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Jerry Marlow, MBA 3 Washington Square Village Suite 10G New York, New York 10012 (917) 817-8659
Dear Sir or Ms., How well do pension-fund trustees, registered investment advisors and other investment managers understand your quantitative investment strategies? Reader responses to my book Option Pricing: Black-Scholes Made Easy (Wiley Trading) convey how my approach to financial communication educates and inspires: “Simply wonderful stuff!!” “So many things click into place so quickly, it's marvelous. I feel I could go for the next Nobel prize myself!.” “A deep insight into the price process pops out clearly.” “I knew Black-Scholes's option-pricing model was important and used it every day in my trading, but never knew why or how it worked. Your book and CD-ROM provided me clear understanding.” “I like your writing style. You express complex ideas in easy words.” “If I can appreciate and understand Black Scholes, anyone can. Now I feel that I am in the world of Einstein.” While most writing about quantitative finance quickly plunges into intricate stochastic-calculus formulas and arcane issues of calibrating models to markets, I explain quantitative finance conceptually and graphically. I keep adding human psychology and behavior into the story. I can make the people you’re trying to reach feel smart, not stupid. When quantitative finance is explained graphically and conceptually, non-mathematicians can understand it. For me, the fundamental concepts of financial modeling, asset valuation and risk management are these: Every financial forecast is a probability distribution. To value a financial asset or liability is to evaluate its probability distribution. The value of every financial asset is the probability-weighted present value of its future cash flows. Under risk-neutral, non-arbitrage assumptions, future values are discounted at the risk-free rate. The process by which an asset’s price path evolves determines the shape of that asset’s probability distribution. Hence, how one models an asset’s price process largely determines the value of that asset and the value of derivatives written on it. To be useful, a financial model must not only capture a price process accurately, its implementation must provide a way to calibrate the model to current market conditions. Especially for multi-factor models, calibration can be a daunting task. The more accurately a financial firm can model price processes, the more accurately it can value assets and the more profitably it can trade assets. If a trader has superior modeling capabilities, he or she can perform structural arbitrage of probability distributions against other financial firms that have inferior modeling capabilities. A portfolio’s value at risk over a given time horizon is ordinarily measured as the loss to the portfolio were the value of the portfolio to reach the bottom 5% or 1% of the portfolio’s probability distribution. To hedge their trading positions and otherwise manage risks, traders need the ability to calculate hedge ratios for their assets. How good those hedge ratios are depends on how well the model that the trader uses captures the asset’s price process. Price processes change over time. A valuation and hedging model that worked well at one point in time may fail to give good values under different market conditions. The financial markets are auctions. What gets auctioned off in the financial markets is market participants’ expectations about the future. In the stock market, expectations about corporations’ future profits or earnings get auctioned off. In the options markets, expectations about assets’ future price volatilities get auctioned off. In fixed-income markets, expectations about how the yield curve might evolve in the future get auctioned off. Ultimately, many financial models are attempting to model auction behavior. Many different events can change market participants’ expectations about the future. To your communications team and to your firm, I can bring a strong conceptual understanding of quantitative finance, derivatives and risk management. I am knowledgeable about the financial crisis and investors’ concerns. My writing has educated investors about the advantages of investing in global portfolios that include commodities, currencies and absolute-return strategies. In my writing, I have helped investment firms educate high-net-worth individuals about derivative securities and derivatives-based investment strategies. Pre subprime era— when the main worry was that homeowners would repay their mortgages too soon— my writing educated pension-fund trustees about interest-rate and prepayment models. Presentations I created persuaded pension-fund trustees to invest in collateralized mortgage obligations (CMOs). My writing has helped persuade funds of funds and individuals to invest in a hedge fund's structural-arbitrage option-trading strategy. My writing has convinced high-net-worth individuals around the world to invest in a globally balanced portfolio-management strategy that— regardless of market conditions— holds the portfolio's volatility constant and lets its expected return fluctuate with market conditions. My marketing writing has always been well received. A client told me that, at the end of one marketing presentation I wrote for him, a theretofore unknown investor in the audience came forward and, on the basis of the presentation, asked to put $2,000,000 of his family’s wealth under management. Chances are, I can meet with you and your colleagues and put into writing as much information as you think prudent about your quantitative investment strategies. I can write in a way that your clients and prospective clients can understand. I can write in a way that inspires client confidence in your asset-management capabilities. If you want to get your clients excited about the asset-management strategies that you’re excited about, let me write for you. Let's talk. Give me a call or send me an email. My resume follows. I can work for you as a consultant at $100 per hour or will consider a staff position that offers a salary above $100k plus the opportunity to earn a bonus. To see samples of my writing, go to www.jerrymarlow.com. I look forward to hearing from you.
