Insight certainty 4/5 debate potential 2/5

Simkin: Effective mentorship models the decision process rather than prescribing actions

Todd Simkin · #119 Todd Simkin: Making Better Decisions · Sep 7, 2021 · at 29:44

Todd Simkin, trader and educator at Susquehanna International Group (SIG), discusses pedagogical methods for training junior traders.

0:00 / 0:46exact quote · 46.7s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“And a big part of how information is passed from the mentor to the mentee is by modeling the decision process. It is not enough to say you should have raised vol by two points when this trade came in. Instead, it's so much more important to say, okay, when this trade came in, I remembered that earlier in the week, somebody had traded this other structure, and when they did, I updated my, you know, possible outcome space to look different. This trade confirmed what that other trade did, so, so now I was, I just more heavily weighted this other outcome, and the result was that I took volatility up two points. Then someone knows not only what to do, which is really not the important thing to take away, but how to do it, which is very much what we're looking to teach.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

More from Todd Simkin

Insight
Simkin: Call-out culture incentivizes finger-pointing regardless of expertise
“The big problem with call out culture is that we're rewarding people just for the call out. That it doesn't matter what their other behavior it is. It doesn't matter what other positions they have, what knowledge they have, what expertise they have. They just …”
Todd Simkin Sep 7, 2021 ▶ 17:55 #119 Todd Simkin: Making Better Decisions
Insight
Simkin: Probabilistic forecasts cannot be judged wrong unless 0% or 100%
“It's really hard to say anybody's wrong about a single probability prediction, unless they said that something was zero percent or a hundred percent.”
Todd Simkin Sep 7, 2021 ▶ 35:00 #119 Todd Simkin: Making Better Decisions
Insight
Simkin: Constructive communication beats probabilistic thinking for truth-finding
“Talk more is number one. That beats probabilistic thinking that, you know, that, that beats sort of anything else in truth finding is, is being able to bring in other people in the decision process in a constructive way.”
Todd Simkin Sep 7, 2021 ▶ 41:53 #119 Todd Simkin: Making Better Decisions
Insight
Simkin: Traders should not back limited opinions against informed counterparties
“Our approach is to recognize that we are often on the bad end of informational asymmetry that other people who are looking to trade in the markets frequently know more than we do. And as a result, we don't want to back our own limited opinion against a more in…”
Todd Simkin Sep 7, 2021 ▶ 3:16 #119 Todd Simkin: Making Better Decisions
Insight
Simkin: Decision-makers must update opinions in a Bayesian way
“The most important thing from our perspective is to be willing to update that opinion in a Bayesian way, to use approaches that are going to be inclusive of all the information available to us, and only when we get to mutually exclusive information or mutually…”
Todd Simkin Sep 7, 2021 ▶ 4:20 #119 Todd Simkin: Making Better Decisions
Insight
Simkin: Use related instruments to find disconfirming evidence before taking trades
“And again, in isolation, it's really hard for me just to say this person's wrong. But if I have a similar looking option, similar because it's the same expiration, or because it's the same strike and a different expiration, or that there's something about the …”
Todd Simkin Sep 7, 2021 ▶ 8:10 #119 Todd Simkin: Making Better Decisions
Made with StarZero

Turn any episode into a week of clips.

This entire site, over 200 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable, runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.