If you follow basketball at all, you’re probably familiar with the hype-tapes that are readily available on YouTube. Any serious prospect or professional will have multiple highlight reels showing only their best plays. These have almost reached the level of parody. There’s even a hype-tape for relatively unathletic NBA journeymen like Brian Scalabrine (“The White Mamba”), who averaged 3 points and 2 rebounds per game in an 11 year career – for non-basketball fans, these are mediocre stats. In The White Mamba’s hype tape he is dunking all over his opponents and hits every single shot.
With that intro, here is my personal hype-tape:
My academic success didn’t happen by pure luck or talent. There was a tiger-mom involved who made a lot of personal sacrifices and pushed me way out of my comfort zone when I was a kid. I have a 150 IQ and have been three years ahead in math for as long as I can remember. Near-perfect top 1%-tile scores in SATs, GREs and GMATs. Went to an elite top-5 college (top-2 engineering) and double-majored in a hardcore STEM and a humanities, while minoring in Japanese. Was also in a fraternity and partied way too much. Professionally, I am a Chartered Financial Analyst – for this certification I passed three annual exams, each of which has around a 50% pass rate. In my industry, the CFA is treated roughly equivalently to an MBA or a Master’s degree in Finance.
My whole career has been at investment firms picking stocks and trading options, as well as other asset classes, such as commodities and bonds. Every day, I exchange ideas with people just as smart as me, as we try to make sense of our front-row seat to history-in-the-making.
I’m a direct descendent of a hardcore Polish Holocaust survivor (grandfather), a Mossad spy (father), a Russian math genius (mother), a Russian architect (grandmother), a WW2 Russian army major who was part of Berlin occupation (grandfather), and a medical doctor (grandmother).
Happily married with two beautiful daughters. Wife is a Japanese national, children are bilingual.
Serious hobbies include: personal fitness, martial arts, Buddhist meditation, Taoist chi gong, playing piano, and Japanese language study.
Casual hobbies include: sports (Celtics, Patriots and Red Sox); listening to music (jazz, casual, classical and hip hop); eclectic reading; watching movies & television; fashion; and travel.