Kris Sidial🇺🇸

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@Ksidiii

Co-CIO of Ambrus| (Focus: Volatility Trading / Tail risk hedging )| @penn guy ( These are my personal thoughts and not the opinions of Ambrus)

Follower of Christ ...New York ambrusgroup.com Joined October 2013

878 Following 88K Followers 20K Posts

Latest posts 5

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Kris Sidial🇺🇸 @Ksidiii Aug 28

A little about me: I got started in the volatility trading business about 13 years ago, initially as the sole junior trader to Robert Kanter. From there, I went on to trade at several proprietary trading firms. After having the best year of my trading career, about six years ago, a few partners and I decided to start our own hedge fund.

I like to think I’ve established myself as one of the top volatility traders in my space. Along the way, I’ve been fortunate to receive a few industry awards, recognition, and backings for what I’ve been able to accomplish throughout my career as a trader.

My focus on this app is pretty simple: to have interesting discussions with other traders and PMs, help younger traders navigate their own journeys, and share some of the volatility trading philosophies and lessons that have served me well throughout my career.

Kris Sidial🇺🇸 @Ksidiii 2d

One part of my trading that I take a lot of pride in is keeping the old school approach of picking up the phone and calling around. It has become a lost art, but I think there’s tremendous value in understanding the street, its agents, their tendencies, and how they’re seeing things.

Over the weekend or after the close on a meaningful day, I like to connect with friends and peers who work at:

Market-making shops

IDB desks

Mid sized RIAs

Larger Wealth platforms

Multi-strats

Single manager Hedge funds

Pensions, endowments, insurance etc

I’m always interested in hearing how they’re seeing things, and I’m ALWAYS open to sharing what I’m seeing and why. The value comes from making it a two way street. You have to be willing to share in order to receive.

Of course, we rely on a ton of data and have our own internal models to help interpret flows and positioning. But those conversations are a key part of testing whether what we’re hearing and seeing across the street supports or challenges what our systems are telling us.

That’s also why I’m always open to attending industry conferences, listening to a broad range of podcasts, and hearing views that oppose my own. Understanding how other participants think, what drives their decisions, and where they disagree with you is part of the work.

It’s all one big game and the more color on the street you can get, the better informed your decision making can be.

Kris Sidial🇺🇸 @Ksidiii 2d

Now that we saw the market drop 4% in a day with a few pod shop liquidations, we can now circle back to the point I was making in this post, the majority of the street was NOT betting lower, it was and still is the complete opposite!

All the horrible sell side data in the weeks prior were talking about how hedge fund exposures were “LOW” and how short based bets were super high lol.

Dive into the thread. It should serve as a good learning lesson.

Kris Sidial🇺🇸 Verified account @Ksidiii Oct 24

Everyone who keeps sharing these short interest charts is missing the flows behind them. Most shops are not taking outright short bets. This is another effort to ease margin requirements across the street: banks providing balance sheet for more speculative bets are asking clients to post more short exposure.

The sequence on the street looks like this:

HF manager: “I want more margin.”

Bank: “Things look risky in public AI bets, and we’re already lending a lot against private AI bets. For some clients, we’ll extend more financing, but only if they add more short exposure to improve their collateral scores.”

HF manager: “Okay, I’ll short more stock against my main bet.”

That is how you end up with short exposures that look astronomically high while many end users remain heavily long tech. The additional shorts are supporting the financing of their main bets.

Which also tells the bigger story on why raw equity financing rates haven’t blown out the way they did ahead of the big SpaceX IPO in June, despite the fact that lending is slowing.

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Kris Sidial🇺🇸 @Ksidiii 3d

A vol trader is similar to a surfer in the respect that in order to have a good time, you need waves. And as the saying goes “upside vol is still vol”.

Trade em well everyone! 🫡

Kris Sidial🇺🇸 @Ksidiii 4d

Coincidental but great day to be 2025 and 2026 volatility hedge fund of the year!

😂😂😂🙏🏾

Kris Sidial🇺🇸 Verified account @Ksidiii 4d

For the second year in a row Ambrus won Volatility hedge fund of the year!!!!

Super grateful for all of our investors that continue to trust us and allow us to perform the way we do as a vol hedge fund that specializes in carry-neutral tail risk hedging.

When we started this business 6 years ago, our goal was to bridge the gap between the art of tail risk hedging and good volatility trading. Truly humbling to reflect on how far we have come as a firm.

Lots of more work to do, and we will continue to keep our heads down and do it.

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