Rama Nambimadom

@Alpha_Ex_LLC August 2008, even end of it, did not feel anything like what ended up transpiring. Keep in mind Bear Stearns had looked dicey 5 months before, but JPM swallowed it up and nothing systematic happened. So at end of August it looked like something similar would happen with Lehman.

one for the ages... VIX futures curve today (white) vs end of August, 2008 (blue)

@dampedspring Did I answer your question, or did I filibuster ?

Here's a question for options nerds Ignoring if it's "right" or "wrong" whether it's caused by paper flow or some expectations. Is baseline assumption in modern option thinking that each expiries vol skew represents an implied PDF and the vol surface is a stack of those expiries PDF's?

@sdav1986 Bessent intervening

and the vix curve is now down on the day as it should! Flows in vol products have been totally phony lately

@bay_photography Where ?

California golden poppies as far as the eye can see

@dampedspring Deep out of the money put prices are high because in the world where they are n the money, the marginal utility of wealth is high since in aggregate the world is poorer.

@dampedspring So when you look at the probabilities backed out from option prices, they maty look off to you , not just because market prices are divorced from fundamentals because of flows. Market pricing also considers the marginal utility of wealth in different states

@BlackScholesMan P/E of 27 ? More than double over last month ?

It just so cheep: the numbers just started working: • Q1 FY2026 revenue +14.8% YoY • EPS: $0.29 vs. $(0.40) a year ago • EBITDA: $3.6M vs. $(0.8M) prior year • Backlog: $139.5M — built BEFORE Iran war • Military mix: 63.8% of revenue Trading at ~0.95x revenue. Industry peers avg ~14.6x EV/Sales.

$SIF — How Operation Epic Fury turbocharges backlog. A bit of a warning on this one: It’s small cap defense name and it trades thin. It took me a while to get my position built. I’m not trying to “pump” the stock: but I wanted to give a warning up front. 🧵

@orrdavid @ferderser export controls coming. CL / NG not the most relevant places to look

@ferderser A supposed major escalation, in some ways a real one, hardly up. If the damage was severe, this would have gone up a lot.

The big energy risk was Iran causing extreme damage to neighboring country's infrastructure. This damage would be long term rather than a temporary (and likely over soon) blockade. Iran tried the attack but it pretty much failed to cause that serious of damage. The number of missiles launched was low, and the damage they caused is a lot less than I would have guessed a month ago. Unless there is follow through soon, I'm going to call it. That this conflict is over. That Iran is out of steam. Also, that Iran did this further alienates them from their neighbors.

@Citrini7 There is no education from the second kick from the mule

So much of this game is just trying your best not to learn the same lesson over and over again. The most recent re-learned lesson for me… common sense is nearly always a better foundation for a trade than expert wisdom if you think there’s a large inflection or regime shift underway. A little more than a week ago, I called up a friend of mine that understands energy far better than I do and said something like “seems like the no brainer play here is to be long Brent and short WTI”. This seemed like common sense, after all it’s not like there’s a war in the continental US and if the government was willing to sell futures they’d probably be open to using regulation to increase domestic supply. Right? But I had it explained to me a laundry list of reasons why that wouldn’t work. That was when the K6 spread was at about $6. A week later, the spread is almost $12 and I didn’t put it on because I figured my tourist understanding of oil meant it wouldn’t work. This is nothing against the wisdom of experts, but in markets - sometimes - it pays to be an idiot tourist basing your views on a common sense thesis. Especially at inflection points…Like the blind men and the elephants, it’s possible to be too close up to something and miss the very straightforward big picture. It was true with natural gas and ags in early 2022, it was true with semis in 2023…it’ll probably keep being true whenever there’s a big phase shift happening.

@TaraBull look what they have done to my Sonny

Bro got trapped by three Waymo cars

@EconstratPB Was there last weekend. Met Cooper Norris (Landman Jr) at Chandelier. Before that was in Death Valley and spent some time walking through sand dunes near Stovepipe Wells. I am now ready to pontificate on oil prices.

We’re driving to Vegas. He just doesn’t know it.

@radigancarter Can a ship trying to transit stick close to an Iranian or Chinese ship and be able to sneak through as Iran may not want to hit the ship for fear of endangering the Iranian or Chinese ship nearby ?

