Martin Kronicle

Jared Dillian

Aaron Brown

Michael Martin

I’ll be speaking with Aaron Brown and Jared Dillian at Columbia University Monday, February 13 at 6 pm.

Information on Financial Engineering Semiar

I got to spend a little time with Gotye while he was in Los Angeles last week. I filmed about 30 minutes worth of an interview. Will have it up shortly.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Jared Dillian’s brain worked very differently from most of his colleagues. He had what I’d call these emotional tectonic plates inside his head that would shift in an instant. When they shifted, they’d tremor so hard, they’d make the fault lines along the San Andreas Fault sit up straight…and that’s not counting what happened as a result from his trading.

Dillian describes his personal journey in one of the most revealing memoirs I’ve read in the past decade. He is a very genuine person and his recent book Street Freak: Money & Madness at Lehman Brothers is written with a great deal of candor. I recommend you read the book — it’s written with a great deal of honesty and you can hear it come through in the podcast.

“Throughout most my adult life, I’d always felt that I experienced things differently from other people. I felt more. Instead of getting sad, I would get really sad. Despondent. Instead of being happy, I would be delirious. I would laugh, and everybody would turn around to look at the crazy man. Now here I was, crying in the middle of Seventh Avenue. But there was no reason for the crying. I was just walking down the street, and I fell to pieces.” – from Street Freak

Dillian is the publisher of the Daily Dirt Nap Newsletter, which continues the success of the market letter he wrote for his clients over the Bloomberg while at Lehman.

Jared, Aaron Brown and I are speaking at Columbia University on February 13, 2012 for an event called the Financial Engineering Practitioners Seminar

The Dog Days of Yoga

“…inhale and bring your head back with a long neck, shoulders wide and stretching down your back, roll up into an upward facing you, and with a deep exhale, roll your paws under lifting your hips towards the back of the yard into a downward facing you. Try not to look at me or the neighbor’s cat pose…focus only on your bad breath.”

I took an afternoon class with an AMAZING teacher…set myself up for a great weekend. I’ll be writing this up shortly…

The CME Group is holding its annual Commodities Trading Challenge and it looks pretty awesome. These didn’t exist when I was cutting my teeth. Teams can register now and the Practice Round starts on February 13.

Here is more from their site:

“The Challenge is where colleges and universities from across the country compete in a fast-paced electronic and open outcry trading competition. This competition was originally created by The New York Mercantile Exchange and the University of Houston over ten years ago with just a small number of schools on the roster. As the markets have grown however, so has the competition, with 85 schools participating in 2011. In addition to the electronic trading segment, the University of Houston continues to serve as host for the Houston Open Outcry competition and this year we have moved the second Open Outcry component of the competition to Chicago.”

There are scholarships (and internships) available for the electronic trading component portion!!!

Read all the rules about registration for the CME Group 2012 Commodity Trading Challenge.

For more information, visit the CME Group.