Time is one of those great levellers. Everyone has precisely 24 hours in a day, no matter who you are. Obviously, how you fill that day will differ. I’m pretty sure I waste a large proportion of the day, through browsing social media too much, checking e-mails incessantly, eating burger (obviously) etc. However, despite that,…
Author: Saeed Amen
Data, General, Python
Python use cases for trading desks
by Saeed Amen •
If there’s one thing I get asked most by traders, it is usually a question about how to learn Python! I recently taught a Python for finance course at Queen Mary University of London. Judging by the take up of the course, Python is also a topic of interest for students wanting to break into…
Data, General
The importance of valuing your data
by Saeed Amen •
There are many points which crop up during presentations about data. Usually, there’s some discussion about how cleaning data takes 80% of the time and 20% of the time is dedicated to the “fun” bit of analytics. Then they’ll be some of the attributes associated with big data, such as the Vs. Perhaps what gets…
Data, General, Python
Business models for fintech
by Saeed Amen •
In every part of Istanbul, you’ll find stores which sell a plethora of snacks, ranging from dried fruit to nuts to baklawa. Whilst everything seems delightfully fantastic, ultimately, you can’t buy every single item. You need to make a choice. Invariably, when I recently visited Istanbul, I ended up choosing a mix of different things,…
General, Python
Deciding between code libraries
by Saeed Amen •
Whenever there’s a dessert buffet, I always make the same mistake. Rather than sticking to a single dessert, I invariably try a bit of everything. The problem is that each cake, each sweet and each fruit looks as inviting as the next. A piece of baklawa here, perhaps a chocolate mousse over there, with a…
Data, General
The Berlin Wall and market information flows
by Saeed Amen •
I visited Berlin over 15 years ago. It’s one of those places, where history literally seems everywhere, whether it’s strolling through the Brandenburg Gate or past the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, which has been left as a partial ruin as a reminder of war. Only 15 years before my visit, the Berlin Wall had fallen.…
Data, General, Macro
The Beatles and nostalgic backtesting
by Saeed Amen •
It’s 50 years this year since the Beatles’ Abbey Road album was released. Reenacting the Abbey Road cover on the zebra crossing is something I’ve wanted to do for years but have somehow never got round to it. What’s so special about the Beatles, that makes fans crowd around that Abbey Road zebra crossing, much…
General, Python
Dancing to a simpler code
by Saeed Amen •
It is somewhat of a cliche, but simplicity often belies complexity. The simpler something appears, it is often the case that more thought goes into it than you’d think. I recently attended a class to learn a traditional dance, the debka. The steps seemed simple enough, when the teacher showed everyone the steps, it looked…
Data, General, Python
Teaching traders to code in Python
by Saeed Amen •
I used to like burgers. I still like burgers. Ok, some things don’t really change. However, that’s probably an exception. Most things do change, in particular in finance. I started my career in FX nearly 15 years ago. The must have tool was (and still is!) Excel and perhaps to a lesser extent VBA (which…
Data, General
Alt data and tomato ketchup as a condiment
by Saeed Amen •
I’ve never met anyone who just eats tomato ketchup. Ditto for anyone whose diet simply consists of lettuce. The same goes for those whose intake consists exclusively of gherkins. Why? First, such a monotonous diet is unlikely to be healthy, and a sure way to deprive yourself of healthy nutrients. Second, devouring tomato ketchup (or…