favorable profit margins.
Carley Garner (A Trader's First Book on Commodities: Everything you need to know about futures and options trading before placing a trade)
Traders had begun to speak of the ‘Greenspan put’ because having him at the Fed was like having a ‘put’ option on the stock market (an option but not an obligation to sell stocks at a good price in the future).
Niall Ferguson (The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World: 10th Anniversary Edition)
It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.” —Charles Darwin
Dennis A. Chen (Option Trader's Hedge Fund, The: A Business Framework for Trading Equity and Index Options)
In Trading, Every Setback is a Setup for a Comeback.
Zalman " Sal" Sulaymanov (How To Suck Less At Day Trading: The Ultimate No-Nonsense Guide For Retail Traders on Getting A Reach Around From The Markets)
refer to Jared Woodard’s e-book Iron Condor Spread Strategies.
Dennis A. Chen (Option Trader's Hedge Fund, The: A Business Framework for Trading Equity and Index Options)
But it is well to always remember that you have options, precisely as you did before your gift broke through.
Sharon Lee (Trader's Leap (Liaden Universe, #23))
I had only one option. I was going rogue.
Dr. Block (The Ballad of Winston the Wandering Trader, Book 4 (The Ballad of Winston #4))
Arbitrage is a "risk-free" profit, but for most of us, it might as well be a mirage. Markets are quick to eliminate such opportunities.
Carley Garner (A Trader's First Book on Commodities: Everything you need to know about futures and options trading before placing a trade)
Iron Butterfly Strategy is built up using package order for all the spreads simultaneously to avoid slippage. Never opted for making one of the spread before the other or buy and sell all the four individual options separately. Sometimes, the market or any particular stock rally considerably and went to overbought or oversold region. In such cases, the market or stock price is anticipated to take reversal and bounce back. The traders or investors may use MACD or RSI indicator to identify the MACD cross over (bullish or bearish) and overbought or oversold zone in RSI indicator. If the RSI indicator goes below 30 level and bounce back crossing the level of 30 from below, it indicates market going up and time to initiate long position. If it is confirmed by MACD bullish crossover, the Bull Put spread of the Iron Butterfly may be initiated first and subsequently the Bear Call spread at higher level. If the RSI indicator goes above 70 level and bounce back crossing the level of 70 from above, it indicates market going down and time to initiate short position. If it is confirmed by MACD bearish crossover, the Bear Call spread of the Iron Butterfly may be initiated first and subsequently the Bull Put spread at lower level.
Er. SUDHIR KUMAR SAHU (IRON BUTTERFLY & REVERSE IRON BUTTERFLY: Advanced Options made plain (Part - 2))
In the vocabulary of options traders, writing means selling.
Robert T. Kiyosaki (Retire Young Retire Rich: How to Get Rich Quickly and Stay Rich Forever! (Rich Dad's (Paperback)))
It is a "known fact" that 95% of all private traders lose all their money in the first 12 months.
Johann Christian Lotter (The Black Book of Financial Hacking: Developing Algorithmic Strategies for Forex, Options, Stocks)
It is a "known fact" that 95% of all private traders lose all their money in the first 12 months. Not true - at least not with completely random trading and one trade per day. You can see from the profit distribution that only about 55% lose money at all (the sum of the red bars with negative profit), while 45% end their trading period with a profit. Of course, they won't attribute their success to the bell curve, but to their trading skills.
Johann Christian Lotter (The Black Book of Financial Hacking: Developing Algorithmic Strategies for Forex, Options, Stocks)
The profit distribution of real traders is not a Gaussian, but a Lévy distribution. It has a smaller peak and fatter tails. That means the losers lose more, and the winners take more than in a random-trading situation.
Johann Christian Lotter (The Black Book of Financial Hacking: Developing Algorithmic Strategies for Forex, Options, Stocks)
certain option traders get to treat 60 percent of their income as long-term capital gains taxed at the lower rates even if all of their trades happen in less than a year. Traders in futures and foreign exchange may also qualify for this tax benefit.
Tom Wheelwright (Tax-Free Wealth: How to Build Massive Wealth by Permanently Lowering Your Taxes)
The last thing a trader needs to do is be scientific or play econometrician during buisness hours.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Dynamic Hedging: Managing Vanilla and Exotic Options)
Traders speculating on price moves must forecast not only current and future fundamentals but also how the trading world will react to those fundamentals. One must be able not only to study past supply-and-demand figures and how they affected price but also to know a little about crowd psychology. Predicting where prices will go is like trying to predict the direction of a hurricane. Even the experts can make only vague projections until the storm makes landfall.
James Cordier (The Complete Guide to Option Selling: How Selling Options Can Lead to Stellar Returns in Bull and Bear Markets)
Andrew Baxter has written several best sellers in the trading and investment space. Each year, his Outrageous Market Predictions has been amongst, if not the most highly downloaded business Ebook, within the iTunes store.In addition, 10 Essential Keys to Winning the Investment Game Trading Options, one of Andrew’s Options specific books, has been read by thousands of Traders, around the World.
