Josh Giersch
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josh.sg
Josh Giersch
@josh.sg
3.5K followers 210 following 52 posts
I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. AUD vol on a 40 handle. Crypto basis swaps. BNPL burrito taxis. Cloudwatch bills the size of a phone number. Memories, tears in rain, etc. etc.
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josh.sg
No, you should use dollar swaps!

*yoinked offstage by a giant vaudeville hook*
"Should you use ChatGPT to hedge a new issue?"
February 9, 2026 at 4:22 PM
josh.sg
Bonus: a couple of photos from Hearst Castle, WR Hearst's gargantuan folly on the hills above St Simeon. First photo is the main house (yes, really); second is a detail of the tiling on the floor of the Roman Pool room, a lil' crab made from gold and blue-glass tiles.
The main building of the Hearst Castle complex, a gigantic mock-Spanish pile with a pair of hundred-foot-high bell towers surrounding a front door that tries to be, but isn't, on par with the entrance to Gaudi's Sagrada Família. Palm trees are scattered around the building, and a crowd mills on the steps below, possibly wondering what possessed William Randolph Hearst to build this incoherent pile. A crab, rendered in small square gold tiles, stands out against a background of the same-sized tiles in deep cobalt-blue glass. The crab's eyes are downturned, making it look grumpy, but it's also very cute.
January 23, 2026 at 6:40 PM
josh.sg
Went for a drive up California highway 1, freshly reopened after a three-year closure due to a slight case of "the road's fallen into the ocean. AGAIN".

Am delighted to report that CA-1 is still one of the top two or three roads in America.
Bixby Bridge at Big Sur, a dramatic arched bridge over a deep coastal canyon. The panorama is lit by a golden sunset. A bush of small blue flowers is lit from behind by a bright-gold sunset. A dark photo of a field of white calla lilies, standing out against the dark-green background and foliage. A sunset over the ocean; the land is silhouetted, and the sun, right on the horizon, is lighting up the trailing edges of clouds in the sky.
January 23, 2026 at 6:35 PM
josh.sg
I've learned to accept that I'm basically Ned Flanders
January 3, 2026 at 7:05 AM
josh.sg
time to commence my annual ritual of cursing at TurboTax and threatening to "short $INTU to zero" for four months
A screenshot of Intuit TurboTax, suggesting that I'll be able to finish my taxes in an hour and thirty-two minutes. There is an inexplicable popup that labels the picture as "race mode activation".
January 3, 2026 at 1:59 AM
josh.sg
Met some more of the locals in Dubai.

(Shout out to the Dubai Desert Conservation Reserve, and the Al-Maha Desert Resort. Absolute bucket-list stuff.)
An Arabian gazelle is looking straight at the camera. It has slender black horns, a very soft face with dramatic white eyeliner, and ridiculously huge ears that look like variegated leaves. An Arabian gazelle, standing in desert sand, looking straight at the camera. It has small horns, and looks young. A brown eagle is looking straight at the camera in close-up. It has a bright yellow beak with a black tip, and looks distinctly unhappy with you. An eagle is resting on its handler's arm. the handler is looking away from camera and wearing a thick leather glove to protect himself from the talons; the eagle is a ruddy brown, and has its wings spread wide to help itself balance.
December 7, 2025 at 12:54 PM
josh.sg
Went to Dubai and met some locals.
A falcon, wings spread and its eyes intently focused, perches on a glove on the arm of its keeper. The keeper is a young woman, wearing sunglasses, smiling proudly at the falcon. A falcon in dramatic quarter-profile view, seen from below, with its wings spread, showing off its mottled plumage. A falcon perching on a small metal stand, seen in profile. Its eye is looking straight at the camera; its wings and closed around its body; and there's a tiny piece of meat on its beak.
December 7, 2025 at 6:03 AM
josh.sg
oh no
A screenshot from the above Bloomberg article. "The pensions regulator had been monitoring the swaps contracts based on their nominal value, rather than the risk. If the yield curve were flat, a one-year swap contract and a 10-year swap contract may have the same notional value outstanding, but the dollar value at risk for the 10-year would be far higher. The correct way to hedge a swap is with another swap of equal risk, not equal nominal outstanding."
November 25, 2025 at 9:19 PM
josh.sg
mfw the sticky-delta starts to come unstuck
November 17, 2025 at 11:19 PM
josh.sg
A sign in the style of Zohran Mamdani’s “Zohran for New York City” posters but it says “Wicked for Good”
November 8, 2025 at 11:37 PM
josh.sg
Bloomberg After Dark
A screenshot from a Bloomberg article. It reads “I’m a little embarrassed by this, but I love Dick’s,” one fellow soccer dad tells me. “When we walk in I say ‘I love Dicks”
October 10, 2025 at 5:06 PM
josh.sg
oh hey I have Sora 2 access
October 5, 2025 at 8:22 PM
josh.sg
It’s October 3rd.
A still from the movie Mean Girls. Cady Heron, played by Lindsay Lohan, is saying “it’s October 3rd”.
October 3, 2025 at 3:31 PM
josh.sg
Went for a wander up the top of Rock Creek Road—the highest paved road in California, and home to some truly exceptional fall colors.

