An Innocent Abroad

Navalist. Tweets on Indian def policy, mil history, finance. No ideology. Channeling Arik. Fan of Gens Sagat Singh and Inder Gill. Opinions personal.

[An Innocent Abroad @_ariksharon]

Mil history in India is not popular because of a very critical structural issue. To borrow Maj AH Amin's lingo, subcontinental mil leadership has been a "total failure" as far as attack is concerned. Subcontinental Gens have historically tended to be timid and unimaginative,-1/n

[Yew's Finest @FinestYew]

The urge to start a publication house that is devoted to Indian Military History popularisation.

The never ending quest for information on battles & figures who defined the subcontinental battlefield.

[An Innocent Abroad @_ariksharon]

@Rouge_ENIN @samikm_2003 event open to public ke saamne best to avoid such things but if its happened IA should have leaned in and said "so what if he did" imo

always lean in, never show weakness

[Anand Sankar @saybwala]

In any sane country, this would be a recruitment poster, not a subject of outrage.

Wishing the young couple a lifetime of happiness and good health together. 🤗

[An Innocent Abroad @_ariksharon]

@hellfire_81 Vij?

[An Innocent Abroad @_ariksharon]

@VatsRishap yeah! the flipside to risk-taking is that some bets can go sour, but if one analyzes everything only on the basis of outcomes then it's not good analysis (a mistake i made originally when i first wrote that)

[Gaurav M Tripathi @GauravT71548031]

A superb instructor and an excellent Human being. Trained under him as a Flight Cadet on the Iskra TS-11 Jet Trainer. I wouldn't have gone solo by night if not for this gentleman.

He was shot down when flying low to look for Flt Lt Nachiketa who had ejected earlier. In keeping with his Uber empathetic leadership that everyone who had known him would vouch for. Naman 🙏

[An Innocent Abroad @_ariksharon]

@Mallufideintent a flotilla

[An Innocent Abroad @_ariksharon]

@seeker122616 lovely piece sir

[An Innocent Abroad @_ariksharon]

@seeker122616 congrats to the kid and proud parents sir

[antirez @antirez]

Announcing with gratitude that @audreyt just gifted me an M5 Max 128GB MacBook Pro! It will let me develop DwarfStar4 (DS4) further on newer Metal hardware, and experiment with distributed inference splitting Q4 quants across the M3 Max and the M5 Max. Thanks so much, Audrey!

[An Innocent Abroad @_ariksharon]

@bsdhanoa @seeker122616 @Rouge_ENIN how does one set up the system to reward spine? it is too personality-dependent at the moment

[An Innocent Abroad @_ariksharon]

@antirez would you know of resources one can go through to build their intuition about this?

[An Innocent Abroad @_ariksharon]

@VatsRishap That is also true

[An Innocent Abroad @_ariksharon]

there is nothing to be delayed because no one knows the end goal. Remember the cheshire cat educating alice about how roads work?

[Rishap Vats @VatsRishap]

“Let’s have a written strategy document first” is the oldest trick in the book which veterans of all hues take out whenever they have to find justifications or excuses for delaying something of critical importance they know cannot argue against in-principle.

[An Innocent Abroad @_ariksharon]

@nitingokhale sir who is the former navy chief?

[An Innocent Abroad @_ariksharon]

how is a transshipment port at that location helping people who want to be shipping things? Any resources explaining that will be much appreciated if you come across

[VatsRohit @KesariDhwaj]

Now it seems that unless India has a maritime strategy, it should not be thinking of building a transshipment hub in A&N Island.

The commentary on the proposed transshipment hub is like blind men feeling and describing an elephant. Every one is airing an opinion they want to, without addressing the core question - how is the port unviable at the proposed location.

[Ben Foldy (he/him) @BenFoldy]

Kalshi responds to @wsj story on prediction markets loss rates with comps showing their users have better loss rates than day traders in Taiwanese stocks between 1995 and 1999, Indian options traders, sports books and traders of Brazilian equity futures.

[An Innocent Abroad @_ariksharon]

@Rouge_ENIN @sonnigberger 😂😂😂

[An Innocent Abroad @_ariksharon]

@Rouge_ENIN Pata nahin kya milta hai junta ko ye sab karke, his acc popped up too much so then I spent some time redoing my algorithm by watching food videos and now am pleased to report all good

[John Arnold @johnarnold]

Curious how Jane Street made $40 billion last year with few negative days? Here’s one example:
- Between 1990-2000, there was only one exchange-listed product to trade natural gas: the NYMEX (now CME) physically-settled futures contract
- In 2000, ICE realized there was demand for a financially settled (swap) futures contract and introduced it
- CME countered and listed their own swap future

At this point, the products were primarily for institutional and sophisticated individuals with a commodities account. But as commodities boomed in the 2000s, exchanges created new contracts to increase access and appeal to retail traders.

- the NYSE introduced an ETF (UNG) that followed natural gas prices in 2007
- More ETFs followed that offered ability to bet on a price decline and to get 2x or 3x leverage
- CME introduced a mini contract that was 1/4th the size of the original

The next evolution was to appeal to the pure speculator by expanding the market to less regulated exchanges, widening access globally, increasing leverage, and creating daily bets.

- CME introduced the micro contract that is 1/10th the size of the original
- CME and ICE introduced contracts that expire each trading day
- Hyperliquid and Binance offer unregulated, on-chain, high leverage, perpetual nat gas contracts for non-US uses
- Kalshi offers same day binary contracts. Other prediction markets are moving forward as well.

Now add other iterations on settlement days for the contracts and options on everything listed above.

Note that all of these contracts settle (perps notwithstanding) against the original CME physical futures contract. But instead of one way to trade the product, there are dozens. This creates an opportunity to make markets across all of these surfaces and arbitrage among them. And that's what Jane Street and other similar HFT shops do (among many, many other things).

Nat gas for delivery at Henry Hub, Louisiana is just one product. Take all the ways to trade equities, currencies, commodities, crypto, interest rates, etc across all the different exchanges in all the jurisdictions and the opportunity of making $50 here and $1000 there adds up to an enormous, low-risk money making machine.

This opportunity originates from the large variety of ways people desire to trade random financial instruments and the various products designed for them. This creates a hugely profitable opportunity for the HFTs. They provide a valuable service of creating liquidity for those seeking to trade. Whether that trading is smart and profitable for the average punter on the other side is a different story.