7 Comments

Great article as per usual, always learn a lot from this. Appreciate the context, insights and tactical advice.

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Jan 24, 2023Liked by Brent Donnelly

Hey Brent, loving the substack and just finished the Alpha Trader book (great book btw). I’ve been trading for 3 years now and have finally seen some consistency in my trading. Currently I work as a software engineer, but am looking into doing a career switch into trading.

I know there are many jobs that overlap with tech and trading, but was wondering if you could give any insight on how to break into more traditional trading roles. It seems like most roles today are focused on quantitative analysis, market making or HFTs, but maybe it’s just my bias as my peers in tech work in or around these businesses. If you had to start your trading career all over again today, how would you go about it?

Keep up the great content, and wishing you a great 2023!

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Very nice article.

A thought on Tesla. I wonder if the discounting is less about the larger competitive environment and more about brand damage to Tesla specifically around politics.

If you look at teslas demographic here

https://www.businessinsider.com/typical-tesla-driver-owner-income-age-careers-demographics-2022-10

They skew young, educated, and relatively well off. Among the most represented occupations is software engineer.

California has the highest rate of ev ownership in the US as well as the highest share of Tesla ownership.

Now if this were a statistical analysis I would no doubt be missing confounding factors, but based on this limited info I would say Tesla owners skew left, and are exactly the kind of people who would be inclined to abandon the brand based on Musks politics.

As such I might not be quick to assume this is a negative for ford. It could be Tesla shifting its supply curve to simply maintain existing share lost in a wave of politics.

Or maybe it does portend a price war. That’s just another possibility to consider. If you start seeing other manufacturers cut prices then I think the case for the lowest margin producers being hit hard is much stronger.

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nice work by UBS and MKM, and great work by BMO.

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