How to find your arbitrage (from the guy who’s done it 3x) ft. Nick Kokonas

“I got a great name for a restaurant. Awesome. That's terrific. Make the 50 sauces. You know. Have you ever read that book, Art and Fear? I think they use this pottery class example. Do you know this story? I don't. Perfect example for this. So the story is there's a professor in Florida at university.”

“You woke up every day at 5:30 in the morning and I, you know, got on the floor at 6:30, and it was game day, and I was fueled by espresso and agitas. And, you know, like, I was just like, yo, you found this thing. Let's go. Right. Right. And one of the things that, you know, my dad was still around then.”

“When he finally wrote about something I actually knew about, I went, oh, this is all wrong. Flashboys is all bullshit. Because if you show up and start asking traders, hey, how did you do that? And you engender their trust in order to betray it because they know you're going to write a book.”

“Like, I just went, that's it. I thought nothing more of it. Right. But we exchanged books. He sent me a book he wrote called Finding Real Magic. He went to India. I read it after you recognized unbelievable book. Wonderful guy, like great thinker, great everything. And then he was working as a consultant on building magic for David Blaine.”

Our IdentificationSaid as “Finding Real Magic”. We believe this refers to Here Is Real Magic: A Magician's Search for Wonder in the Modern World.

“So this book called Market Wizards. It's one of the rare trading books that's great. Now, everything in it's out of date in terms of the process of like the floor traders and all that. But what's not out of date with the Market Wizards book, the mentality of the people that he profiles in there and interviews is great.”

“The two brothers actually told me this. So the first brother is the guy who started native deodorant, Moise Ali. And when he decided he was going to go start a deodorant company, his friend was like, weird. Yeah, weird. No offense, Philip. Yeah, yeah. Right. When I think deodorant, you're not the guy that comes to mind.”