After a late night departure from Seattle and a refreshing red-eye nap, I woke in the skies above the greatest city in the world. The view from the windows was panoramic. The center of Manhattan boldly rose into the forbidden 3rd dimension from which I observed, and around it was a wild patchwork of water and land, of streams and rivulets and archipelagos, that would have looked entirely in place on the very fringes of civilization.
Off the plane, I walked to the sky train terminal, where a woman was hard at work patching the confusing design decisions made in the train’s routing. Not all the trains coming along the same track were equivalent! After getting the scoop from the not-mailing-it-in lady, I got a map and boarded the right train. I was so enjoying the feeling of being in a new city that I decided not to read on the train as my custom demanded, but instead looked out the window. While in this absorptive state, I heard a group behind me excitedly discussing whether they were on the right train. I whipped out my map and offered a quick assessment: no, they were not! This train exited the airport and they wanted to change terminals. I grinned as they jumped off at the next exit, their last chance to stay in the airport (and probably to stay inside security).
At the subway stop, I listened to a family speaking Spanish and watched the father carefully guide the elderly grandmother to a seat. I felt so ALIVE! Hopping on the subway, I investigated some of the local advertisements, including the School of Practical Philosophy (which of course is Eastern focused because Western philosophy is so impractical (fight me Winnie)).
I arrived at the Pace University dorms where I would be staying. It was 8 and I couldn’t check in until 10, but the security fellow let me drop off my luggage. I walked over to the Jane Street offices, got an ok EOB + bacon for $8 at a nearby shop, and checked out the area. There was a really well done Irish Hunger Memorial, that had an entrance full of quotes illustrating the plight of Irish peasants during the years of the potato famine and the iniquity of English legislators and private interests exploiting the situation. But most of the monument was simply a beautiful planted area run through with a stone wall lined path, looking exactly like a piece of bucolic Irish countryside.
The monument was next to the western edge of Manhattan, and here along that edge ran a walkway. Hundreds of joggers and walkers passed me as I strolled along the walkway. There were really nice public basketball, volleyball, and small soccer courts–I stopped in a basketball court to take a few shots with my frisbee. (I made a couple of 3s–I’m getting almost as good with my disk as with a ball, and now I can reliably “dribble” by mac’ing the disk forward (of course it would be easy to defend such a dribble)). I’m super happy that there is this beautiful place to relax and shoot hoops on my break from work! There was even a large grassy park on the water!!
I was pretty exhausted and my feet were tired–I was wearing my FiveFingers and I could feel the concrete bruising the balls of my feet with each step! So I turned my steps back towards Pace. Checked in without incident, although as usual the student coordinators were totally inept and thought I had already checked in, then had to go way up to grab my key card before descending back down to my room on the 25th floor. My room was quite spacious, if not luxurious–there were no singles left so I had to pay for “double w/ single occupancy”. It had two bunks, so I felt a little silly with my air mattress. Considering asking Pace to remove the extra bunk and dresser so that I can put in a table and outfit my room like a lounge–there is no floor lounge for us merry little band of 25th floor Jane Streeters to chill in.
Briefly unpacked, then took a longer nap than I intended–I actually slept through my alarm! But felt refreshed, and famished. Went out to a taqueria and devoured an enormous burrito. Sitting at the outdoor seating area, I got blessed by a woman walking by. (“Do you know Jesus?” “Yes.” “So you know he is your Savior, right?” “Yup.” “Can I pray for you?” “Sure.” “Puts hand on my shoulder and murmurs prayer.”) Then walked along the eastern side of Manhattan! I found the building that used to house the Fulton Fish market (where legendary NY governor Alfred E. Smith rolled heavy fish barrels as a young man to support his family). It’s now next to a high end seafood restaurant. From there I wandered into Chinatown. So much fun people watching! Some teenaged goofballs are doing tricks in the concrete front yard of a church–on scooters! I grab a bubble tea, wander around, and find myself in a park. The park is crammed with people, just chilling. Literally every bench is occupied. It’s mostly Asians. I listen to some interesting traditional music played on what Winnie tells me is an Erhu–literally two-stringed lute, and wander among the tables crammed with Chinese chess players, mahjong players, card players, and kibitzers. I marvel at the street culture! Seattle has nothing like this, even close. There is a whole Chinese extended family singing and playing instruments. A set of middle aged men form what sounds like a barbershop quartet, singing traditional? music backed up by a host of instruments played by the rest of the family. It’s pretty awesome! Nearby there’s a sport court where soccer, volleyball, tai chi and basketball are being played. I really want to play basketball, so I awkwardly stand against the fence watching the games until one ends, and a couple of players leave–and I jump in. My hustle inspires the guy I’m guarding to nickname me ‘Zuck’, and I get some good rebounds, but am pretty hopelessly miscalibrated on the shooting side with the street ball and the unforgiving hoop rim (sans net of course). I chat with some of the players afterwards (is the “hot hand” real?). Heading back to my room, I’m caught in a short-lived downpour that feels amazing.
