writing — essays on derivatives, RWAs & market structure

Momentum, low-volatility, and quality are documented across dozens of markets — then a large fraction of the premium evaporates, or inverts, on the NSE. A math-first account of why: net-of-cost alpha and breakeven turnover, the STT floor that taxes turnover not profit, the square-root impact law under thin promoter-locked float, momentum crash risk, betting-against-beta, and the constraints (price bands, F&O ban periods, borrow) the backtest leaves out. The rule that falls out: in a high-cost market, slow factors win.

The SEC is days from publishing an innovation exemption that will let crypto platforms wrap US public equities into on-chain tokens without the underlying company's consent. The headline reads as deregulation. The mechanism is the depository-receipt model from 1927, on a new ledger. Why the rights-passthrough condition is the load-bearing part, what this changes for DeFi and 24/7 equity trading, and what it doesn't change for private-company synthetics.

Anthropic cleared at $1.4T in secondary. The Anthropic prestock on Jupiter trades at roughly a third of that with 200%+ APR funding, and Hyperliquid pre-launch perps regularly hit four-digit APR. Why these prices price first-day float clearing and forced sellers, not project value — and what the same misreading is already costing on-chain.

SEBI alleged Jane Street made ~₹36,500 crore manipulating Indian weekly index options. The trade is mechanically simple, the math is freshman options, and the reason it worked at this size is a structural quirk of the Indian market.

Tokenized stocks have existed for over five years. They mostly don't work. The structural fixes — primary issuance, real institutional liquidity, dividend pass-through — and what it takes to actually put real assets on-chain.

Dating apps are markets in attention, but they've been designed as if the spread doesn't exist. Adverse selection, toxic flow, and the case for an AI matchmaker — Aria — as a market maker.

On-chain options remain a rounding error in crypto derivatives volume. The reason isn't lack of demand — it's that AMM designs leak capital to informed flow during oracle lag. A look at LVR, endogenous implied volatility, and what to do about it.