Ricki Heicklen

Oct 28, 2024 | lesswrong.com | Ricki Heicklen

I'm running a quant trading bootcamp at Lighthaven (in Berkeley) Nov 6-10. This is my first time trying the extended weekend model; it starts Wednesday night so if you're local you only have to take off Thursday and Friday. You can register here, or check out the LessWrong event here. The course covers the fundamentals of quant trading (markets, order books, auctions, risk and sizing, adverse selection, arbitrage, how quant trading firms make money).

Sep 26, 2024 | lesswrong.com | Ricki Heicklen

September 26 is the anniversary of the 1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm incident—item #16 on Wikipedia’s upsettingly long “List of Nuclear Close Calls”—in which Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov did an excellent job at not starting World War IIIQuarterly Performance Review, Autumn 1983Colonel Yuri Kuznetsov looked out the window anxiously. The endless gray landscape did little to soothe his nerves. He only had one employee review left to get through, but he’d saved the hardest one for last.

Mar 14, 2024 | lesswrong.com | Ricki Heicklen |Thomas Kwa |Nathan Helm-Burger |Ben Pace

“I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member” -MarxAdverse Selection is the phenomenon in which information asymmetries in non-cooperative environments make trading dangerous. It has traditionally been understood to describe financial markets in which buyers and sellers systematically differ, such as a market for used cars in which sellers have the information advantage, where resulting feedback loops can lead to market collapses.

Mar 14, 2024 | lesswrong.com | Ricki Heicklen |Thomas Kwa |Nathan Helm-Burger |Ben Pace

“I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member” -MarxAdverse Selection is the phenomenon in which information asymmetries in non-cooperative environments make trading dangerous. It has traditionally been understood to describe financial markets in which buyers and sellers systematically differ, such as a market for used cars in which sellers have the information advantage, where resulting feedback loops can lead to market collapses.

Feb 22, 2024 | lesswrong.com | Ricki Heicklen

With thanks to Scott Alexander for the inspiration, Jeffrey Ladish, Philip Parker, Avital Morris, and Drake Thomas for masterful cohosting, and Richard Ngo for his investigative journalism. Last summer, I threw an Every Bay Area House Party themed party. I don’t live in the Bay, but I was there for a construction-work-slash-webforum-moderation-and-UI-design-slash-grantmaking gig, so I took the opportunity to impose myself on the ever generous Jeffrey Ladish and host a party in his home.