With best personal regards, Resume Jerry Marlow 3 Washington Square Village Suite 10G New York, New York 10012 (917) 817-8659
Job Objective Position as a financial writer and/or marketing manager for a quantitative investment firm. Position in which my main responsibility is to create marketing communications that educate and inspire high-net-worth individuals and institutional investors to choose your firm to manage their assets. Education 9/79 to 1/81
10/72 Professional Accomplishments 1/86 to present Freelance financial writer, speech writer, marketing writer, financial modeler, presentation designer Specialize in creating pitch books and other marketing presentations for asset-management firms, writing about financial modeling and explaining derivatives. Write web sites for asset-management firms. Have written extensive web copy to market asset-management services to high-net-worth individuals and families. Writing educational material on how to trade FX options. Wrote, designed and produced marketing and management presentations for head of Private Banking at Bankers Trust Company (now Deutsche Bank). Created presentations for investment-firm principals, managing directors and finance professors to use at Institutional Investor and other industry conferences. Topics have included: portfolio management, derivatives-based trading strategies, structured products, retirement services, retirement risk management, equity swaps, collateralized mortgage obligations (CMOs) and industry roll ups. Developed pitch book for hedge fund that trades index options. Wrote Option Pricing: Black-Scholes Made Easy— A Visual Way to Understand Stock Options, Option Prices, and Stock-market Volatility. Developed modeling software to accompany book. Published by John Wiley & Sons. Developed presentation software that captures option-market simulations and uses simulations to explain option-trading strategies. Edited white papers by finance professors and executives. Valued stock options in divorce proceedings and other litigation. Give seminars on options-pricing theory and on how to value stock options in divorce proceedings. Conceived, researched and wrote web site for California real-estate developer. Site educates community groups and residents about real-estate development and land-use laws and development approval processes. To speed projects through community and government approval, web site educates and encourages community groups and residents to participate more efficiently and effectively in the project-approval process. Researched, wrote and created web site to sell condominiums in depressed real-estate market. Wrote, designed and produced management-strategy and staff-development presentations for Bankers Trust Company and Sallie Mae. Wrote brochure to recruit elite college graduates to be technological bankers at Bankers Trust Company. For all projects, interviewed senior management. 4/81 - 1/86 Bankers Trust Company (now Deutsche Bank), NY, NY Wrote promotional brochures and produced slide shows to market trust services, corporate cash-management services and international clearing services. Managed brochures through graphic design and printing. Wrote and produced staff-development presentations. Managed advertising and promotion budget. Hired and managed staff of one graphic designer. 4/78 - 4/81 Chemical Bank (Now JP Morgan Chase), New York, NY Wrote brochures to market cash-management services, portfolio-management services and international consulting services. Produced slide shows. One showed how, using a system of the bank’s design, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) manages cash flows in one hundred, sixty-six currencies. 6/77 - 4/78 D/J Brush Associates, New York, NY Performed statistical analysis of survey of corporations on their uses of non-broadcast video. Produced videos for corporate clients. Computer skills Microsoft PowerPoint 2007, Word 2007, Excel 2007; Adobe Director/Shockwave, Fireworks, Dreamweaver. References furnished upon request. |