雜記20090627

June 27th, 2009

很久沒有写杂记了。来了UBS快一个月了,发现IT实际上是很简单的活,IT的project management就更简单了。相较之下还是我在啤酒厂的工作挑战性更加大,一方面是因为我在AB待了7个多月,人家把我当个正式员工对待。在这里只有2个月,人家还是把你当实习生,待遇不一样。我总归感觉假如把UBS整个IT部门砍掉,都是没有问题的。

每天上班的时候都要穿过华尔街,走到世贸大厦(的遗址),然后坐联通纽约和新泽西之间的PATH。因为世贸中心仍旧是一个大坑,唯一通向PATH车站的是一条羊肠小道,顿时让我想起了300里的“hot gate”:成千上万的穿着西装的人们从新泽西涌向纽约。只有一小部分人像我是反方向走的,每天要逆着人流往前挤。有一天早上还被一个NYPD(警察)逮住,说是要抽样搜包,发现我包里有两瓶水,顿时起了疑心,把我当作是恐怖分子。看了又看那哥们跟我说:try to keep yourself hydrated, will ya? (尽量不要让你身体缺水)

我还是比较喜欢办公室里的view的,一眼望出去就是曼哈顿的金融中心,尽管那两栋标志性建筑已经不见了,但整个金融中心看出去还是密密麻麻,好不壮观。而且这边的空气更好,住起来更舒服,房租价格却不菲,在全美房价不景气的情况下这里的房价5年里已经番了四番。

lower manhattan

lower manhattan

swan

my office building

上图就是我的办公大楼

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那天在给一个刚刚被lay off的同事举办farewell party的时候DJ突然把音乐切掉了,然后指向大屏幕,大屏幕是FOX News,巨大的breaking news: Michael Jackson has passed away。然后DJ就开始大放Thriller,之后的三天,我走到哪里,不管是哪个店,到处都在放MJ的音乐。iTunes的在线音乐商店里十大top albums里有六个都是michael生前的album。想想真是可笑:MJ啊MJ,你生前大家都在骂你是变态,强奸幼年儿童。你一死全世界都开始悼念你,没人再提及你是不是pedafile了。

今天早上看纽约时报上还说MJ生前欠债的统计已经是四亿美元,这个数字还在增加,看来他欠的债跟美国政府欠的债一样复杂,纠结。

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更多high line照片:

the pattern

nothern spur

Pictures in Shanghai

June 23rd, 2009

wing 
Century Park, Shanghai Century Park, Shanghai 

Century Park, Shanghai 

Century Park, Shanghai

The High Line Park

June 19th, 2009

好嘛,我来用中文更新一下:上周三和三个同为摄影爱好者的同事去参观纽约上周刚开放的high line park。high line是美国上世纪三十年代到七十年代的货车运输轨道。也就是“货车轻轨”。在被废弃以后,不像中国政府喜欢把废弃的东西拆掉造新的,人家就把废弃的东西重新利用其来,做了一条绿色走廊。走廊上有许多创意设计,比如可以观看整个曼哈顿西侧的观景台,比如把巨大躺椅装上铁路轮子然后可以放在废弃铁轨上滑…

Sorry I had to post in English again. I am sitting in my office (TGIF!!!), trying to prioritize my tasks and I decided my highest priority today  is to blog on this wonderful place that we visited this Wednesday.

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 High Line is a 1.5-mile section of the former elevated freight railroad of the West Side Line, along the lower west side of Manhattan. It runs from 34th Street near the Javits Convention Center to Gansevoort Street in the Meat Packing District in the West Village.  In 2004, The NYC government commited $50 million to redevelop the abandoned train track into an elevated park. The park has three sections and one section is still under construction but the rest of the two sections have opened to the public last week! Several UBS co-workers/photography enthusiasts paid a vist the Wedesday and decided this is THE PLACE to go summer 2009.

22nd Street Seating Steps / 23rd Street Lawn 

IMG_0073

IMG_0140

Nothern Spur HDR1

Nothern Spur 

Nothern Spur

Entry to Nothern Spur

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LED lights that help grass grows during night time.

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Green Design      

I like the design of this, you have solar panel powering all the LED lights which photosynthesizes the grass during the night and a water fountain that recycles water back to the sewege system.

