The Sophron Network

The Sophron Network
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Direct insights from experts in the trading, quant, and finance industry.

  1. 5d ago

    Carol Alexander – AI: Dream Or Doom?

    Prof. Carol Alexander joins The Sophron® Network to discuss risk in the places the models do not look. From the unregulated exchanges where Bitcoin is still priced, to the liquidation rules that turn small moves into crashes, to AI agents that can coordinate with each other: a conversation between optimism about what AI makes possible and a sober view of where it could lead. Prof. Carol Alexander is Professor of Finance at the University of Sussex Business School, where she directs QFIN, the Quantitative Finance International Network. She is the author of the four-volume Market Risk Analysis and edited the Journal of Banking and Finance for a decade from 2013. She started as a bond analyst at Phillips & Drew, then worked at Algorithmics and as Head of Market Risk Modelling at Nikko Securities. Since 2019 her research has concentrated on crypto derivatives, and she was a model architect for FTX US Derivatives. We examine why risk managers have no power, why Coinbase follows Binance within a second, how 500x leverage and automatic liquidations turn a 10% move into a 50% crash, and which chapter of Market Risk Analysis she would rewrite for perpetuals. We also discuss the Young Finance Scholars Conference, citation networks in finance publishing, the AI 2027 report and the Hugging Face attack. Follow Carol AlexanderLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carol-alexander-426914b8/Her networking tokens: https://lnkd.in/p/e3EZ7FsYHer post on the Hugging Face attack: https://lnkd.in/p/ewuagPBW Core Timestamps00:00 - Cold open: AI as a swarm of bees01:00 - Welcome and introduction01:29 - The Young Finance Scholars Conference06:15 - Black Monday 1987 and why risk needed mathematics07:21 - Why risk managers have no power09:42 - AI risk and teaching AI12:49 - The AI 2027 report and jobs20:10 - FTX and a risk-based margin model23:34 - Bitcoin is priced on unregulated exchanges25:13 - 500x leverage and liquidation28:13 - Price discovery: CME, Binance and Coinbase33:04 - Rewriting Market Risk Analysis for perpetuals35:54 - Volatility ETNs and leveraged products39:59 - Citation cartels in finance journals43:24 - AI writing papers, AI refereeing papers50:35 - Advice to the next generation52:50 - The Hugging Face collective54:45 - Closing thoughts Main Topics CoveredWhy risk managers lack power inside firmsPrice discovery on unregulated exchangesLeverage, liquidation and flash crashesPerpetuals and leveraged productsAI in academic publishingAI agents and AI riskConnect With UsInstagram: https://instagram.com/amsterdaminvestLinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/amsterdam-investment-clubX: https://x.com/amsterdaminvest Subscribe for more conversations at the intersection of markets, research, and technology.

  2. Sep 29

    Paul Wilmott – Are We At The Peak Of Human Intelligence?

    Dr. Paul Wilmott joins The Sophron® Network to ask whether we have just passed the peak of human intelligence. What was meant to be a technical conversation about quant finance turns into something broader: why so much of finance still assumes the world is linear, why pure thought still beats a billion parameter black box, what happens when models trade against models, and which human skills are worth protecting once AI can do the rest. Dr. Paul Wilmott is a mathematician, author and consultant specialising in derivatives, risk management and quantitative finance, and the creator of the Certificate in Quantitative Finance (CQF), which he has taught for over two decades and which is today delivered by Fitch Learning. He received his DPhil in fluid mechanics at St Catherine's College, Oxford, founded the Diploma in Mathematical Finance at Oxford and the journal Applied Mathematical Finance, was a founding partner of the hedge fund Caissa Capital, and runs wilmott.com and Wilmott magazine. We examine nonlinearity, the right level of mathematics, Navier-Stokes versus data-driven AI, portfolio insurance and the 1987 crash, the feedback effect of hedging, and why he hates calibration. We also discuss Paul Wilmott's first rule of quant finance, and why he would teach every child mathematics, magic and charades. Follow Paul WilmottWebsite: https://wilmott.com CQF: https://www.cqf.com Core Timestamps00:00 - Cold open: the peak of human intelligence 00:27 - Welcome and introduction 02:05 - The nonlinearity rant 04:11 - From fluid mechanics to options 07:19 - Why he built the CQF 09:57 - Models that do not work, and why people use them 12:27 - Navier-Stokes versus a billion parameter black box 16:43 - Models competing with models and 1987 18:17 - Look at the people: human nature and trust 22:08 - Maths, magic and charades 31:57 - Will assumptions disappear, replaced by data? 33:50 - The feedback effect of hedging 37:29 - Attention spans and black-and-white movies 41:13 - Calibration and Paul Wilmott's first rule 44:59 - What should a quant learn now? 49:15 - Critical thinking 51:57 - The maths is easy, human nature is hard Main Topics CoveredNonlinearity and the limits of linear modelsHow the CQF was built, and what it teaches differentlyPure thought versus data-driven AIFeedback effects and model-on-model marketsWhy calibration to market prices misleadsEmpathy and critical thinking in the age of AIConnect With UsInstagram: https://instagram.com/amsterdaminvest LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/amsterdam-investment-club X: https://x.com/amsterdaminvest Subscribe for more conversations at the intersection of markets, research, and technology.