I take a quick shower, and then it’s off again to Target while the sun is still up to get household conveniences. I make a pretty efficient go of it, getting really stuck only while contemplating purchasing a water filter. I ask a couple passing by in the aisle what they think of NY tap water. Immediately, the wife starts to tell me it is awesome and she has drunk it for 10 years, and the husband begins to regale me with a conspiracy theory about estrogen in the water and the danger of acquiring man-boobs. I talk with them, each doubling down on their position, for about 5 minutes, even after their little son walks over. What a cute couple.
I have to haul my stuff back from Target in the giant plastic laundry hamper I’ve purchased. Included are two gallon jugs of water and a six pack of beer, and so the thing is quite heavy. Forearms straining, I haul it for several blocks until I get the bright idea of putting it on my head! This works beautifully, except for the slight pressure on my neck. Switching back and forth between head-carry and arm-carry, panting heavily, I make it back to Pace and unload. I drink a lot of water.
Continuing a really well done Jane Street lecture on heuristics and biases that I started after basketball, I get really pumped up and start popping tabs. I investigate the Jane Street partner who delivered the lecture, a math legend, national olympiad champion and team member, who wrote the Art of Problem Solving book that is used in the UW Putnam preparation course. I find a really great NYT article pumping up Jane Street, which reveals that Garry Kasparov and Christopher Hitchens (Brandon is a big fan of the latter New Atheist debator and writer) have given talks at Jane Street.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/23/business/dealbook/a-new-breed-of-trader-on-wall-street-coders-with-a-phd.html
The article makes reference to the main item in which Jane Street makes markets, a type of security called an “ETF” or “Exchange-traded fund”. Like other types of fund, an ETF is a set of assets whose ownership is parceled out into shares owned by different investors. Unlike an “Open-ended fund”, the shares of an ETF are not directly redeemable for their underlying asset value, but can only be created or redeemed in large blocks. This means that their value, while it cannot be too far from the underlying asset value (or someone would buy/redeem a full block), can deviate from that value, and thus markets in these funds must be made. An ETF is something like a general
As far as I can tell, an ETF is a generalization of the notion of “stock”. Someone could create an ETF that had only one asset type–a single stock–which would for all intents and purposes be equivalent to the stock, but
The center of Manhattan stood out as a 2D histogram whose use of height to encode h
Early morning arrival Helping that group with the sky train map Pier 17–sports courts, amenities, Irish Hunger memorial Unpack, nap and sally forth: Tacos, getting blessed, Fulton Fish Market (fancy restaurant now) Cool Chinatown, more fun people watching, crazy yokels on scooters… The park!! Family playing Mandarin barbershop with instruments (so friendly when I applauded them, what a weird sight I was staring raptly with my bubble tea), overcoming an awkward situation to play hoops, chatting about the “Hot hand”. Target run, conversation with cool couple about filters, carrying basket on head. Getting pumped up about Jane Street–include this in private report? Heuristics and biases, badass mathematician guy, learning about ETFs and why they are a flexible abstraction over all sorts of different things which lend themselves to arbitrage (they even have an “arbitrage mechanism” whereby they can be created in blocks, which I guess, by unpinning their value from the raw asset value, allows the value added by the management to be priced in) but why would you not just be able to create them one by one and thus track the raw asset value directly? Fun chat with Winnie, talking about particle physics, difference between theory and experiment.. Train to Busan! and then to bed.