After writing 6 long posts on my experiences in EGB IT, I realised I still missed out many points. Here they are in no particular order.

So after nearly 7 years on EGB technology teams I have moved on. Not out of banking (at least not yet), but when the opportunity came to try a different business area I jumped. This is despite being able to earn more money if I stayed in my EGB niche. There are two related reasons for leaving: the industry and technology are both changing to the detriment of developers.

When I started in 2005, EGB trading was already on an upswing that lasted through 2009. I'm not sure when this upwards trajectory began, but the people around me considered it normal. Business was good throughout the mortgage and banking crisis of 2008. When times are good and the desks are making good money some of it is reinvested into technology. There was a lot of optimism and this translated into banks wanting the fastest and smartest trading platform. We got to rewrite systems. Increasingly business was relying on technology - it was becoming trade-by-wire. It seemed that there was much further to go. Algorithmic trading is big in equities, why couldn't it be big in fixed income too. There was huge potential for writing interesting code.

This environment no longer exists. It was only when the European debt crisis began to bite in 2011 that things trended downwards, but then they went down fast. There is a great deal less ambition among the fixed income desks. Most traders seem happy just to not be losing money - something many are not achieving. Some banks are shutting down their bonds desks. As a natural consequence there is less to spend on technology and little desire to do more than maintenance. Flow volume is king, and as far as technology development is concerned, that is not hard. Thus less developers are required and the work is less interesting.

Combined with this is the creeping commoditisation of bonds technology. When I started Ion provided mainly gateways, little tools and their message bus. Over time they have climbed up the product stack. Now they also sell pricing engines, autoquoters, autohedgers, risk engines, position servers - nearly everything a bank needs to trade cash bonds. The quality is fine too. Their applications won't do everything a desk requires, but it will do most of it and the desk's technology team can add the remainder quickly. Not all banks will use vendor systems (many don't like Ion or see advantage in bespoke systems), but enough will to affect the market for EGB technologists.

Thus, once again, less developers are required and the work is less interesting. I don't see the situation changing until the market improves - and I don't see that happening soon. So I thought it time to try a different business area.

• Blog at an average rate of at least 3 times a month. Result: achieved. - 48 posts in 12 months, so this target was easily surpassed.
• Only have 2 programming projects going at the same time. Result: achieved. - I did this to the letter of the goal, but there were a couple of abandoned projects along the way. On the plus side, I did a couple of successful little projects to teach myself game coding (see my blender page) and now I'm working on a larger game demo to test out some ideas.
• Complete 2 Blender models. Result: partial. - I did two, a Roman lamp and a spaceship. However, I originally planned to do two completely different (more complex) models. This difference occurred as I needed to learn the new Blender 2.5 interface, and then wanted to focus on game models rather than historical models.
• Decrease net ownership of physical goods. Result: maybe. - I bought a new computer and it is quite large. Apart from that I have less, but when included it is about even.
• Run 5km in 27 minutes. Result: not even close. - My foot problem has not abated all year. A few abortive runs midyear quickly led to a reoccurrence of the injury and further rest. Only now do I seem to be back to normal - but I'm yet to properly test it.
• Work less, travel more. Result: achieved. - Cornwall, Turkey, Andalusia, Tenerife, plus some other little holidays.
• Maintain general Ruby and Scala skills. Result: partial. - I've done some Ruby, but no Scala.

For the coming year I have decreased the number of goals, mainly because there are a few big ones:

• Blog at an average rate of at least 3 times a month. Never more than 4 a month. Historically this shouldn't be a problem, but I also don't want it to become a time sink.
• Complete the game demo and send it out for comments. If the feedback is not disastrous start working on a full game. This is my main goal now. I'd also like to do one other project over the year (probably a simple website).
• Be able to run. I just want my foot to be completely better so and I can run without concern, speed is not important.
• Decrease net ownership of physical goods, as always but especially relevant considering the next goal.
• Leave the UK. Recent events mean this will probably be my last year in the UK. It took months to organise my move here. I expect a similar effort this time.

Plus as a nice to do, if I have time:

• Maintain general Blender, Ruby and Scala skills - same as last year.

Modern investment trading relies very heavily on technology. Computers are now involved in nearly every corner of large banks' trading activities - a big change from more manual processes over 20 years ago. It would certainly be impossible to run a EGB primary dealership without significant technology expenditure. This post details an overview of the technologies I saw on EGB desks.

Over my time working for EGB desks I was always a Software Developer, and software is the part of the industry I know best. Code written in banks is not especially different to other places, although there is a difference in attitude. This starts before a person even joins a bank.