  3. Sep 22

    Michael Fritzell – Should You Invest in Asia?

    Michael Fritzell joins The Sophron® Network to answer a question most European investors never ask properly: should you invest in Asia at all? His answer is no, you do not have to. Then he explains why he has spent sixteen years doing exactly that: why decades of Asian growth so rarely reached the shareholder, how to think in emerging market cycles, what is happening at both ends of the Korean market, and how a patient stock picker finds 20 percent IRRs in markets nobody else is covering. Michael Fritzell is the publisher and writer behind Asian Century Stocks, an equity research publication on overlooked companies across East Asia, Southeast Asia and Australasia, read by more than 20,000 investors. Swedish by background, he holds a Master's in Economics from the Stockholm School of Economics and studied Mandarin at Peking University. He began his career in investment banking in London before moving to Asia in 2009 as a research analyst for an emerging market fund manager in China. He has been based in Singapore since 2014, at a European family office, a start-up hedge fund and his own contract research business, before turning Asian Century Stocks into his full-time work in 2021. We examine share issuance, minority protections and capital controls, Marc Faber's seven phase cycle and why Indonesia sits close to full capitulation, the AI capex boom at the top of the KOSPI and the value-up reforms underneath it, Japanese SaaS after the February panic, and AeroEdge, a 70 million dollar Safran supplier found on YouTube that went up ten times in a year. We also discuss his 20 percent IRR hurdle, credit bureaus as toll bridges, the one Korean stock he would hold for a decade, and why a European starting from an index should skip the EM ETF. Follow Michael FritzellLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-fritzell-1aab10/Website: https://www.asiancenturystocks.comX: https://x.com/MikeFritzell Core Timestamps00:00 - Cold open: Indonesia under Prabowo00:34 - Welcome and introduction02:08 - Sixteen years in Asia, and why a newsletter instead of a fund05:53 - Do you have to own Asia?11:02 - Why the growth never reached the shareholder15:02 - Marc Faber's seven phase cycle and Indonesia today20:37 - Currency, reflexivity and macro in frontier markets23:32 - Korea and Taiwan: the AI capex boom28:24 - Japan: SaaS after the AI panic32:39 - A 20 percent IRR hurdle and the 18 month catalyst36:42 - Korea's hidden champions and the value-up reforms44:19 - AeroEdge: the ten-bagger found on YouTube48:20 - Toll bridges, credit bureaus and consumer stocks52:05 - Rapid fire: where a European should start57:48 - The one stock for a decade Main Topics CoveredWhy you do not have to own Asia, and the opportunity set that keeps him thereShare issuance, minority protections and capital controlsEmerging market cycles, reflexivity and IndonesiaKorea from both ends: the AI capex peak and the value-up reformsJapanese SaaS, freee and the February software panicA 20 percent IRR hurdle, catalysts and falling knivesAeroEdge and the Japan Company HandbookCredit bureaus, NICE Information Service and how to startConnect With UsInstagram: https://instagram.com/amsterdaminvestLinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/amsterdam-investment-clubX: https://x.com/amsterdaminvest Subscribe for more conversations at the intersection of markets, research, and technology.

