Some advice to youngs like me:
1. Just write. It's okay if it sucks, just write.
2. Ask dumb questions, admit when you're wrong.
3. You'll learn more by doing than by reading.
4. Pick an interesting, large question. Learn as much as you can for it. Keep iterating. Just go for it.

For 4 you will be wrong *a lot*. But that's fine, keep prodding at it. Look for any signal you can. If you find an interesting correlation document it. If it is robust over time, it usually hints at deeper, interesting questions. Go explore.

I want to give a story about when I started my research on NOPE. It started in summer 2020 when I basically first read about the concept of delta hedging. My initial guess... was wrong. In fact, I was exactly wrong in a lot of cases. I got input. I talked to people.

I remember vehemently being opposed to using NOPE for anything *but* binary catalysts. Someone, might've been @falcontrading3 or @isabelfinmemes asked to see it on SPY. We caught the Sep 3rd correction with it. Okay.

We then graphed it. I hate graphs, I do not believe in TA. I remember sitting in my parents' kitchen and I saw the graph and I saw side by side it traced out (over time) the same shape as SPY's price graph. Holy shit, okay.

This question bothered me for a while. Why was it tracing out SPY? Why did it go off before the crash? I didn't actually know. I studied, I kept using it on earnings. It was wrong, it was a red herring most likely. Okay. I talked to a ton of smart people. They guessed liquidity.

Okay, liquidity it is. What was it doing? No idea. I got end of day data and wrote a paper for class. We saw the EOD red correlation. OK. That was something. That was a ball of yarn with a thread sticking out. I got laughed at a lot for my incorrect earnings predictions. It hurt.

People came and went. Lives are busy, internet friends are ephemeral. I kept on iterating. New people came. Time slowed down for a while. Finally got intraday data due to a generous friend. Ok. Initial results wrong, waited and waited. Said a few wrong things. Learned more.

And finally we found the correlations. It all made sense. Okay, this was something. And now we're here.