10th Avenue Square 

Lindsay & David Haha I love this shot, two of my collegues that went with me, Lindsay (The one ducking in the middle of the frame) was focusing on a vintage point shot of the rail and David, borrowed my tripod and was trying to shoot HDR with his home made shutter release.

We spent 3 hours shooting until the park closed down at 10 p.m. we merely finished half of the park. So we will definitely go again next Friday!

日流量创新

June 16th, 2009

小收获,纪念一下。经管我没有任何线索会突然spike一下,而且IP都来自中国。

screenshot

the “SMART” System

June 16th, 2009

See, one of the reasons I opened a blog is to use it as a tool to note-taking what I gained in life or work. Otherwise it would just be a diary I guess. And since it’s more of a notebook to me. The great advantage of blogging is that you can take notes or check notes wherever you have internet access. With iPhone’s wordpress app, you can even blog on the road (Although I prefer not). This way you are “plugged-in”.

So this time I heard my boss explaining to me the “SMART” system (or model) for project managers. “SMART” system stands for:

Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Realistic
Timely

Specific – A specific goal has a much greater chance of being accomplished than a general goal. To set a specific goal you must answer the six “W” questions:
*Who: Who is involved?
*What: What do I want to accomplish?
*Where: Identify a location.
*When: Establish a time frame.
*Which: Identify requirements and constraints.
*Why: Specific reasons, purpose or benefits of accomplishing the goal.

EXAMPLE: A general goal would be, “Get in shape.” But a specific goal would say, “Join a health club and workout 3 days a week.”

Measurable – Establish concrete criteria for measuring progress toward the attainment of each goal you set. When you measure your progress, you stay on track, reach your target dates, and experience the exhilaration of achievement that spurs you on to continued effort required to reach your goal.
To determine if your goal is measurable, ask questions such as……How much? How many? How will I know when it is accomplished?

Attainable – When you identify goals that are most important to you, you begin to figure out ways you can make them come true. You develop the attitudes, abilities, skills, and financial capacity to reach them. You begin seeing previously overlooked opportunities to bring yourself closer to the achievement of your goals.
You can attain most any goal you set when you plan your steps wisely and establish a time frame that allows you to carry out those steps. Goals that may have seemed far away and out of reach eventually move closer and become attainable, not because your goals shrink, but because you grow and expand to match them. When you list your goals you build your self-image. You see yourself as worthy of these goals, and develop the traits and personality that allow you to possess them.

Realistic – To be realistic, a goal must represent an objective toward which you are both willing and able to work. A goal can be both high and realistic; you are the only one who can decide just how high your goal should be. But be sure that every goal represents substantial progress. A high goal is frequently easier to reach than a low one because a low goal exerts low motivational force. Some of the hardest jobs you ever accomplished actually seem easy simply because they were a labor of love.
Your goal is probably realistic if you truly believe that it can be accomplished. Additional ways to know if your goal is realistic is to determine if you have accomplished anything similar in the past or ask yourself what conditions would have to exist to accomplish this goal.

Timely – A goal should be grounded within a time frame. With no time frame tied to it there’s no sense of urgency. If you want to lose 10 lbs, when do you want to lose it by? “Someday” won’t work. But if you anchor it within a timeframe, “by May 1st”, then you’ve set your unconscious mind into motion to begin working on the goal.
T can also stand for Tangible – A goal is tangible when you can experience it with one of the senses, that is, taste, touch, smell, sight or hearing. When your goal is tangible you have a better chance of making it specific and measurable and thus attainable.

Random chats

June 11th, 2009

From our team’s group channel:

8:02 AM Yuan-Y Huang: morning
2:28 PM Noah Rosenblum: G’Day Yuan
2:28 PM Noah Rosenblum: g
2:28 PM Kari Rabatin: a bit delayed there Mr Rosenblum
2:28 PM Noah Rosenblum: time zones
2:28 PM Kari Rabatin: he sits next to you
2:29 PM Noah Rosenblum: as mentioned, different time zones

What is “deleveraging” anyway?

June 10th, 2009

 

You will be familiar with the term “deleveraging”, but do you have any idea what it actually means? If someone asked you to define it, could you?