  4. Sep 15

    Maximillian Nölke – $200,000 In 1 Day, Energy Trading Insights

    Maximillian Nölke joins The Sophron® Network to explain how an electricity market actually trades, from the inside of an Irish power desk. We start with the overnight period that cleared at 200 to 240 euro when the desk had expected 120 to 130, and work outwards: why gas still sets the price in a system built around wind, why a battery is the only asset that can move electricity through time, and why nothing a power trader does can be carried into tomorrow. Maximillian Nölke is a Senior Energy Trader at GridBeyond in Dublin, where he trades Irish power on an assetless basis alongside PPAs on wind farms and battery storage. He joined in January 2026 from EP UK Investments, where he spent two years optimising a portfolio of twelve thermal generation plants across the all island market and ran the associated gas and carbon books. Before that he traded short term power at PrepayPower Energy Trading, covering the Irish single electricity market and GB intraday. Since 2019 he has also run his own research, building factor based strategies across equities, commodities, crypto and I-SEM power, including a price forecasting model on more than fifty variables. We cover the shape of the trading day and its four hard auction deadlines, what really sets the price, and the part that surprises people from financial markets most: every half hour settles into imbalance, so the honest analogy is a one day option rather than a position you can sit on. We also discuss DS3 and why a rarely called battery is still worth paying for, Europe's negative prices and the storage gap behind them, what optimising twelve thermal plants involves once gas, carbon and start costs meet the price you are willing to sell at, and which of his fifty model variables carried real weight. Follow Maximillian NölkeLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maximillian-nolkeGridBeyond: https://gridbeyond.com Core Timestamps00:00 - Cold open: the overnight that paid over 200,00000:30 - Welcome and introductions03:46 - A day on an Irish power desk: four auctions, hard deadlines06:52 - Why every half hour settles and nothing carries over09:45 - What sets the price: gas, wind, temperature, interconnectors13:05 - Data centres, EVs and air conditioning reshaping demand14:45 - Batteries: the only technology that moves electricity through time16:42 - DS3, ancillary services and keeping the system standing18:08 - How he ended up in energy, and who gets blamed for prices22:32 - Nuclear as baseload, and the ten year lead time25:45 - From twelve thermal plants to an assetless book28:13 - Gas, carbon and power: optimising a thermal fleet33:04 - The true price of an energy day, and the overnight that paid34:34 - Recency bias and how much past data is worth37:49 - Constraints, curtailment and negative prices41:22 - Why battery investors need revenue certainty43:51 - The fifty variable model: what mattered, what was noise45:49 - Weather forecasting as a genuine edge47:39 - Breaking into energy trading: pick one narrow problem Connect With UsInstagram: https://instagram.com/amsterdaminvestLinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/amsterdam-investment-clubX: https://x.com/amsterdaminvest Subscribe for more conversations at the intersection of markets, research, and technology.

  5. Sep 8

    Henry Atkins – Building A Quant Desk From Scratch

    Henry Atkins joins The Sophron® Network to discuss what it actually takes to build a quantitative trading desk from nothing. A group of university students wrote trading code between lectures and ran it from the library. What began as a $25,000 seed allocation has grown into a firm managing over $50 million in assets. Three or four years later the firm was FCA regulated and allocating for institutions in the UK and the US. Henry founded and led its quant desk, and this conversation is about how that is really done: designing the business before the strategy, raising against a track record that barely exists, and the research process that has to sit underneath any of it. Henry Atkins is Head of Quant Trading at Deeter Analytics, a quantitative trading firm founded in 2025. He previously spent close to four years at MCD Capital, a London based systematic firm trading listed options and futures across CME, Cboe and the New York Stock Exchange, where he founded and led the quant trading desk and ran its intraday book in futures and equities. Before finance he spent three years at Expedia Group as a machine learning scientist, working on learn to rank problems across millions of customer interactions. He read physics as an undergraduate and holds a master's in quantum computing. We examine what a proprietary investor actually evaluates in a pitch, which has far less to do with performance statistics than most students expect, and what regulation is worth when the constraint is not the quality of your numbers but the quantity of evidence. The conversation then turns to research process: building a platform against synthetic data with known faults injected, establishing bounds by training with look ahead bias, rolling walk forward models to generate a family of curves, and a bar data workaround for bracketing volume and slippage without tick data. We close on technology. Where AI compresses the work and where accumulated tech debt stops it, why the infrastructure edge of the large multi manager platforms is falling in cost, how prediction markets may push the quant role from asset class specialty towards method specialty, and what separates a world model from a large language model when the environment gives continuous feedback. Follow Henry Atkins LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/henry-atkins/ Blogs Henry Recommends Stefan Schlamp, for interesting nuggets of financial data science and great storytelling: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stefanschlamp Aleksa Gordić, for big machine learning work: https://www.aleksagordic.com/blog Main Topics Covered Designing a systematic trading business before choosing a strategyWhat proprietary investors evaluate when there is no track recordRegulation as a way to buy trust over a short trading historyThe three buckets of running a fund, and why trading is the hardestWhy the infrastructure edge of large multi manager platforms is falling in costWhere AI helps a quant team and where tech debt breaks itStress testing a research pipeline with synthetic data and injected signalBracketing volume and slippage when you only have bar dataAsset class specialty versus method specialty as prediction markets widenWorld models, feedback driven learning, and what that could mean for marketsConnect With Us Instagram: https://instagram.com/amsterdaminvest LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/amsterdam-investment-club X: https://x.com/amsterdaminvest Subscribe for more conversations at the intersection of markets, research, and technology.

