i worked for several wsf's and seldom made more than low wages, but what i gained was worth everything and more than money.
this guy http://stanfinney.com told me i should be paying him, when asked why he said your going to leave one day with your stuff and my stuff basically. he was right and i thank and think of him every moment for that opportunity. if you want to learn to trade shine the shoes of someone who actually does it (trading) well. don't screw around with salesmen who are peddling the services of the company. set with the guy calling the shots making the money. then if you have a brain you can make it.
"never paid a penny on capital gains " what instruments can be traded in HK without paying capital gains?
1. A finance professor has negative income growth in real term; 2. The sharpe ratio is rather high due to job protection with tenure; 3. The hourly rate is also quite high since all teaching can be done in 30 days of work at the pace of Wall Street (5 hours of teaching per week for 30 weeks and another 5 hours for grading and preparation); 4. However it is not so easy to leverage. Remember the optimal kelly position is sharpe ratio divided by std dev. The stdev is so low, and the optimal leverage is very high. But you cannot do 10 tenured professor job at the same time to earn 2 mill a year. 5. When you consult or do other things, the sharpe ratio goes down, but still in tolerable range. The income will be much higher. njrookie
Actually this is not true. At least in finance. Professors have many ways to leverage. Many of them publish research. Many write books. Hell half of them are active traders making more money trading then teaching. Many make money, lots of money, giving speeches. Honestly, the income is endless. That's not to say all of them take advantage of it, but it's there. Some of you guys are forgetting, these guys have a "lot" of free time. There is nothing really stopping them from trading as much as anyone on here does. In fact the irony is, over the years, many hedge funds tried to lure some of the smarter academics away from their ivory towers and most of them never took the bait as they were better off where they were. Let me add one other variable here. Most of these professors, although not all, live in small college towns where they are essentially rock stocks in their communities. Where as the avg grunt in NY or London gets spit on by most of the surrounding liberals who deem them nothing more then a sycophant to society. Don't underestimate the satisfaction one gets from having their ego stroked. You can't really put a price tag on that.
A simple google search would have answered that question ;-) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_gains_tax#Hong_Kong
Sorry but I do not buy your story. The very few who choose academic careers over the private sector due to their true passion and drive to research and eventually publish groundbreaking developments can be counted on one hand globally in a ten year span. Obviously, the net worth that comes along with a career of a professional in finance, consulting, technology, anything, is a lot higher than the net worth of most any tenured professor. This leaves me with the conclusion that most in academics are there because it leaves them with a convenient, lower stress life style while it comfortably places them in the middle to upper-middle class in terms of net worth. Nothing wrong with that at all but they are on a scale closer to the one choosing a relaxing life style on a deserted island than someone trying to bring the best out of him/herself. And it comes again down to the 90-95% of people who tried to reach the mountain top or know they cannot reach it and instead settle with less but at least the second best choice. See, only look at the attitude of your average professor or researcher. Do most strike you as being engaged, highly passionate and motivated or do they mostly come across with an attitude of "I hope the damn office hours are over soon" or "I do not really care what you guys think of my lecture or research"? Someone who is engaged and who has a genuine love for what they do reflect their passion in anything they say and do. Just think about that for a moment and tell me how many of 100 research papers you came across most recently strike you as noteworthy of keeping or bookmarking...
i propose being an academic and being a trader is a oxymoron. yes there are some exceptions, but this board if full of idiots with phd's.