I think I've completely screwed up my CV.I've completed my MSc in Sept, since then I've only applied for 5 roles and went for 2 interviews, spending most of my time analysing tick data and coming up with algo trading strategies. (It was fun and surprisingly addictive).So that's a 6 months break. Before my MSc, I had an unplanned 14 months break due to visa issues (for the MSc). After I completed my BSc, I had a 17 months break before I started my first job, where I only worked for 20 months. Thinking it's time to start work again, I recently had a chat with a recruiter who seemed reluctant to put me forward for a role (very similar to my previous role) due to all the breaks I've had in my CV. (Assuming that's the reason - the first thing he said was "I presume your Linkedin profile is not updated").How bad is it? Any ideas for damage control?

Not much you can do to change the past. Write something in your CV describing why you had the breaks and how you spent your time. Don't expect tier-1. Stay in your next job for 3 years before moving.

Let this be a lesson to you not to apply for jobs.

QuoteOriginally posted by: farmerLet this be a lesson to you not to apply for jobs.are you saying he should work for himself or are you just trying to be funny?

QuoteOriginally posted by: AnalyticalVegaare you saying he should work for himself or are you just trying to be funny?There are plenty of ways to make money, other than plow through these hardheads begging to sit in a cube for 10 years. Unless you specifically want to sit in a cube without working all day.I haven't done a scientific survey or anything. But I suspect that big-office corporate work is basically designed for people who don't want to do anything except maybe 10 minutes a day.

farmer, how's your managed futures trading performance been for the last 5 years?

QuoteOriginally posted by: ArthurDentfarmer, how's your managed futures trading performance been for the last 5 years?I usually make a few 100 percent on whatever I post as margin. I was actually thinking about this yesterday. Specifically whether there is any way to do a comparison with people who try to make 10% a year. I decided that my market calls are much better, and I would make at least 50% a year if I used my market calls in a more common leverage, and trading style.I remember a few years ago I made like 25 times my money three times in a space of a few months. And each time I withdrew the money and did stuff, paid enormous bills, debts, blew it, whatever. All that other stuff is boring, so I have decided to not withdraw money much any more. Better to blow it over trading or something. And if you can avoid losses, you can make so much that you cannot think how to blow it all, except of course with more trading. I usually structure my trading around specific tax dates on the calendar, so that I have no problem blowing it all before one.But that is not what I was thinking of. For me, it is not too hard to make money selling gizmos online. I see a lot of people lately selling vapor nicotine stuff, online, in stores, to their friends. I see people who collect leads for carpet cleaning. People who buy and sell motorcycles. That is just off the top of my head in the last few weeks, there are many more things.I try to live my life in a way that I don't have to talk to people or pay much taxes. But if you liked talking to people, and you wanted to make a lot of money, you could make millions doing so many things. There is just about no limit to what you could raise investors for, basically anything that other people are doing to make money, whatever is hot where you are today.All you really have to do is see hot areas, and then get on the phone to pair people with expertise in those areas with investors. And if whatever you do requires marketing, you just have to be aggressive so that you spend $1 to make $1.10 not to make $0.90.

But by definition, if you have a salary, you pretty much cannot make extra money by working hard or being creative. So only a lazy person would take that job. You pretty much are fulfilling the demands of the organization, as they arrive at random. Like a waiter. You are executing the needs and ideas of others. You cannot increase their needs or make them more frequent, or improve their ideas, to work more or think better, and make more money. So you would only take that job if you don't want to work or think, if you like standing around like a bus boy waiting for customers to arrive.The act of finding such a job must be utterly unpleasant to people who want such a job. The more you work at it, the better your chances, but still with the chance of nothing. And so they will probably take a bad deal, just to get back to the preferred activity of waiting around mindless to be called into action by someone else.I think it is a mirage. It creates the impression you will get somewhere in an easy way.

I don't understand why more guys don't make porn. They say do what you love, what you have a passion for, what interests you, the thing where your knowledge of the art is pursued out of joy. A lot of guys really like porn videos.

People who have addictions are always looking for variety, to take the monotony out of their addictions and bring back the joy. Just to try to get that fresh feeling of the first time. People have to eat every day, they will try something bad and overpriced once a week just to try to get the thrill of the first time.When it comes to coffee and cigarettes, you could probably sell people 10 different kinds of coffee variations. I have a smoking-related gizmo which I want to see if I can build a prototype, or enough units to test market, for under $20 a unit. I know I could mass-produce the gizmo for under $2 a unit.

QuoteOriginally posted by: ArthurDentfarmer, how's your managed futures trading performance been for the last 5 years?I am excited about the coming months. There are so many bits and pieces of information out there. Other than charts, and simple filters, I rarely hear of any organized way to marshal all the information into predictions about price movements.People seize on A or B, or some combination of A and B. But when it comes to the size of A and B, and how much of each, and then you add C and D, and find the dominant new factor E, how can you even think about it? How can you put it into charts, how can you act on the charts when there is not necessarily any history of patterns and associations to repeat?Some people use very abstract models, like Soros. But this is only good for very low-frequency events. How can you bind together all the information of day-to-day events, and come up with actionable conclusions, when the human mind is mainly capable of time-division multiplexing over different ideas and concepts? Can you organize all this information that is too much to think about, and yet too unstructured for a computer?I hope to find some new ways to.

