lil gradient (@little_gradient) header
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building a pretty good prediction markets trading firm

Joined May 2026
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i kid you not lads, in 2021 you could blindly quote alts 200 bps wide with 300 lines of python and make 7 figs
This is what crypto felt like in 2021
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there's infinite alpha in being ok at socializing as a quant trader, way more than being marginally more cracked. the bar for social skills is so low that the marginal returns are huge.
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how it feels to quit your job at boomer inc and trade prediction markets full time
Me after 5 mango white claws
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whenever you see a guy dunking on reasonably hot girls for not being hot enough this is him btw
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2.2M/4 yrs+385k for an engineering lead. So $935k. Junior eng role is worse. Idk why quants are all thirsting for these lab jobs, you can get this in all cash at a tier 2 HFT shop. Maybe the superstar researchers have mega millions comp, but not rank and file devs.
Salary of the ex-OpenAI employee arrested for allegedly planting a secret recording device: $385K with $2.2M in stock
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ok since everyone is telling me about equity appreciation if you joined now you'd be looking at 1.3 trillion or whatever they price it at, if appreciation was guaranteed, investing would be the easiest business in the world also when oai ipo's (soon) you can just take your cash comp and buy the stock if you want, or buy a different stock you like better!
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alright tier 1 jane st, hrt, citsec, xtx, jump tier 1.5 optiver, imc, sig tier 2+ literally everyone else inb4 "but akshually rentec and tgs" idc they are boomer scientist places who don't really hire kids for QR, kinda true of xtx also tbh sorry if im missing anyone
Replying to @little_gradient
what are some of these tier 2 HFT trading firms?
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really confidence inspiring that whenever you deal with a crypto company the wire info is like Mule Barn, North Dakota (population: 3) Community Bank
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the best feeling in trading is turning something on at smol size and immediately seeing this
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fighting for our life to beat the pnl screenshot curse
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alright which farming operation is not even bothering to give their subaccounts plausibly unrelated names when there's a public leaderboard? cmon guys, this is amateur hour.
are you gonna mention Polymarket washtrading through same name accounts? i found 24 "plys" accounts created around the same time that appear to be farming volume on perp DEX their volume makes up 18% of ALL-TIME Polymarket Perps volume you can open the leaderboard and verify the accounts yourself good enough for the Token2049 announcement?
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> someone talks about actually using devin > check bio > works for the company every. time.
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The bloomberg terminal has such a complete cultural victory as a status symbol. You can be worth a billion and still feel compelled to flex your $2700/mo financial software subscription.
it’s ok sarah muse is thinking about you too
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new meta is opus 5.5 workhorse and astra 8x fast when production is on fire
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On prediction markets and sports - When I set out to trade prediction markets, I was really excited about the truth machine thesis. I wanted to trade politics, global events, etc, and contribute to the probabilities on the screen. But running a business is a survival game, and to survive you need to meet the demands of your counterparties. And the demand is in sports. Am I thrilled to tell people I'm a pro sports trader? Not really tbh. Is the pnl good? Yes. I suspect some of the early employees at kalshi and poly feel the same way, based on what their businesses set out to do, and what they have become.
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True. I grinded jane st interview prep like the single most important thing in life, hundreds of hours, compiling every post on chinese forums, trying to program simulators of the interview... Pathetic I know. Rejected final round. Fuck 'em, printing money in this game anyway.
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sure the user is getting a bad price on the ultra longshots, but they kinda suck for the mm too assuming all 0.1c are worth 0 (they're not), it's optimistically 36.5% ROIC if all expire in 1 day (they don't). adjusted for toxicity, might as well just put your money in the s&p
Extremely long parlays, which have become an ever-growing part of Kalshi’s activity, are creating by far the biggest losses for Kalshi takers, with the prices of the longest combinations more or less completely detached from their probability. That the biggest market maker edge happens on the longest parlays may not be a surprise, but the extent of the difference is stark.
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the x-factor here is whether the biggest institutions have deals where they don't have to fully collateralize these, then it makes more sense.
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reallocating elastic ip addresses for a new trading box until one looks like a sufficiently lucky set of numbers to me
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porsche has really come full circle from what car guys buy to what the boring rich guy buys after googling what car guys buy
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the leased lambo split between 4 drop shipper bros is somehow purer..., the people's choice!
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