 

Well, even if you can’t, you’re not alone in not fully understanding the meaning of all the financial terms currently in circulation. To help, Compass is launching a new series to explain frequently misunderstood investment terms. From time to time, we’ll take a financial term and demystify its meaning.

 

So, back to deleveraging. What is it?

 

Simply put, deleveraging is the unwinding of debt. In the business world, companies seeking to grow often take on large amounts of debt, or leverage, enabling them to spend more in order to achieve that growth. But debt is risky business. If the risk becomes too great for the company to bear or the growth attempt fails and the company cannot repay its debts – something which could be disastrous for its reputation - it’s stuck in a pretty sticky situation. Where is that money going to come from?

 

The answer is deleveraging – winding down debt by selling it off or by selling off some of the company’s unattractive assets at a hugely discounted price to raise the money. It is always the garish sweaters which feature heavily in the end of season clothes sales.  But some bargain hunters will buy them in the end if the discount is deep enough. This is what companies hope to achieve. They may not make as much as they had expected to, but at least they’ll make something, as long as they can find the right buyers.

 

Which leads to the next problem. Deleveraging is frequently seen by investors as a red flag, a signal that perhaps they shouldn’t put their money into that company but rather take it elsewhere. But where? This is where the world finds itself today, but this time it is households and financial entities who are in debt, all trying to recoup their losses by deleveraging, but in doing so, looking less and less attractive to investors and creditors. And the result? A lot of desperate sellers but hardly any buyers – a situation which can lead to decline in activity across the economy, more commonly known as a recession. But we’ll cover that next time.

What is a “recession” anyway?

June 10th, 2009
Ah the “R” word. Gracing front pages, blogs, shop windows and “75% Off!” flyers everywhere. But what exactly is a recession and what causes one? Unfortunately, the answer to that is a relatively contentious one and different economists will probably tell you different things. One thing is for certain though; recessions are a natural part of the economic life cycle. They have happened before and will certainly happen again.

 

According to the widespread technical definition, a recession is a period of reduced economic activity, or negative growth, which lasts for at least two quarters. It is usually marked by a rise in unemployment, reductions in retail sales and a slowing of demand for big purchases like houses and cars. Simply put, it is a contraction – a bit like breathing. In order to have life you have to breathe, to expand and contract. In the same way, in order for the economy to have life, money has to expand and contract too. While recessions are clearly unpleasant, they do tend to spring clean and reboot the economy, and this makes for a healthy economic environment over the long run.

 

A wide variety of things are often linked to recessions, from inflation and interest rate changes, to wars or financial crises. It is thought that the main cause of the recession the world is currently experiencing was kicked off by the “credit crisis” that erupted in 2007 and has still not been stabilized.

 

Roll back a couple of years and life was good. Business was booming and people were spending; but, it was a false prosperity, as they were spending more than they actually had and borrowing more than they could actually afford.

 

In early 2007, banks in the US – the world’s largest housing market – found that they were confronting the so-called subprime crisis, due, in part, to their leniency in who they gave credit to. In the line with the old adage, “what goes up must comes down,” after the boom levelled off house prices started to fall. All of a sudden, these bank-owned “assets” were worth far less than the debt borrowed to buy them in the first place – which of course still needed to be repaid – and banks found themselves having to write down huge losses. As these losses mounted they in turn led to frozen banking functions and failing banks, and what followed is the worst financial crisis the world has seen since the 1930s; and it wasn’t long before the crisis spread to the economy and businesses started to fail too.

 

Understandably, banks suddenly got a lot stricter with who they gave credit to, meaning fewer people could buy houses and prices began to fall even further. The high energy prices which characterized 2007 and early 2008 weren’t helping either, reducing disposable incomes which were already growing smaller as businesses were closing or scaling back. Things were getting expensive, there was a total collapse in confidence and banks had stopped lending to each other, too. Finally, after the US investment bank Lehman Brothers failed in September 2008, the banking system was vulnerable to a total collapse, credit dried up, and the global economy experienced a sudden contraction that was the sharpest downturn for over 75 years. And with that, we found ourselves plunged into a deep recession.