QuoteOriginally posted by: farmerLet this be a lesson to you not to apply for jobs.You know, I must say I think you're kind of a difficult person. I put everything you type through a mental filter. I come up with about 10% of what you say as being relevant, with another half of that being intelligent, and another half again as being wise.This post above is probably on of the most wise things I've ever seen you produce, and I couldn't agree more with it.God what a world, when a man worries about a "gap in his resume" or whatever. Jesus.

Hey guys, thanks for the input.rmax: I thought about doing that, but I was wondering if explaining them will draw more attention to the gaps. (although I suppose it will be ringing alarm bells for most).farmer: you know how some people ask a question, hoping that someone will say what they want to hear so that they feel like they were given "permission" to head a certain direction? You actually did that for me. (Not the porn part - not got the body for it) I think the direction that I'd like to move towards is clearly algorithmic trading. Working independently, however, means a lot of "reinventing the wheel". I suppose the motivation is to get some guidance from the right supervisor who is more experience and have a better inkling of what works and what doesn't - hence the desire to start looking for a job again.QuoteOriginally posted by: farmerPeople seize on A or B, or some combination of A and B. But when it comes to the size of A and B, and how much of each, and then you add C and D, and find the dominant new factor E, how can you even think about it? How can you put it into charts, how can you act on the charts when there is not necessarily any history of patterns and associations to repeat?Some people use very abstract models, like Soros. But this is only good for very low-frequency events. How can you bind together all the information of day-to-day events, and come up with actionable conclusions, when the human mind is mainly capable of time-division multiplexing over different ideas and concepts? Can you organize all this information that is too much to think about, and yet too unstructured for a computer?I don't think I really understand what you mean here (but like all cryptic stuff, it is very intriguing). It does sound like some sort of causality inference though. There is actually a paper about news prediction that I think could be relevant where history of patterns and associations are unavailable. What she did was to use ontology to make use of similarity between words to make use of the historical outcomes of similar (but different) events for prediction. Of course there are many ways to measure similarity of events to determine if they are comparable and if its inclusion for prediction will yield better results. For time series, maybe how similar the sequence of historical events may be informative as well. Excuse me. Was having a geeky moment there, but the author is kira radinsky if you're interested.QuoteOriginally posted by: OrbitGod what a world, when a man worries about a "gap in his resume" or whatever. Jesus.There was a time when I really had an issue with HR hiring people who can tell the best stories during interviews. I think I'm starting to be able to live with it now.

QuoteOriginally posted by: JeriotI suppose the motivation is to get some guidance from the right supervisor who is more experience and have a better inkling of what works and what doesn't - hence the desire to start looking for a job again.Trend trading works in all timeframes. As long as there is not too much hot money flowing into it, and as long as there is not too much upheaval, your competitors will only trade trends so far as they still make a fair return. So then you put the labor and capital and technology into it, and try to execute more efficiently, like any mature industry. You may find small innovations that allow you to make 1.25 times the fair market return, rather than 0.75 times. Being faster works, as do other microstructure advantages such as exchange memberships, whatever. Other than that, I think it is a changing game. Systems that continually find new patterns probably work, but I don't know if you can expect stable profits over a long period. It probably helps to know your competitor, who is changing whether daily or yearly.QuoteOriginally posted by: JeriotI don't think I really understand what you mean hereThink about a chess game. You have perfect information. In theory, whoever goes first probably wins. If you assume your opponent doesn't have perfect information - or, more accurately, assume that he does and just can't execute by using it perfectly - you could try to win faster, by guessing his patterns or predicting where he will be shortsighted. But assuming the reality that both you and your opponent have perfect information, the challenge is to have a mind or machine that can actually process it and execute. I am not saying I have perfect information for any market. I am just saying I have enough that I have this same problem of using what I know.I read a story for the layman on Deep Blue. It said something like Deep Blue can't work through all the gazillions of permutations. But what they did, is come up with a way to rate certain setups. If you have only a few pieces like a bishop and a king and a knight, and your opponent has even less, you can chase your opponent all over the board all day. It might take a lot of computer just to calculate all the different paths your opponent could run away. But a general evaluation would say this is a good setup to get to, even if we don't test every alternate scenario beyond this point. So I guess they did that also for configurations with more pieces. Maybe they ran through every possible move for some setups, and then said all these alternate but similar layouts have this same general quality.So in low-frequency algorithmic trading, or discretionary trading, there may be too much to think about at once. So like any decision, you have to try to distill out some key indications. Even if everyday life, I have lots of rules which I don't remember the origin of. Or, for example, you may have a friend who lies a lot. So long after you have forgotten all his individual lies, or even after you have forgotten everything he ever said, you might remember to not believe him. So you have to learn, and forget. Like learning that a certain chessboard configuration is good, and then forgetting why. So you need some way of making discoveries, and then having a means for storing and reusing them. And also for modifying and invalidating them, and organizing them.

if i heard some story were you had to deal with visa issues but you didn't give up but instead worked as a freelance programmer and developer and had to be real client-focused and eventually you got that visa and you go that degree it wouldn't sound too bad to me. you can probably also say that after all these different jobs you realize that now is the time to find a firm for the long haul. So instead of picking the first offer that comes along you made the decision that it's better to wait an extra month than to pick the wrong job.overcoming problems and challenges, wanting to better yourself, not giving up, not making random choices but thinking shit through are qualities firms like. Now, the important thing to notice is that NOBODY likes a complainer who lives in the past. There is not a single good firm in the world that will hire a guy who is pissed at himself for screwing shit up. Now, you kinda screwed. If you sit around at home feeling sorry for yourself you will be WAY MORE SCREWED in half a year. In other words: You cannot change the past but that gap is getting longer.you should get a recruiter right now.