Background

Body and mind, early.

I started reading philosophy at seven and training martial arts at twelve — not as hobbies, but as a way of living. One taught me to sit with a hard question without flinching; the other taught me discipline, and what it costs to be undefended. Long before markets, I was already learning to observe, to adapt, and to stay honest about where I actually stood.

A different kind of math.

I was always good at math, but never the memorize-the-formula kind. I loved it the way I loved philosophy — as logic, as a way of thinking about the world. That instinct, to look for the principle underneath the rule instead of the rule itself, is the same one I bring to markets now.

Finance, found abroad.

Finance found me later, through engineering and business degrees abroad in France — which drew me onward to Dubai, then Boston, to specialize. Somewhere in there, the knowledge of body and mind became a personal practice, and finance became the field where I could finally put the way I think to work.

A global education in people.

I've lived and travelled across China, the US, Europe, and North and West Africa. That taught me as much as any classroom — how people differ, how cultures move, how behavior repeats and where it suddenly doesn't. Learning to read people turned out to be good training for learning to read markets.

How it all folds into the work.

When I specialized in analytics, I stopped seeing the world as a fixed science with permanent laws. Markets — like most things — run on behavior: ever-changing, context-dependent. So I keep my pattern-recognition sharp, apply what I know with humility, and readapt when the context shifts. That isn't a technique I picked up in finance. It's just how I've always tried to live.