Callum Makkai
@callum-makkai.bsky.social
Quantitative trader focused on small cap equities
“A truth that’s conditional on regime, liquidity, policy stance, or crowd positioning isn’t really a truth. It’s a description of what worked last time. Traders who survive know this instinctively. Analysts and educators, tragically, often don’t.” #markets #trading
Hull Tactical Asset Allocation
www.hulltactical.com
December 15, 2025 at 8:35 PM
“When you have a correlation event in the market, beta is a terrible predictive indicator of what’s going to happen … if you have a correlation event … and the market dislocates, that stock’s going to move much more like its vol than it does like its historical beta.” #markets #stocks #trading
December 10, 2025 at 8:56 AM
Reposted by Callum Makkai
‘You’re kidding yourself if you think a stock-market bubble can’t form when there is widespread concern about a bubble. Take the housing bubble: Google search interest reached a peak in 2006, coincident with the highest precrisis level for home prices.‘ www.marketwatch.com/story/invest...
December 8, 2025 at 6:54 PM
‘You’re kidding yourself if you think a stock-market bubble can’t form when there is widespread concern about a bubble. Take the housing bubble: Google search interest reached a peak in 2006, coincident with the highest precrisis level for home prices.‘ www.marketwatch.com/story/invest...
“speculation and bubbles, for that matter, you know, the extreme speculation, are inherently inflationary. And it's one of the ways that excess liquidity turns into inflation.”
#markets #inflation #risk
#markets #inflation #risk
December 5, 2025 at 10:44 PM
“speculation and bubbles, for that matter, you know, the extreme speculation, are inherently inflationary. And it's one of the ways that excess liquidity turns into inflation.”
#markets #inflation #risk
#markets #inflation #risk
“new information being revealed is always going to move prices. That's where there's a little bit of an idea of an arms race. The things being transient and going away, it becomes the really specific implementation, not the sort of broad concept is not valuable anymore.”
#quant #trading
#quant #trading
December 5, 2025 at 5:47 AM
most jobs, to get better at them, you do more of them, right? You become a better baker by baking more cakes. With trading, you become a better trader by taking your hands off the keyboard and letting things play out. Because every time you touch the keyboard, it costs you money.”
#trading
#trading
December 4, 2025 at 7:53 PM
most jobs, to get better at them, you do more of them, right? You become a better baker by baking more cakes. With trading, you become a better trader by taking your hands off the keyboard and letting things play out. Because every time you touch the keyboard, it costs you money.”
#trading
#trading
“it's always better to just buy the underlying asset than trying to deconstruct financial engineering.” #trading #investing #markets
December 4, 2025 at 7:52 PM
“it's always better to just buy the underlying asset than trying to deconstruct financial engineering.” #trading #investing #markets
“Typically, when short vol is performing very well, the equity risk premium is also performing well. And so, for me personally, I would rather be partaking in that, usually with momentum on single stocks, strong sector stuff, things like that.”
December 2, 2025 at 12:43 AM
“Typically, when short vol is performing very well, the equity risk premium is also performing well. And so, for me personally, I would rather be partaking in that, usually with momentum on single stocks, strong sector stuff, things like that.”
“If you are a risk premia guy or girl, that is something where you can't analyze it to death because it doesn't go away … so there's nothing wrong with really going hard on the data analysis because you're going to find more and more information to contextualize the effect” #quant #markets #trading
December 2, 2025 at 12:39 AM
“what I do is I split my account into a risky bit and a safe bit, and then I go full Kelly on the risky bit, and I rebalance between those. So I've always got typically 90 percent in the risk-free bit. So that gives you a big upside possibility, but you're not going to lose more than 10 percent.”
December 1, 2025 at 10:44 PM
“what I do is I split my account into a risky bit and a safe bit, and then I go full Kelly on the risky bit, and I rebalance between those. So I've always got typically 90 percent in the risk-free bit. So that gives you a big upside possibility, but you're not going to lose more than 10 percent.”