Andrew Baxter
Lemon Pepper Cod 2 cod fillets (I prefer the thick end of the fillet) 1 teaspoon extra virgin olive oil Zest and juice of 1 lemon Lemon pepper seasoning (Trader Joe’s makes a good one) Dry the cod fillets and rub them with olive oil. Top the fillets with the lemon zest and sprinkle with lemon pepper seasoning as desired. Let the fillets rest in the refrigerator for 15 minutes and then grill for 3 minutes. Top with fresh lemon juice. Note: This is one of the world’s easiest dinners! Two great side options: grilled asparagus and kale salad.
Erin Oprea (The 4 x 4 Diet: 4 Key Foods, 4-Minute Workouts, Four Weeks to the Body You Want)
Skin in the game can make boring things less boring. When you have skin in the game, dull things like checking the safety of the aircraft because you may be forced to be a passenger in it cease to be boring. If you are an investor in a company, doing ultra-boring things like reading the footnotes of a financial statement (where the real information is to be found) becomes, well, almost not boring. But there is an even more vital dimension. Many addicts who normally have a dull intellect and the mental nimbleness of a cauliflower—or a foreign policy expert—are capable of the most ingenious tricks to procure their drugs. When they undergo rehab, they are often told that should they spend half the mental energy trying to make money as they did procuring drugs, they are guaranteed to become millionaires. But, to no avail. Without the addiction, their miraculous powers go away. It was like a magical potion that gave remarkable powers to those seeking it, but not those drinking it. A confession. When I don’t have skin in the game, I am usually dumb. My knowledge of technical matters, such as risk and probability, did not initially come from books. It did not come from lofty philosophizing and scientific hunger. It did not even come from curiosity. It came from the thrills and hormonal flush one gets while taking risks in the markets. I never thought mathematics was something interesting to me until, when I was at Wharton, a friend told me about the financial options I described earlier (and their generalization, complex derivatives). I immediately decided to make a career in them. It was a combination of financial trading and complicated probability. The field was new and uncharted. I knew in my guts there were mistakes in the theories that used the conventional bell curve and ignored the impact of the tails (extreme events). I knew in my guts that academics had not the slightest clue about the risks. So, to find errors in the estimation of these probabilistic securities, I had to study probability, which mysteriously and instantly became fun, even gripping. When there was risk on the line, suddenly a second brain in me manifested itself, and the probabilities of intricate sequences became suddenly effortless to analyze and map. When there is fire, you will run faster than in any competition. When you ski downhill some movements become effortless. Then I became dumb again when there was no real action. Furthermore, as traders the mathematics we used fit our problem like a glove, unlike academics with a theory looking for some application—in some cases we had to invent models out of thin air and could not afford the wrong equations. Applying math to practical problems was another business altogether; it meant a deep understanding of the problem before writing the equations.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life (Incerto))
call and put options, credit-default obligations (CDOs), and a whole host of exotic financial instruments available to traders these days. If you build up a lot of wealth, you may want to have your fiduciary look into some of these vehicles. But just realize that if you’re playing this game, you’re most likely no longer just an investor, you’ve become a speculator as well.
Anthony Robbins (MONEY Master the Game: 7 Simple Steps to Financial Freedom (Tony Robbins Financial Freedom))
To be someone or to do something, which would I choose?* A man occasionally reaches a fork in life’s path. One road leads to doing something, to making an impact on his organization and his world. To being true to his values and vision, and standing with the other men who’ve helped build that vision. He will have to trust himself when all men doubt him, and as a reward, he will have the scorn of his professional circle heaped on his head. He will not be favored by his superiors, nor win the polite praise of his conformist peers. But maybe, just maybe, he has the chance to be right, and create something of lasting value that will transcend the consensus mediocrity inherent in any organization, even supposedly disruptive ones. The other road leads to being someone. He will receive the plum products, the facile praise afforded to the organization man who checks off the canonical list of petty virtues that define moral worth in his world. He will receive the applause of his peers, though it will be striking how rarely that traffic in official praise leads to actual products anybody remembers, much less advances the overall cause of the organization. I certainly had options. I can’t say I didn’t. I had outs, and could have walked away from FBX. All I had to do was shut up, keep my head down, go through the motions with whatever shitty product was handed to me after FBX, and read along from the Facebook script about how to be a proper product manager. I might even resurrect my career if one of those products was “successful.” In the rapidly ossifying Facebook culture, one could get along simply by going along. Plus, there were real stakes on the line. Consider the number of shares and the fact that at the time of this writing, in December 2015, Facebook is worth almost four times what it was when I struck my AdGrok deal. I had two children, whose mother’s nine-to-five corporate job provided for them, though just barely. Her London trader heyday was long gone, and now her salary was that of your standard-issue MBA inside the corporate machine. I contributed a slab of cash every month, per California support guidelines, but it would be my Facebook stock vesting yet to come that would pay for private high schools and Stanford, so Zoë and Noah wouldn’t have to sneak into this country’s elite through the back door from cattle class, as I had to do.
Antonio García Martínez (Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley)
the goal of a successful trader is to make the best trades. Money is secondary
T.R. Lawrence (Options Trading: How to Turn Every Friday into Payday Using Weekly Options! Generate Weekly Income in ALL Markets and Sleep Worry-Free!)