  6. Sep 1

    Merlijne Keuss – Global Payments Are Broken

    Merlijne Keuss joins The Sophron® Network for a practitioner-level hour on what it actually takes to get a real business settling on a regulated stablecoin. Her first job in any client conversation is not selling. It is working out whether a compliant euro or dollar token improves anything at all, and a fair amount of the time the honest answer is that it does not. Merlijne Keuss is a Business Development Manager at Quantoz, the Utrecht-based fintech and Dutch electronic money institution behind EURQ and USDQ, the MiCAR-compliant stablecoins supervised by De Nederlandsche Bank. She develops use cases, finds strategic partners, represents the firm at industry events, and works with clients from payment companies to real-world businesses worldwide. Before Quantoz she spent three years in business development at AssetCare, in the New Funds team specialising in fund setup and fund services. She holds a Master in Financial Econometrics and a Bachelor in Econometrics from the University of Amsterdam. We start with what developing a use case really means: mapping how a client moves money today, and what they are genuinely paying in FX margins, settlement fees and monthly charges that nobody has fully added up. The worked example is the live TerraPay flow from Europe to Ethiopia, where EURQ provides the regulated euro settlement leg over Xahau, Cooperative Bank of Oromia pays out in local currency, expensive pre-funded positions disappear, and every existing licence and compliance framework stays exactly where it was. From there we test the pitch. Cost is almost never what makes a business switch; settlement speed, counterparty risk and increasingly yield are. Regulation rarely wins a deal on its own, and MiCAR is a set of commercial constraints before it is an edge, which is why what you are really selling is trust. Roughly 99% of circulating stablecoin supply is dollar denominated, and inside SEPA a euro stablecoin has no problem to solve. We also discuss agentic and programmable payments, whether the chain matters to the businesses using it, treasury interoperability, accounting treatment as cash, and where adoption breaks open first: containers held in port until money lands, end of day settlement in oil and energy trading, and small remittances where 12 euro of SWIFT fees on a 20 euro payment simply does not work. Follow Merlijne KeussLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/merlijne-keuss-998a0a1ba/ Quantoz: https://www.quantoz.com Main Topics CoveredWhat developing a stablecoin use case involves, week to weekThe TerraPay remittance flow, Europe to Ethiopia, settled on XahauSettlement speed, counterparty risk and yield as the real switching driversOn-chain alternatives to money market funds, without DeFi riskDollar dominance in stablecoin supply, and what shifts itMiCAR as a commercial constraint, and selling trust rather than complianceTreasury interoperability and stablecoins accounted for as cashConnect With UsInstagram: https://instagram.com/amsterdaminvest LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/amsterdam-investment-club X: https://x.com/amsterdaminvest Subscribe for more conversations at the intersection of markets, research, and technology.

