Saturday, October 8, 2011

Role of a trader

Full Disclosure - I am a programmer for a hedge fund.

In all societies in the past, a person's income was directly linked to his/her role in society. Agricultural societies rewarded farmers, warlike societies rewarded soldiers and democratic societies rewarded statesmen. This is not to say that the system was fair or that everyone got what they deserved, but there was a general connection between the craft that was the primary source of a society's prosperity and the status of the practitioners of that craft.

Traders and investment bankers are among the highly paid professionals of our times.And yet somehow I am unable to understand the role they play in our world. As in I understand the role, but not its significance to our lives. What would happen in no trading was done for a week?

The role of a professional trader emerged as a side effect of development of excellent means of transportation. With farmers and craftsmen able to ship their goods far and wide, it became impossible for them to personally be present at the site where theie wares were being traded. Thus emerged the trader-someone who would charge some money in exchange for buying/selling on your behalf. And it is in strictly this role that the function of the trader is critical. Such trading has to be done in order for assets to circulate in society. Here actual assets get introduced into the economy  via the trading function. The trader is essentially as assistant for those creating real assets and value.

Now consider the role of the stock market trader as we see it today. This trader does not generate any assets in the system. By merely playing off one asset against another (No one really knows the reason for volatility, but the likeliest reason is trading itself. Imaging that!!! The phenomenon that the trader claims skill in riding is in fact 'created' by his riding!), he generates a notional wealth which in no way reflects the real world's prosperity. If the stock market climbs a thousand point in a day, it does not mean thhat an equivalent amount of assets have somehow been injected into the economy on that day, or that people are living proportionately better lives. Nor do the actual asset creators benefit from this movement, apart from claims of massive market capitalization, which is merely a poor metric of a company's performance. No one benefits, apart from the trader, who without having given anything to the society, has now cornered a good bit of its money.



Trading-for-the-sake-trading is institutionalized gambling. It is cartel which allows power to shift from those who produce to those who merely piggyback. The trader in an assistant's role can never be too big to fail. The role is very important, but one that doesn't necessarily drives our lives.

This brings me to the concept of bank. But that is a discussion for some other day.

Thursday, October 6, 2011

Kislay Verma goes live!!!

Balls to perfection. And Screw the previous post.

The music is here!!! It can be accessed at Reverbnation, Facebook and Myspace. You can also check it out in the whats-its-name on the top-right of this screen.

After many, many hours of tinkering with different softwares, recording and re-recording vocals, being betrayed by sound gurus, and in general trying to perfect the sound as I detailed in the previous post, I finally lost patience and decided to go to the world with home demo recordings. Not that I dont care about the quality any longer but all those hours didn't seem to be improving the mix and I was beginning to get more and more confused about the right tone. So I figured the best way to do this would be to go to the audience and use the feedback. Crowdsource the critical listening, so to speak.

The first 2 songs out are Drift Away and An ode to good times. Drift Away especially has been received very well by the few people who have heard it till now. Rank 20 among Indian singer-songwriters on Reverbnation's charts is not bad for starters (Though admittedly  the category is sparsely  populated).

I must thank Sidhharth, Kalpana and Tarun for listening to some very bad preliminary versions of recordings and giving invaluable feedback.

Next stop is finding some gigs in Hyderabad. If you have any ideas/contacts, please let me know. The beer will  be on me if I land the act.

So if you haven't heard the music yet (What are you waiting for??? The whats-its-name is right there on the right!!), get to it!!! Every bit of feedback is highly appreciated. If you like it, don't forget to share it with a friend. Or ten friends.

Kislay Express is rolling out. Welcome aboard :)

Listen. Share. Support.