Rock Creek Road peaks at ~10,200 feet, 3,000 feet above the valley floor below, so the aspens up top change color 2–3 weeks before those lower down.
An aspen tree, with a slender white trunk, is fully covered in yellow and orange autumn foliage. It's surrounded by dark-green pine trees, and the scene is reflected in a lake in the foreground. A stand of aspens in the foreground is lit up in red, orange, and yellow autumnal shades. Behind it, a pine forest stretches for miles toward a distant mountain range. Fallen aspen leaves in fall colors - light lemon yellow, rich goldenrod, orange, and peach - are scattered like a Jackson Pollock painting on a black background.
September 29, 2025 at 4:32 PM
josh.sg
Went for a wander up in the White Mountains, to see the bristlecone pines.
A dead bristlecone pine tree, shot from near its base, in dramatic perspective against a partly cloudy sky. The tree is tall and gnarled, and the wood is striated with light-blonde and dark-gray streaks. A dead bristlecone pine tree, shot from a higher elevation, in sharp focus against a sparse, scrubby landscape of mountain grass. The tree's skeleton is gnarled, with blonde and gray stripes through its wood. A wide-angle photo of the Patriarch Tree, the largest bristlecone pine in the world, shot against a brilliantly blue sky. The tree looks like it has five trunks, and is a deep coniferous green; it towers over the moonscape-like scene, with another dead bristlecone in the background; in the foreground, a shaded plaque describing the tree is inset in a block of what looks like marble. A branch of a bristlecone pine tree is in sharp focus against a blurred background of other branches. The branch has a prominent cone pointing from its tip, dark purple in sharp contrast to the green of the pine branch, with crystalline resin forming stalactites from the cone.
September 28, 2025 at 9:49 PM
josh.sg
”Lack of vol is crushing the economics of FX desks” is the same theme we heard in 2010-2018 to justify desks pulling back from market-making. I don’t think it’s wrong right now, but it *is* cyclical, and FX vol will come back.

www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
Advancements in electronic trading may be crushing volatility in the currency market, making prolonged wild swings a thing of the past. That’s the view of some of the participants at an annual industry shindig in Barcelona this week, where the impact of growing automation and algorithmic trading were the hot topics. Some warned that the lack of dramatic action creates the risk that market makers may exit as it becomes harder to generate profits.
September 19, 2025 at 2:36 PM
josh.sg
Went for a wander up Mount Shasta. Quite nice.
A long-exposure picture of star trails circling above the peak of Mount Shasta. Polaris, the center of the circle, is in the top left; down the bottom, the ground is lit in an eerie red, and two trees are silhouetted against the sky, one on each side of the frame. Mount Shasta towers above the carpark at the Bunny Flat trailhead. There's a forest in the middle-ground, and the bare, treeless peak towers above it. A Mount Shasta mountainscape, with a treeless range of mountains on the right towering above a sparse scattering of conifers. In the foreground, a path with an "Old Ski Bowl Trail" sign leads off into the distance toward the mountains.
September 17, 2025 at 11:32 PM
josh.sg
Went for a wander at Pinnacles National Park.
Two Acorn Woodpeckers - black birds with white undersides and prominent red heads - are sitting on a branch. In the background, the trunk of the tree they're sitting on is pockmarked with holes drilled by other woodpeckers. A buck deer with four-point antlers is sitting in a field of dry grass, looking directly at the camera. His mouth is slightly lopsided, because he's in the middle of chewing a mouthful of food.
September 13, 2025 at 10:07 PM
josh.sg
Went for a wander on a gray morning out at Half Moon Bay
A half-sunken ship, weathered by time and salt spray, sits listing in the calm water of a harbor. An excited dog is caught mid-leap, splashing into the ocean. A common-or-garden sparrow, caught in shallow depth-of-field, sits on a branch.
September 3, 2025 at 6:44 PM
josh.sg
Went for a walk in the Hayward Shoreline marshes this morning and met the locals.
A squirrel pokes his head up from behind some dry grass, looking intently at the viewer, his ears perked as though he's suspicious of something. A brilliant-white Great Heron in flight, seen from below, its wings fully spread with some light diffusing through the wing feathers.
August 29, 2025 at 9:13 PM