Agustin Lebron - Trading, Crypto, and Adverse Selection

ℹ️ EPISODE INFO

Released

June 23, 2022

Duration

1h 4m

Channel

Dwarkesh Podcast

Watch on YouTube

▶ Open ↗

📝 EPISODE DESCRIPTION

Agustin Lebron began his career as a trader and researcher at Jane Street Capital, one of the largest market-making firms in the world. He currently runs the consulting firm Essilen Research, where he is dedicated to helping clients integrate modern decision-making approaches in their business. Episode website + Transcript: https://www.dwarkeshpatel.com/p/agustin-lebron Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3Rhttnm Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3COMNEe Follow me on Twitter to be notified of future content: https://twitter.com/dwarkesh_sp Follow Agustin on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AgustinLebron3 Buy The Laws of Trading: https://www.amazon.com/Laws-Trading-Traders-Decision-Making-Everyone/dp/1119574218 TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 Introduction 4:18 What happens in adverse selection? 9:22 Why is having domain expertise in trading not important? 15:09 How do you deal when you're on the other side of the adverse selection? 21:16 Why you should invest in training your people? 25:37 Is finance too big at 9% of GDP? 31:06 Trading is very labor intensive 36:16 Overlap of rationality community and trading 48:00 The age of startup founders 50:43 The role of market makers in crypto 57:31 Three books that you recommend 58:47 Life is long, not short 1:03:01 Short history of Lunar Society

🎤 SPEAKERS

• Agustin Lebron

  guest

• Dwarkesh Patel

  host

🧾 EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode of Dwarkesh Podcast, featuring Agustin Lebron and Dwarkesh Patel, Agustin Lebron - Trading, Crypto, and Adverse Selection explores why Most People Shouldn’t Trade: Edge, Hiring, Crypto, Rationality, Risk Agustin Lebron, former Jane Street trader and author of *The Laws of Trading*, explains why most people lack true edge in markets and why, in expectation, they should generally not trade. He uses concepts like adverse selection, edge, and technical debt to analyze hiring, tech-company bootcamps, and software organizations. The conversation explores finance’s social value, the future of trading in an AI world, and how crypto may integrate into traditional finance rather than replace it. Lebron also discusses talent arbitrage, rationalist culture at Jane Street, and career strategy built around “sequential excellence” across multiple deep specialties.

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