Agustin Lebron - Trading, Crypto, and Adverse Selection

Lebron agrees the “strawsonian” reading of his book is that if you’re smart and hardworking enough to succeed at trading, there are usually easier, more reliable ways to make money; retail traders typically underestimate costs, risks, and the true sophistication of marginal counterparties.

Employers are often bidding against each other for talent where the marginal candidate on the market is weaker, and applicants with many offers pick the best, leaving firms systematically adverse-selected; similarly, retail traders and naive liquidity providers are routinely on the wrong side of trades.

Lebron argues tech firms over-index on legible skills (e.g., specific languages) instead of raw intelligence, curiosity, competitiveness, and grit; he advocates mass screening for global high-g talent and then short, intense bootcamps that convert them into high-value employees.

While wanting to “win the game” is necessary in trading, a pure desire to maximize income correlates with bad behaviors and short-termism; the best traders are intensely curious, enjoy competitive environments, and are driven to get very good at obscure, difficult things even without guaranteed payoffs.

Startups should consciously take on technical debt (like non‑recourse debt) to move fast, expecting rewrites if successful; mature firms end up with huge “interest payments” in the form of migration, refactoring, and maintenance, often absorbing the bulk of their engineering headcount.