Agustin Lebron - Trading, Crypto, and Adverse Selection

I tell my kids this all the time, like, life is not short, life is long. And what that means is, you should think of yourself as having many opportunities to learn things, and try things, and do things. Software development is fundamentally an exercise in sociology, like, in organizing teams and in creating processes and culture and conventions around the building of software.

I think finance is 9% of GDP. Is that too high a price to be paying for liquidity and price discovery? Okay. Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Augustin Lebrun, who is the author of The Laws of Trading: A Trader's Guide to Better Decision Making for Everyone. Um, this is one of those books, uh, you know Tyler Cowen calls these quake books that completely, um, shift the models you have of the world. Um, I- I- I really, really enjoyed reading this book. Um, so yeah, I- I'll let you describe your, uh, your background, Augustin. But before that, let me just, um, let me ask this question. So, um, Peter Thiel says that the Strawsonian reading of Zero to One is that you shouldn't start a startup. And I think that, uh, k- k- tell me what you think about this. I think the Strawstinian reading of The Laws of Trading is that you shouldn't trade, right? Because, um, you probably don't have edge, uh, because you're not better than a marginal trader. And if you think you have edge, it's probably 'cause you haven't factored in risks and other costs, um, so don't trade. Is- is that- is that what I should take away from this book?

I think you- you pretty much hit the nail on the head. I think a lot of the times that- that people, um, sort of start thinking about trading seriously, they start realizing more and more how- how- how hard a job it really is to do well. And, uh, and the answer is probably, look, if you're smart enough and- and good enough and hardworking enough to- to make a go at it and make a living at it in financial markets, there's probably an easier way to- to make money and, you know, have a satisfying life most of the time.

Okay, yeah. So d- do you wanna, do you wanna talk about, um, your background, and then how, w-what you've been working on in the past and what you're working on now?

Yeah. So- so my background is engineering. That's kind of what I did in university. Uh, I did engineering for about, uh, six years professionally. I was a chip designer. Um, at the time, I was playing a lot of online poker, back when that was a profitable and arguably legal thing to do. Um, and so engineering was getting kind of boring and I wanted to do something else. And- and so I thought, well, what's- what's halfway between engineering and poker? And of course, that's quant trading. Um, so January 2008, walked into my boss's office and I said, "I want to quit." Uh, and- and he said, "Oh, where are you going?" And I said, "I'm gonna go into finance." And he's like, "Are you sure this is a good time to be doing that?" Um, and said, "Yep. No, I'm dead set on it." Um, and a few months later, uh, managed to get a job at Jane Street and- and rode out the implosion of Western civilization (laughs) -