  7. Aug 25

    Martijn Bron – Inside The Wild West Of Cocoa Trading

    Martijn Bron joins The Sophron® Network to describe what physical commodity trading actually consists of, and how little of it resembles the version visible from outside. We start with a cocoa futures market that ran for years with no position limits and no delivery limits, where squeezes and corners were part of the furniture, and work through what it takes to hedge a global processing business inside a market like that. Martijn Bron is a commodity trading, risk and recruitment specialist, independent since 2023. He works as a headhunter in the commodity industry through his own practice, Maverack Talent Experts, consults for clients including Keystone, co-hosts the Strong Source commodity podcast with Vesper founder Alexander Sterk, and writes Vesper's bi-weekly cocoa market reports. Before going independent he spent 26 years at Cargill, seven of them as Global Head of Trading for Cargill Cocoa & Chocolate, a business of roughly 3,500 people. He joined in Amsterdam in 1997, traded European grains and oilseeds in Geneva, moved to cocoa in 2006, and spent around ten years on the exchange body governing the cocoa contract under LIFFE and later ICE. We examine merchandising, the part of the business almost never described properly: trading around an asset, where the decision is whether to run a factory, slow it down, or buy someone else's production. We look at why the price on the screen is a given and the job is the analysis before it, and why the purpose of price in commodities is to prevent a structural deficit or surplus. The conversation then turns to origin, following the crop from a farm in rural West Africa to the port and every way it can go wrong on the road, and to his argument that climate change is being used as a scapegoat for years of absent replanting and mismanaged tree stock. We close on the market as it stands now, and his advice to anyone speculating: think about what is your edge, not a hedge. Follow Martijn BronLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martijn-bron-77a4224/ Read The Full Write-Uphttps://www.amsterdaminvestmentclub.com/publications?id=ApWWx49UOD1QQ1hmFnWm&collection=The%20Sophron%20Network Core Timestamps00:00 - Welcome and introductions04:13 - Which commodity you start with, and why it does not matter09:34 - Cocoa as the Wild West: squeezes, corners, no position limits10:31 - Ten years on the exchange advisory body20:47 - Merchandising: trading around a factory23:51 - Where the money sits: basis, supply and demand, deep analysis28:40 - Why what gets called trading online is not trading30:07 - Confirmation bias mistaken for conviction40:26 - Cargill, Citadel, Optiver: three different business models45:56 - Turning an earnings call straight into a supply and demand balance49:24 - Why cocoa went up four times before the shelf price moved52:31 - Climate change as a scapegoat1:02:26 - El Niño, and a market moving six percent a day1:08:24 - Edge, not hedge Main Topics CoveredPhysical commodity trading and merchandising around assetsHedging, basis, correlation and the Texas hedgeExchange governance, squeezes and position limitsOrigin risk in Ghana and Ivory CoastAI applied to fundamental researchThe cocoa rally, the demand shock and the shelf price lagConnect With UsInstagram: https://instagram.com/amsterdaminvestLinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/amsterdam-investment-clubX: https://x.com/amsterdaminvest Subscribe for more conversations at the intersection of markets, research, and technology.

  8. Aug 20

    Cboe – What Most People Misunderstand About Options

    Raj Shah joins The Sophron® Network to correct the way most people frame options: not as levered stock trades, but as risk transfer contracts. Cboe created the listed options market in 1973. Raj is a Senior Instructor in its education division, The Options Institute. We use his correction as the way into how an options trade physically moves through the market, what the data actually says about 0DTE, and where options innovation goes next. Raj Shah is a Senior Strategy Associate and Senior Instructor with The Options Institute at Cboe Global Markets, the exchange group's educational arm. His work centres on breaking the mechanics of derivatives down to their component parts for investors, and he also oversees the team's education expansion into Europe. He has traded options personally for around eight years. We start with the mission of the Options Institute, which Raj frames as increasing investor IQ across asset classes, and his insistence that accessible means clear and structured rather than easy. From there: the three main reasons anyone uses options, a worked covered call showing what risk transfer actually is, and his argument that business schools open with pricing formulas when the real world risk lives in market structure, clearing and margin. The middle of the episode is a full walk through of an SPX trade, from the buy button to settlement. We then turn to 0DTE, where Raj explains that it is not a new instrument at all, and gives the numbers behind its growth from Cboe's Derivatives Market Intelligence research. We close on product governance at Cboe, what digital asset markets could take from fifty years of listed derivatives, and why prices are outputs of the market rather than the reason markets exist. Follow Raj ShahLinkedIn Core Timestamps00:00 - Welcome and introductions03:33 - The mission of the Options Institute06:38 - The three reasons people use options07:14 - The biggest misconception about options07:57 - Risk transfer explained with a covered call11:57 - What business schools get wrong16:19 - Building blocks: definitions first, then the math19:18 - What happens after you hit buy on an SPX option25:05 - The central limit order book, and mark to market27:47 - What 0DTE options actually are29:43 - From roughly 20% to roughly 60% of total SPX volume31:32 - Why anyone trades an option that expires today35:17 - Gamma, and why 0DTE moves the way it does37:20 - Who is actually trading 0DTE40:58 - What comes after 0DTE46:46 - When Cboe decides not to launch a product50:17 - What digital asset markets could take from TradFi55:07 - Prices are outputs, not the reason markets exist From CboeThe Options Institute Learning Portal Cboe Derivatives Market Intelligence Connect With UsInstagram: https://instagram.com/amsterdaminvestLinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/amsterdam-investment-clubX: https://x.com/amsterdaminvest Subscribe for more conversations at the intersection of markets, research, and technology.

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Direct insights from experts in the trading, quant, and finance industry.

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  • Creator
    The Sophron Network
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    28
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © The Sophron Network
  • Show Website
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