Lit Nomad

Everything is negotiable

One thing that becomes clear on Wall Street is that free market transactions take place on a spectrum and not at fixed price points. Big businesses set fixed price points, so it’s easy to forget this.

I just booked my airbnb for a month in Manila and haggled the price down by $200. Here’s how the exchange went:

2025-04-04 14:11:50 +0000 UTC View Post

How quant trading firms are using AI [early release]

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing all industries, but what are the brightest minds on the cutting edge of the quant finance world doing with it?

As a former Wall Street quant that worked in a tier 1 trading firm, I will go over how my former firm thought about AI and how they decided to use it.

B-roll: expounding on Race Marxism in film

I left this tangent out of my recent video because, well, it was a tangent, but I enjoyed discussing it, and if people want me to deep dive into this topic more or make a future video about it, please let me know.

How to decide where to live

I am retired, but since I also maintain a YT channel, I could also call myself a digital nomad. Since Covid, the world was forced to embrace remote work, and for many, it was shown to be a more efficient way to run a company (no commercial office space, lower overhead costs, etc), so there are now many fully remote startups out there (some run by my friends). For the growing population of folks in this category, I want to outline the logical steps I take to decide where to call home.

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2025-03-12 18:48:31 +0000 UTC View Post

What are the Trader exit opportunities?

Being a trader is a very non-transferable skill set, so it’s often compared to being a professional athlete. You have a chance to make big money for a few years, but once it’s over, it’s over, and you often have to look for an entirely different career that can be a big downgrade. I worked in Chicago prop trading for 15 years so I have a lot of data on where my trader colleagues have exited. Many of the non-technical traders have been left behind since they didn’t have the coding back...

B-roll: Bursty Spending in Banff

Extra b-roll footage from the Banff leg of my trip that didn’t make the cut.

How Pax Britannica causes me to walk into Japanese people

For those that don’t know, Pax Britannica refers to the relative peace between the great powers in the time period roughly bounded by the Napoleonic Wars and World War I (1815 - 1914).

During this time, the British Empire became the global hegemonic power, and adopted the role of a "global policeman". The name is Latin and modeled after Pax Romana (Rome) and now Pax Americana referring to the period of peace after WWII where the USA acts as the world police.

During the Meiji Re...

How I pay zero taxes (legally)

In this article I will outline how I execute my plan to pay zero taxes in my early retirement.

As most people know, in the USA, there are both Federal and State taxes so I’ll address them separately.

Federal Taxes:

There are two separate tax brackets. One is for Ordinary Income and the other is for Long Term Capital Gains (Short Term Capital Gains are taxed at Ordinary Income rates). For those that don’t know, LTCG means you’ve held your inv...

How I profit from Market Psychology

In the recent bull rally over the last half year, I bought the three dips I circled here in perfectly timed fashion:

receipts:

2025-01-24 08:33:53 +0000 UTC View Post

Vail with Mia

I ski Vail with my fellow homeless friend Mia. We are bursty spenders indeed. Half homeless half ski life.

Free +EV strategy you can run from home

This is the skeleton of a strategy I considered trying to build in my free time. It may be more appropriate as a template for a project you can put on your resume if you want to apply to prop trading firms or Hedge Funds. Overall, it’s a good learning exercise to help you think about the market from the perspective of a professional options market maker.

I skip a lot of steps and assume a basic knowledge of options theory, so I’m assuming people will have a lot of questions. Feel fr...

From sun ☀️ to snow ❄️

I spent the holidays with my sister’s family in Arizona. Humans are tribal creatures, so no matter how much I try to hack my own behavioral patterns to optimize for the long term results I seek, I can’t help but enjoy the warmth of being around family.

I have an older brother and younger sister as well, and they both flew in from the east coast to get together for a few weeks. Sadly, we haven’t all been together in one place for many years, because life and career can get busy and...

Why I’m politically incorrect

I’m very politically incorrect. I’m like this because I want to see the world clearly so I can make optimal decisions over my lifetime. I always want my judgment to be razor sharp.

It’s the same way that Google’s AI was sexist and racist when it first came out. You see, Google’s AI was viewing the world clearly and innocently like a child that asks “why are there no Asian people in the NBA daddy?”

Google engineers had to manipulate the AI to ignore the raw data and j...

Story from my first week at a trading firm (NSFW)

This is something I could have added to the Frat Culture section of my latest video on the pros and cons of working in quant trading, but I forgot, so I’ll tell the story now.

Capitalism visualized

Did you know that the average person knows about 30,000 words? The human brain is incredible. It also shows us how much potential we have when we have our backs to the wall. I learned Japanese before I learned English, so I had to scramble to catch up in kindergarten, but I probably only learn one word a day now.

Did you know that 42% of college grads never read another book after college? They just learn the basics of their job then look forward to their weekends and try to coast to re...

Are Mexican stereotypes true?

I am born and raised in the United States, and I compare how the people of this country stereotype Mexicans 🇲🇽 vs Indians 🇮🇳.

To my many Indian friends, I want to make clear that I love India and most of my closest friends I met from engineering school are Indian. The “genius” friend I often mention that got the $1M bonus is Indian. Bro is Ramanujan reincarnated.

I make a point about IQ in this video mostly to defend the Mexican people who are unfairly stereotyped...

Bursty spending in Mexico City

I flew to Mexico City for a week to celebrate Halloween 🎃 and dia de muertos 💀 with some old friends. While there, I stayed in an airbnb in the neighborhood of Condesa, ate at some top Michelin star restaurants, saw the pyramids of Teotihuacan, and went on a few dates.

The cheerleader girl in my thumbnail I met in Colombia about 7yrs ago and we stayed friends. Here are her socials if you wanna follow her:

TikTok: @astoldbyjess

IG: @picsofjesss

Why is the channel named “Lit Nomad”?

The “nomad” is probably obvious since I intend to slow travel the world over the next few years, so let’s discuss “lit”.

The first meaning people probably assumed is the gen z slang word “lit” as in “awesome”. Yes, this is part of it, but I’m also wise enough to know that these words get played out, and I don’t want to end up like someone with a tattoo of a fidget spinner.

Lit is also old school slang for “under the influence” and since I’m not always s...

Original corny intro to my most viral video

I considered trying to add a touching introduction to this video where I talk about how we can rise again from the ashes of a forest fire, but it was too cringe, so I cut it out 😅

House sitting at my sister’s place in Arizona

I’m done with the homeless leg of my journey and am now staying in my sister’s guest room while I plan my adventures abroad. While her family is in Disney World for a week, I’ve been taking care of the pets and have gotten to know their dog Oreo a lot better. He’s a stray dog that they rescued in Hawaii. He used to survive by digging up slugs and eating them and was super skinny and had patches of missing fur from stress when they first adopted him.

I’ve been taking him for wa...

Welcome!

Thank you so much for visiting the Lit Nomad Patreon! So far, the plan is to maintain a travel blog, add b-roll and blooper footage, and post early releases of my videos here.

Level 2 Patreon members will also get access to my Discord server (where we can discuss career, investing, trading, geopolitics, travel, dating, life, etc) and new exclusive videos. I have a lot of politically incorrect opinions that I feel will get me shadow banned on YouTube, but I can post them on Rumble and li...