The aim of this article is to motivate people to stay committed to their goals. People often have a false notion that there is something called as overnight success. What they fail to realize is that success, like all great things, is a function of time, dedication, commitment and hard work.
Before I list out my accomplishments for 2020 and set my goals for 2021, I would like to tell one and all to “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish!” Get rid of “I will try” attitude. There is no such thing as trying. Either you do. Or you don’t. Commitment is in doing. Success is in commitment. “Dream Big!”
Some of the milestones achieved last year are:
1) I got an opportunity to present a 2 day quantitative trading seminar at IIT Bombay on system driven trading. The response to the seminar was phenomenal and far beyond what I expected. Being a introvert, I always shied away from speaking on the stage and this was my first public speaking appearance & learnt the importance of developing soft skills.
2 ) Seeing my posts on social media about the seminar at IIT Bombay, I was approached by JBIMS, a top MBA institute to share my insights on system driven and markets for their MBA students. This made me realize the importance of brand building and self-promotion.
3) Samir Doshi, CEO of Marwardi Shares and Finance Ltd., a multi-million dollar trading desk , saw my post of IIT Bombay on Linkedin and asked if I could train his traders on how to build trading systems & be more system driven. That’s how I got introduced to training large proprietary trading desks.
4) Seeing my post of training Marwadi Shares, I got approached by head trader of KIFS ( a large proprietary trading desk) to train their traders on the same. It’s one of the best trading desk I have been to till date. I personally learnt a lot & built a great network of traders
5) All my posts were now being noticed by many & got approached by the secretary of Investment Fund Club from IIM Bangalore. I loved the campus and my dream to get into IIM ( only for a day though) got fulfilled.
6) Earlier I was approaching colleges but now colleges had started to approach me 😃 . Got approached by IIT Delhi for a quantitative trading workshop. The economics club head said that he has never such a positive feedback for any workshop held by them.
7) Got associated with Shri Ram College, one of the best commerce college in the country as a Knowledge partner for their economics summit.
8) Then came the big breakthrough E-Summit, hosted by the E-Cell, IIT Bombay,which is Asia’s largest Entrepreneurship promoting college body, approached me to be one of the speakers. The speakers list included prominent personalities such as : Anurag Kashyap(Indian Filmmaker), Rishad Premji (Chariman Wipro Limited), Ashish Chanchalani (Popular Youtuber), Ashish Chauhan(CEO BSEIndia), Manish Maheswari (MD Twitter India), Gunjan Samtani (Head Goldman Sachs India) amongst others. I was honoured and humbled to be one of the speakers.
9) I was invited to be on the Panel List at University of Mumbai for a discussion on ‘Disruptive Innovation in the Financial World’ The panel had Lakshmi Iyer, CIO of Kotak AMC managing 11 billion $, Dr. Satvinder Madhok CTO of Barclays, amongst others.
10) I was interviewed by moneycontrol.com, a popular finance website and app, where my trading journey was captured and my story of trials and tribulations was documented. Here’s the article link :
https://medium.com/@hello_74789/sourabh-sisodiyas-trading-journey-by-money-control-617f1c5dcde4
11) I was invited by BSE India to conduct a webinar on Advanced Derivatives where I discussed volatility and theta decay strategies.
12) I launched a course on Learnapp where I taught a option trading strategy on how to capture intraday time decay & how to manage risk while trading options. The platform has mentors like Ashish Chauhan (CEO, BSE), Ramdeo Agarwal (Chairman of Motilal Oswal), Nitin Kamath (CEO Zerodha)
13) I conducted a session on Quant & Algo Trading for employees of Futures First, one of the largest firms involved in the derivatives industry, trading 25 international exchanges, across more than 150 product markets, spread over 15 time zones.It was a great opportunity to connect with some of the top traders in the world.
14) I was invited to be a speaker at Algo Convention, a prestigious annual Convention on Algorithmic Trading in India.
15) CFA Charter is deemed to be the gold standard in the field of investment analysis. I received my CFA Charter after meeting all the necessary requirements.
16) I was invited to be a guest speaker at Option Symposium, India’s largest option trading conference, organized by Quantsapp
17) I was invited by CNBC Awaaz,India’s top business channel to appear on their popular show Khiladi Number One. It’s a show based on a competition format between 3 analysts. I won the competition in my very 1st appearance. My mother was overwhelmed by my appearance on Television and thinks that I am a celebrity now.
I am a nobody & there are people who have accomplished much more than me. All I want to say is that: If you have not been able to get success yet, don’t lose hope & keep hustling. You eventually get what you want.
My goals for this year are:
1. To deliver a TED talk
2. To hustle hard enough that I may feature in In Forbes Under 30
3. To get a Silver button from Youtube. Silver button is given once you have 1lakh subscribers.
Hope that this article inspires you to become the best version of yourself!