“What should I be looking for to try and get edge? The best way to do it is to know what something normal is like. Don't think about the abnormal. Just become so familiar with how things usually are, but when something different happens, you're like, oh my god, that's not right.” #trading #markets
December 1, 2025 at 9:58 PM
“things that have positive skew may not have as good a Sharpe ratio, but may produce you a better geometric return. Things that have negative skew produce the opposite effect.”
#trading
#trading
November 22, 2025 at 11:19 PM
“things that have positive skew may not have as good a Sharpe ratio, but may produce you a better geometric return. Things that have negative skew produce the opposite effect.”
#trading
#trading
“Markets are not arbitrage mechanisms. That’s sometimes misunderstood. They’re voting mechanisms. The price is a weighted average vote where the weight is by dollars.”
#markets
#markets
November 13, 2025 at 10:07 PM
“Markets are not arbitrage mechanisms. That’s sometimes misunderstood. They’re voting mechanisms. The price is a weighted average vote where the weight is by dollars.”
#markets
#markets
"When you have these cycles, things can run for a period of time. But there are things that will change sentiment and will create drawdowns, or change the perspective on the growth trajectory, and none of us are smart enough to see them until they actually occur." — DJ Sol
#markets
#markets
November 4, 2025 at 5:55 PM
"When you have these cycles, things can run for a period of time. But there are things that will change sentiment and will create drawdowns, or change the perspective on the growth trajectory, and none of us are smart enough to see them until they actually occur." — DJ Sol
#markets
#markets
“how people handle drawdowns, I think, it makes some of the biggest difference in who is successful over the long run. As during a drawdown, your psychology really affects what you're doing.” #trading #markets
David Druz recounts some memorable stories about trading with Ed Seykota.
David Druz recounts some memorable stories about trading with Ed Seykota.
November 3, 2025 at 4:34 AM
“markets are fractal over a wide range. If you get too short or you get too long, the fractal nature of markets breaks down. And of course, fractal is self-similar at different scales… And so we tested it … And suddenly got it to work … so we did trade different timeframes with the same pattern”
October 30, 2025 at 5:35 AM
“markets are fractal over a wide range. If you get too short or you get too long, the fractal nature of markets breaks down. And of course, fractal is self-similar at different scales… And so we tested it … And suddenly got it to work … so we did trade different timeframes with the same pattern”
“In my mind of the three things, timing, money management, portfolio, the portfolio is an order of magnitude at least ten times more important than either of the other two.”
#trading
#trading
October 30, 2025 at 5:25 AM
“In my mind of the three things, timing, money management, portfolio, the portfolio is an order of magnitude at least ten times more important than either of the other two.”
#trading
#trading
“if you're taking risk from the hedgers to make money over the long run, you're going to have a risky or a volatile equity stream … because I'm taking what the hedgers don't want … they're going to pay me to take it. So I have to be able to take it.”
#trading #risk #markets
#trading #risk #markets
October 30, 2025 at 4:37 AM
“in a system of trading, there are three main aspects. There's timing, there's money management, and there's portfolio selection. And all of those have to go into the pie that you're making.”
#trading
#trading
October 30, 2025 at 4:28 AM
“in a system of trading, there are three main aspects. There's timing, there's money management, and there's portfolio selection. And all of those have to go into the pie that you're making.”
#trading
#trading
October 28, 2025 at 5:57 AM
“there's a lot of interest in this business of precision, and I think that is a big mistake. This is not a precision business. This is an accuracy business.”
#trading #investing #markets
#trading #investing #markets
October 25, 2025 at 1:25 AM
“there's a lot of interest in this business of precision, and I think that is a big mistake. This is not a precision business. This is an accuracy business.”
#trading #investing #markets
#trading #investing #markets
“the real arbitrage in the market today is the ability to buy insurance, not through options, but in Delta 1 markets, trading short-term breakouts when the volatility measures are not aligned. So ATRs versus standard deviation, or …”
October 20, 2025 at 4:30 AM
“the real arbitrage in the market today is the ability to buy insurance, not through options, but in Delta 1 markets, trading short-term breakouts when the volatility measures are not aligned. So ATRs versus standard deviation, or …”