There was a split in the lecturers that taught us business. Most were faculty in other departments. We were taught law by a professor from the law school, accounting from the accounting department, economics from the economics department and so on. These people just taught the subject at hand - normally very well. However, the "core" MBA classes (management, strategy, etc) were taught by the business faculty and they seemed to have an agenda beyond the syllabus. They saw themselves as wise men teaching the next generation of world leaders (because business defined the world). They were Aristotle educating Alexander. One lecturer of strategy particularly epitomised this mindset. He taught us to "think like a CEO". This seemed to be a solitary uber-man guiding the firm singlehanded and with precise execution - success or failure was solely his reponsibility. I didn't like his Randian/Nietzschean worldview (I got a below average mark - the worst of my degree). Most students appeared to lap it up. He told them what they wanted to hear - they were special, destined for greatness and the cost of the MBA was money well-spent. Other business lectureres clearly held similar views.

I can easily imagine those students that succeeded in business by luck, skill or most likely both, did come to see themselves as special. We were also taught that having a strong sense of personal agency was correlated with business success. However so is believing failures are caused extraneous factors. Success is yours, but failure is not.

Assuming senior management see themselves as the source of competitive advantage can explain much of modern business' more egregious practices. Huge bonuses, we are the one who make the money. Outsourcing, those people aren't needed. Perks, we deserve it. Isolating senior management from other employees, they have nothing of value to contribute.

We first noticed the restaurant was completely empty. Of course a rainy Monday night at the end of November in Cornwall is about as off-peak as it is possible to get. Still it was surprisingly to see it was just us and a single waitress. Needless to say the staff were attentive, but they were also professional yet friendly. Two hours later when we left, there were 8 other diners in a place that could easily handle four times that number.

I had the onion soup for starters - fine but nothing special. My partner had the largest and most flavoursome mussels I have ever tasted (but I only got a small taste). We both had the char-grilled Gurnard fillets as our main course, with crab sauce (as recommended by our waitress). I had never even heard of this fish before, let alone tasted one. However, I can proclaim it tasty! The beautifully cooked fillet had a quite solid texture (for fish) and had a very slight earthy/gamey taste. It went well with the sauce. Dessert was a delicious chocolate sponge. It all came to around £130 with a bottle of wine and service charge - not bad by London standards. Definitely worth a visit if you are in the area.

Calculating the price of an EGB bond has to be fast. A big bank may have 400 or so European bond obligations and the quotes need to be recalculated quickly when the market moves. It is possible to recover from incorrect prices on D2C markets, with their negotiable RFQs. However, if an executable D2D quote is wrong then the trader will likely lose money.

Usually I have a very good memory of plots. It was a little concerning how wrong I was. Then I realised I was remembering the 1962 Kubrick film. In my mind the book had been completely overwritten by the less confrontational movie (so it could reach a wider audience) and I had no notion this had occurred. Quilty looked like Peter Sellers; Lolita was 14, but played by an actress that looked older. It is like I never read the book at all. Has this happened with other memories too - I have no idea.

At present my results are patchy. I tilt badly less often (but still do infrequently) and sometimes play quite well. I'm better at recognising the type of opponent I'm facing and (very) occasionally manage to read a hand. I'd say 90% of the time I play "ok" for the level of competition I'm facing (micro stakes). However, I will often play blindingly bad hands in a match I'm otherwise playing acceptably. Here is an example where I became enamoured of my top pair against a player who had been playing very tight for over 15 minutes. What was I thinking, so much had me beaten.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $1.50 Tournament, 30/60 Blinds (2 handed) (Converted with http://www.handhistoryconverter.com)

Hero (BB) (t1525)
SB (t1475)

Preflop: Hero is BB with 3d, Ah
SB bets t120, Hero calls t60

Flop: (t240) Ad, 6h, 7s (2 players)
Hero checks, SB bets t240, Hero raises to t480, SB raises to t720, Hero raises to t960, SB raises to t1355 (All-In), Hero calls t395

Turn: (t2950) Jc (2 players, 1 all-in)

River: (t2950) 4h (2 players, 1 all-in)

Total pot: t2950

Results:
SB had 6c, 6d (three of a kind, sixes).
Hero had 3d, Ah (one pair, Aces).
Outcome: SB won t2950

The longer a match, the more likely a badly played hand will occur. I recently read about decision fatigue and I think this may be partially the cause. Decision fatigue is the idea that after making many decisions people's ability to make good decisions deteriorates. A very interesting concept that applies to many scenarios. Some salespeople try to bombard people with choice hoping they start choosing badly. Be aware of how this affects you and how other people may be using it against you.

