The unrules by Igor Tulchinsky, founder and CEO of WorldQuant

Igor’s rules

1. The UnRule: all theories and all methods have flaws. Nothing can be proved with absolute certainty is, but anything may be disproved, and nothing that can be articulated can be perfect.
2. You only live once. Your time on earth is the only truly irreplaceable resource. If today was my last day, what would I be doing with it?
3. Life is unpredictable. There are limits to planning; the key is to act. Foster opportunities, then take advantage of outcomes. If you have to decide and you can’t, flip a coin. If it’s the wrong action, you will feel it and reverse course. Actions have a compounding effect; it’s bad to deliberate for too long.
4. Establish concrete quantifiable goals and always go from A to B. Concrete things are attainable. Abstract and nebulous wishes are not.
5. Develop willpower and persist. The most important limit is how much ability and persistence you have. Age means little.
6. Play to your strengths, don’t compromise. Weaknesses can only be improved marginally, but strength can be improved more.
7. Obstacles are information. If you can’t get something to work there is a reason. Learn adjust and attack it again.
8. Aim for the anxious edge, the point of mild anxiety
9. Arrogance distorts reality. Arrogance makes you perceive the environment in the way that maximises your ego. Environment does not exist for you, so your perceptions turn into fiction. You make bad decisions by chasing illusions. This gets harder after success when hubris slips in.
10. Make everyone benefit
11. Opportunity is unlimited, ideas are infinite
12. Blame no one else. Minimise regrets.
13. There is a virtue in economy of expression. Efficiency implies clarity and economy of thought. Pretend you have a fixed number of words in your life. The sooner they are all said, the sooner you’ll die.
14. Value diverse and competing methods. Because all theories are flawed, the best approach is to collect as many of them as possible and use them all, in as optimal a fashion as you can devise, simultaneously.
15. Value multiple points of view.
16. Make everyone benefit. Align your endeavours with everyone around you and you will create your own tail wind.

Quotes and other insights

1. To be successful in this investment business you have to think about it all the time. Thomas Peterffy
2. Keep losses small. Profits will take care of themselves. Izzy Englander

1. Don’t get emotional about your trades. React instantly to bad news. If it’s scary run. Take aggressive risks but manage losses. Aggressive behaviour forces your environment to react to you, rather than the other way around. You’re in control; you have the wider array of options in a higher probability of success. You need an exit route if it doesn’t work out.
2. In systems with a high degree of interactive complexity, multiple and unexpected interactions of failure are inevitable.
3. A good business runs itself. And create this by choosing the right people. A lot of time should be invested in that activity. Optimal compensation schemes are vital.
4. Minimise bureaucracy. Time is money; time is scarce. Bureaucracy wastes time and money. If you have the right people, right systems and the right compensation scheme you can scale without adding bureaucracy.
5. What makes a good trader? Intelligence, focus, action orientation, and the ability to learn from errors; economy of words and thoughts, honesty, and a strong sense of self; the ability to take risks, compartmentalise, and handle setbacks without ego getting crushed.
6. What makes a good researcher? Creativity, tenacity, attention to detail, intelligence, relentlessness, follow-through, and top-level programming skills.
7. What makes a good manager? Empathy, intelligence, creativity, relentlessness, and follow through.
8. In their view, quantity of alphas is far superior to quality. Quality cannot easily be defined. They seek to maximise exponentially the number of Alphas they pursue.
9. If data increases exponentially, predictability should improve linearly.
10. They key to testing ideas is to have good simulation software.
11. As complexity increases so will the number and frequency of non linear events will also increase (ie many std dev events – rogue waves, schrodinger equation)
12. Power laws very common in nature. In some systems the largest entity often brakes scale invariance, ie. it is even bigger than predicted eg. In network systems, dominant player much bigger.

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