A 🧵 of 21 points to summarise the year 2021.

This thread will contain some useful resources in your journey to become a much better informed, and a more pragmatic trader, better person, better reader, and so on.

So, read away!



1) Best trading book I read this year

  • Alpha Trader by @donnelly_brent



2) Best trading blog I discovered this year

  • traderfeed.blogspot.com



3) Best book on work-ethic I read this year

  • One Good Trade by @MikeBellafiore



4) Best institutional blogs I found this year

  • Two Sigma Insights - twosigma.com/insights/
  • SMB Training Blog (Lessons from the trading desk) https://www.smbtraining.com/blog
  • TraderFeed - Exploiting the edge from historical market patterns - https://traderfeed.blogspot.com



5) Best purchases/investments I made in 2021:

  • Lewitt LCT 440 Pure condenser mic (for the course)
  • Built a high performance CPU for trading, backtesting & data analysis
  • Solid State Logic SSL2 audio interface (for the course)
  • Used Dell IPS square monitors (3), for WFH setup
  • Bought some books from the “have to have throughout life” list in physical hard copy format.



6) Best personal finance decisions I made in 2021:

  • Investing at least 70% of my salary every month in index funds, two mutual fund schemes, and some in gold & FD.



7) Best workplace decision I made:

  • Buying a pair of comfortable earphones for work.

I am at work for over 12 hours. I need to be able to block out distractions and also feel comfortable doing so. The earphone helps me listen to audiobooks, calming songs, etc.



8) Most humbling experience:

Seeing my wife deliver our dog’s puppies, and burying the first one that came out stillborn.

Best days of 2021:

I took care of both the puppies, fed them, bathed them, cleaned their pee and poo while my wife was at work.

Something happens to you when couple of animals just run to you when they see you, or when you sit on the floor and call for them, fighting for who gets to sit on your lap.

It just changes you as a person. That happened and I am a different person since.



9) The best thing I did for my life last year:

Trying not to grow in the name of reading books, taking courses, etc.

Instead, I took @fortelabs’ advice to strive not to learn more, but to teach most of what I learnt. It got me way farther and opened up a lot of opportunities.

If you’re new to twitter, you should go check @fortelabs’ blog, check his BASB concept, course, etc., and also read @david_perell’s tweets and blog, @jackbutcher’s tweets pre-August 2021, mostly pre-December 2020.

These guys were responsible in inspiring me to teach.



10) One skill I am glad I honed:

Backtesting.

I use Python and Backtrader to backtest ideas. It has saved me a lot of time and money.

I learnt a lot about data cleaning, and became better at using Pandas way better than I used to be with it in 2020.

I also started testing event-driven ideas, simple things around price, volume, volatility, time, etc.

When you look back at the last 10 years of market, and see what is the probability of an event happening, figure out whether it is random, it gives you a lot of insights.

For ex: in the markets I trade, it gave me insights like Fridays are usually rangebound, and highest probability of breakouts happening is on Mondays.

Another ex: A particular instrument will breakout of Asian market range 72% of the days, but only 15-18% of it will not be fake.

Quantifying such things hasn’t given me an exact strategy to work with.

But it has given me a list of things to not do, or at least consider before taking technical trades.

It has also given me a way to approach markets to understand their dynamic and how they breathe.



11) The best thing I did for tracking my progress:

I started journaling each and every single day of my trading.

I use @NotionHQ to do this. One file per day, just documenting my analysis, execution mistakes, observations, lessons, and ideas.

Analysis - I do technical and system based analysis before I start trading for the day/week. Weekly holistic picture for the market, daily analysis for specific products.

Execution mistakes - documenting exactly what mistakes I did, why I did them, and how I should fix them.

Observations - anything new I observed that day.

Lessons - what I learnt from that day of trading

Ideas - anything I want to backtest/learn/analyse.



12) Best twitter handles I discovered for keeping it real with trading:

  • @jaredtendler
  • @AlphaMind101
  • @Canny4
  • @johnfcarter
  • @AnthonyCrudele



13) Best book I came across on Personal Finance for Indians with a no-nonsense attitude and no-b.s approach:

@monikahalan’s Let’s Talk Money



14) Best spent time on learning a skill :

How to use notion and simplify the process.



15) Few technical skills I picked up:

  • KDB from @sibichaks
  • InfluxDB and query language
  • Building dashboards in Excel
  • Tick Data analysis using Python
  • Data Cleaning (still sucking at being organised about it)



  • iMac/Mac-mini/MacBook Air/Pro M1 variants
  • iPad base variant
  • Moto G40/60 stock android phone
  • Dell 19” used monitors (from resellers)
  • TVS Gold Keyboard
  • Lenovo ThinkPad E14 Ryzen-5 variant



17) Speakers I consistently listened to this year, to keep myself going:

  • Les Brown
  • Eric Thomas
  • Jim Rohn
  • Tony Robbins



18) One YouTube channel I am glad I found:

Impact Theory by @TomBilyeu



19) One sports personality I learnt about and got crazy inspired by:

Kobe Bryant (watch videos of him and about him on YouTube)



20) One book that helped further my understanding of the body:

Why We Sleep by @sleepdiplomat



21) One book that helped further my understanding of the mind:

Tiny Habits by @bjfogg