 

Now, the question on everyone’s minds is when will it all end? According to some UBS economists, the slow climb towards normality could begin towards the end of this year, with a slightly stronger economy being seen midway through next year.

 

Many now hope that bailouts, government spending, and improvements in the banking industry will eventually cause banks to give out more credit under less strict terms. But ‘eventually’ may take a long time and governments will have to find a solution to the problem of the trillions of dollars of bad assets that banks are sitting on before we can all take a big breath and watch the economy expand once more.

What is a “hedge fund” anyway?

June 10th, 2009
With the markets in their current unpredictable state, hedge funds, in particular, have recently been thrown into the limelight, receiving more publicity than they usually do – most likely a little unsettling for this notoriously secretive bunch. Perhaps that’s why, though we recognize the term, few of us actually know what a hedge fund is or does.

 

To understand what a hedge fund is, let’s first take a look at what it’s not: a typical mutual fund. While these types of funds can generally only buy and sell stocks and bonds, a hedge fund can do a lot more. They typically have far more freedom when it comes to what they can invest in and how they do it, as the majority remain largely unregulated by any official body – for the moment at least. Investing in a hedge fund, therefore, can lead to a whole lot more money because they can use more varied and aggressive strategies.

 

The primary aim of most hedge funds is to reduce your investment’s risk and volatility – or the amount of uncertainty about a change in the value of whatever you’re investing in – while attempting to preserve or make money no matter what state the market is in.

 

There are two basic reasons for investing in a hedge fund: to seek higher returns and/or to seek diversification for your investment portfolio. If you have a wide range of investment options, and one doesn’t work out, at least you have a variety of others, so the impact on your financial return – the amount you make or lose – is somewhat minimized.

 

It’s for this reason that hedge funds are so lucrative – and yet so secretive. Come up with the winning strategy and you make a lot of money. Let someone figure it out and, by copying you, they’ll cause you to lose your unique selling point to investors, as well as your unique grip on the market.

What is a “dark pool” anyway?

June 10th, 2009
Last week we announced the expansion of the UBS Price Improvement Network (UBS PIN) to Australia, providing clients there with access to off-exchange, non-displayed – or “dark pool” – liquidity for the first time. It’s a kind of liquidity we’ve already made available in the US, Europe and, most recently, Hong Kong – but what exactly is a “dark pool” anyway?

 

Essentially, a dark pool is a network of order flow collected together in a single venue for the purpose of crossing orders against each other without a visible quote or order book. Crossing occurs when two orders execute against each other, without a public quotation, off the Exchange. By keeping their order non-displayed, or “dark”, the client has less chance of information leakage and/or market impact, a reaction to visibility that “moves the price” away from you. Though sometimes viewed as controversial because of its rather menacing connotation, “dark” became a popular term for this kind of liquidity since it quickly conveyed the idea that these orders were not visible.

For example, suppose you wanted to acquire a large position in Acme Anvil Company. You send a “buy” order for 100,000 shares. The moment your large order hits the market what will sellers of Acme do?  They will raise the price before sending more sell orders to the exchange – and by the time your order fully executes, your price paid for Acme ends up being significantly higher.

 

If, instead, you sent that Acme order to a dark pool, your interest in Acme would not have been visible, so your order might have anonymously matched with Acme sell orders at a much lower price.

 

In markets such as these, saving a fraction of a basis point on your trades over the course of time can mean the difference of millions, or tens of millions of dollars, pounds or euros to large investment managers. The effect on performance can be significant – which in turn has a direct impact on the ability of an investment manager to retain client assets.

 

Dark pools can be independent structures, an “alternative trading system”, (ATS – the US regulatory structure) or a “multilateral trading facility” (MTF – the European regulatory structure), providing trading executions that occur outside of the local exchange. There are also internal crossing networks that are broker-owned facilities, such as our own UBS PIN or Goldman Sachs SIGMA, which are designed to cross client flow with internal orders.   
  
No matter the structure, though, trading anonymity is what “dark liquidity” is all about. It also explains why dark pool liquidity has become such a key factor in today’s equities environment. By making dark liquidity available to our clients, UBS is assisting them in protecting their orders from market impact, and potentially improving their price performance – which is the cornerstone of best execution.

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