Got the wife evacuated, so have time to drink a tea and think about the Strait of Hormuz. I've sailed through the it a few times years ago and done antipiracy operations in the Strait of Malacca. Maps can be deceiving. The best way to think about the Strait of Hormuz is a four lane highway, with two lanes per direction for the largest ships like crude carriers, cargo vessels, and warships in the center of the channel where it is deepest and free of obstacles. Then on the outside of those lanes, you have medium sized ships, going Jebel Ali to other regional ports like Sohar, since a lot of international cargo goes direct to Jebel Ali then is cross loaded across the region. On the outside of those lanes, along both coasts, are dhow fishing boats and all manner of local, smaller craft. Maritime trade crisscrossing this region goes back hundreds of years. The Portugese wrote how disappointing it was to find a tight network of trade already established in the region when they arrived in the 15th century. It is hard to describe how crowded these waters are. You sometimes wonder if you could walk to Iran across the decks of ships and not get your feet wet. The amount of traffic makes distinguishing between normal traffic and a threat incredibly difficult. Is that dhow fishing, transiting between coasts, laying mines, gathering intelligence, or a tender for surface drones? Hard to discern while sailing ducks in a row escorting a lumbering tanker or cargo ship. Operation Prosperity Guardian in the Red Sea proved to be a Houthi victory when a land power with no navy to speak of fought the most powerful navy on earth to an agreement. The Hormuz problem is harder now the Iranians have proved they have the will to fight, no matter how much pain is leveled at them from afar. The shipping lanes in the Strait of Hormuz go around the Musandam penninsula. This turn exposes ships to 270 degree of fire control in layered systems from Qeshm, the surrounding high ground, to further inland, with surface drones now added to the mix. Iran doesn't need to mine the entire strait. Iran just needs to turn that main shipping lanes around Musandam into a kill box and divert approved ships past Qeshm, out of the main shipping lanes like a watery weigh station. It has started doing this. The U.S. has created a hard problem for itself. NATO understandably wants nothing to do with this. If the most powerful navy in the world can't solve this, what difference does European navies make. With the watery weigh station past Qeshm, Iran isn't closing the strait to global commerce. It is simply doing what the U.S. does with the dollar, exerting power over the chokepoint it controls. Understandably the U.S. doesn't like this, so why can't the U.S. just send warships to escort ships through? Well, when you escort a ship through a strait, you tend to stay ducks in a row. So if warships are sent to escort tankers, they are now just another target in the strait. Even if the warships could maneuver through local traffic to screen ships, lets go back to the 270 degree turn around the penninsula. The warships would be receiving layered waves of fire likely worse than they faced off with in the Red Sea against the Houthis from essentially three directions while having the longer route to run to protect the tankers around the peninsula. As the Hormuz Crisis drags on, anything less than breaking Iran's control of the strait will be seen as a loss for the U.S., much like the Battle of the Red Sea was against the Houthis.

@options_insight what about diagonal put trades when skew is high/term structure is flatter than usual or even inverted ?

When SPX put skew hits the 98th percentile, I won't touch theta trades. Even if implied vol looks expensive relative to realized. Even if the variance risk premium is positive. Even if the setup "looks good" on paper. Extreme skew tells you the largest participants in the room are buying downside protection aggressively. Institutions, hedge funds, dealers who see flow you don't. Theta trades need calm markets to work. When skew is at extremes, calm is the one thing you're unlikely to get. That doesn't mean you can't, it just means you are relying on getting lucky and the cost of being unlucky is high. I'd rather miss a week of premium than get caught short gamma during a 5% gap down. Many traders only look at vol levels. The professionals also look at skew. Skew is the key risk filter that overrides everything else.

@jaredhstocks @sdav1986 Take 3 day weekends

@sdav1986 Likewise for me

I am making it a habit for dropping money on Mondays, down an extra 300k today

@johnarnold Does the Giving Pledge commit them to giving it away to specific institutions chosen by the Giving Pledge group ?

Signatories to the Giving Pledge commit to giving away the majority of their wealth during their lifetime or in their will. The irony is that if you are concerned about the philanthropic industrial complex, you should give while living and not delegate any decision authority.

I understand and agree with many criticisms of philanthropy. But practically, fortunes have to go somewhere. There are only 3 options: philanthropy, heirs & govt. If not nonprofits, is Peter Thiel's plan to give $10B+/child? I'm more skeptical of that than he is of philanthropy.

@stevehou Hanging out somewhere specific tonight ? We are bouncing around strip.

@FixedIncQuant Yup

In Vegas next couple days happy to meet people! DM open.