The hilarity of finance

A list of jokes that can be made about dark pools:

Entering the dark pool of a stranger

Dropping your kids off at a pool, and then it becomes dark



The great thing about what I do is that people take all these terms seriously but it cracks me up to no end.

For example, yesterday I had to make sure something called a "swaption" worked within our systems.

I was already familiar with a swap and with an option, but a swaption? Are you just messing with me? Is that a word? Apparently it is.

The first thing I did was head to wikipedia, then I just started laughing and yelling out quotes to the people around me who started doing the same. Highlights:

"An example illustrating the use of swaptions is: Joe is in Mexico and he knows there's an election coming up" - And then Joe decides to move out of Mexico?

"Joe and Dave engage in a swap" - Hey, keep that kind of stuff to yourself.

"However, they don't do the swap yet because Joe's debt is about to expire" - Wait, now I have to reread the last five paragraphs.

"Here is another scenario: Doug's Tractor Company needs to engage in a swap for the following reason" - I reject your scenario including the word tractor and swaption in the same sentence.

"The valuation of swaptions is complicated.." - You don't say.

"the result depends on several factors: the time to expiration, the length of underlying swap, and the "moneyness" of the swaption" - Moneyness, really? Now I have to make jokes about that you bastards.

"Given these complications, quantitative analysts attempt to determine relative value between different swaptions" - Holy crap, swaption arbitrage.

My opinion is that nobody fully understands the whole picture, just their little piece. When I see this stuff it just makes me wonder how long it will take until zombies walk the streets eating young children who aren't quick enough.

Welcome

Every now and then I think about setting up a blog for all my snarky comments.

I work at a finance company.

I would prefer for my snarky comments to not be used against me in any background search for future employment.

Today I thought of a good name for this blog, dark pools of knowledge, leading to this post and all after it.

So I'll be sort of anonymous or at least not directly linked to this blog and will feel a little more uncensored.

Some background first:

I deal with trades, among other things.

For now, let's think of that as buying 100 shares of IBM (as if). In a trade such as this, I decide I want to buy those 100 shares and I look to the market for those shares.

The entity that will facilitate this trade is the executing broker, let's say that is Goldman Sachs.

If you trade online through E Trade or something similar all this is done in the background for you.

Goldman will go out and find someone offering those shares. I will pick a place I want to hold those shares (so I'm not stuck with pieces of paper in a box in a closet). Think of this place as a bank for shares or whatever I happen to own, including cash. This place is called a custodian. Goldman may or may not also be the custodian.

A dark pool is pool of liquidity that can include multiple executing brokers and you don't know who you are trading with - hence the dark part. But you get access to more shares using this method in addition to traditional methods.

So if you were to setup a dark pool router you would submit your order for 100 shares and then later get the results - Surprise, you traded with Goldman and Morgan Stanley. So I'm dealing with this today, leading to this post.

Now it's all explained in case anyone asks.