This idea fits my poker play. The worst play comes at times when fatigue is a possibility. As a beginning poker play, I make lots of decisions in a game. I've not yet reached a point where I see patterns and the choice is clear. Instead I think through nearly everything. In my last game, I honestly thought twice about folding 72o out of position against a pre-flop raise (but folded in the end). I can imagine I would quickly become fatigued. The antidote is to only start playing when I feel fresh, preferably after eating or resting. Of course the problem I will will still get fatigued during a long game and then I'll start making decisions like playing another game! Hopefully the game will become more routine and thus I'll make less decisions when playing. Well, it's worth a try.

Many Channel 4 News and BBC Breakfast broadcasts usually include at least one segment where two people with opposing views discuss some news item. I have also seen this on current affairs shows and Sky News - but I don't watch them often (to their credit I am not aware of this being done on the main BBC news). It is claimed that they are promoting discussion, but the impression is of a bunch of schoolchildren circling the combatant and chanting "fight!". Humans have an attraction to conflict, and suggesting a controversy may gain viewers. Certainly such an approach is prevalent on the Internet (witness Godwin's law). However, I hold news journalism to a higher standard than blogs (and I think they consider themselves superior too). Perhaps the media is just catering to baser instincts to fight for viewership in an increasingly competitive news market.

These discussions rarely add any value to the topic at hand. The participants are in opposition by definition (or they wouldn't be invited) and can't be persuaded by a 5 minute TV confrontation. At the rare best there is a reasonable logical exchange, although normally the parties use all the non-logical weapons of rhetoric to win the debate. Sometimes there is a heated argument and if the producers are lucky enough to provoke a physical confrontation it can be covered as news itself! Often the role of the news anchor in these segments appears to be goading the participants.

There is the idea of journalistic balance, but this can be provided without the need for argument. Instead "talent" seems more important than reasonable, logical and most importantly truthful statements. A new journalist once explained to me that an eloquent, presentable and outspoken person is better "talent" - that is they come across well onscreen. This is why the same experts appear on TV news repetitively even to discuss areas outside their area of expertise. This is used to advantage by politicians and PR people. Even today it is possible to find flat-earthers. A news discussion with them may imply opinions differ on the shape of the Earth! Channel 4 often suggests viewers visit their website site after a discussion for fact-checking. I find this strange because I watch the news for facts, but they don't have time to present them.

Rant over.

When I first interviewed for a technology job in fixed income, I knew the "basics" and explained how to to a discounted cash flow analysis to price a bond. The interviewer smiled and said yes, that was the correct way to price a bond, but that wasn't how it was done in practice.

For the last six years I have developed software for the bonds desks of Investment Banks (usually the European Government Bonds desk). Now it is time to move on into a different business area. So I have decided to write some notes on the business and software of bond trading as I have witnessed it - starting here with the basics.

This series provides a brief introduction to a number of current topics researched or studied in the Classics department at Warwick University. The 10 audio-only podcasts are in the format of an interview discussing the topic at hand. Episodes range in length from 21 to 36 minutes. The production quality is generally good, although on the "Graeco-Arabic Studies" episode the audio cuts outs a couple of times. One of the episodes, "The Golden Age of Islam", is in Arabic so I was unable to understand it.

The podcasts range across a number of disparate topics. There is a discussion of Numismatics - which for classical studies effectively means coins. Coinage was first minted in Lydia (in modern day Turkey) around 650BC, and spread quickly. Coins were traditionally made from valuable metals (gold and silver). However to be able to mint more money, the coins were regularly debased. During the 3rd century AD the denarius went from being 50% silver to 1.5% silver. Another podcast (Medicine and Classicism in a Comparative Perspective) looks at how medicine claims classic roots in ancient works and commentaries, like those of Hippocrates and Galen. Apparently Indian and Chinese medicine have similar traditions. Old classical medical books (and alchemy texts) were among the first texts translated into Arabic as the classical world collapsed, as stated in the Graeco-Arabic Studies podcast.

A quip during Drinking Parties in Ancient Greece podcast proposes that classics is really just the history of drinking. This episode describes the Symposium; drinking parties in ancient Greece. Apparently the dancing girls were regularly in danger of being groped. The Sex in the Ancient World episode suggests such dancers must have been disreputable women, as higher class Greek women were neither heard nor seen. Homosexuality in ancient Greek society is also mentioned. There is some debate as to whether the pederastic relationship in ancient Greece was considered homosexual in the way we understand it today or just a traditional cultural institution.

Other episodes deal with the role of logic in the renaissance; Roman elegiac poetry; and epic poetry (subtitled "Homer to Virgil", it could be retitled "Homer and Virgil" as these are the only two poets mentioned). There is also a short biography of Augustus while discussing his autobiographical mausoleum inscription, referred to as the Queen of Inscriptions. Apparently the original is now lost, but three copies exist in modern Turkey.