I concluded my (first) trip to Mexico City last Sunday, arriving here in the suburbs of Salt Lake City, Utah staying at my friend Ari’s childhood home. Even after two months I felt a bit of sadness in leaving CDMX; I was missing out on major items on my list of things that I wanted to try. Luckily I’m planning to go back soon, so I was able to let the fomo abate.
I forgot how nice it is here (Sandy, UT), even though I was here for several months last summer. It’s easy to remember gratitude having access to several great coffee shops, a great gym, Whole Foods, nice people, and the snow-capped-mountains as a visual backdrop everyday. It’s almost too idyllic and nice here sometimes. I could easily live here if I ever wanted to settle back down in the continental US.
If you ever visit this region some of my coffee recommendations are: Alpha Coffee, Honeysuckle, La Barba, The Bean Yard, and Publik Coffee Roasters. If you workout definitely get a 1/2/4 week pass at Xcel Fitness, and there’s pretty much infinite hiking in every direction. The only tricky thing here is socializing (compared to San Juan, PR or Mexico City where you walk everyday and you can just step outside your door to find a party/congregation of people), but I got invited to a fun poker game, and I think there’s a lot of meetups/other things, I’ve just been lazy to try as I’m here for a short period. People are noticeably very nice here, so I’m sure I could have a busy social schedule with a tiny bit of effort.
The slower pace in Utah has allowed me to reassess my lifestyle as I frequently need to do. My stock trading has been going decently well, but it’s been slow for the past few weeks. I have pretty good algorithms that are working as expected. I’m working on new crypto trading algorithms based off of my stock ones, and the initial versions are significantly better performing (on historical back tests) than my stock algorithms. This makes sense because there’s been way more volatility in crypto recently, and the markets are more fragmented. I’m on 5th drafts or so of Machine Learning algorithms for a bunch of different time frames and different strategies in crypto, but I got a bit overwhelmed. I realized this past weekend it’s better now that I hone in each week on one time frame and one strategy, and revise/implement things to a working basis instead of creating more and more half-finished algorithms.
I’ve been producing new work and improving my trading business, but I can definitely pick up the pace a little bit. In particular with the crypto trading at the moment the only thing holding me back from what I believe will be significant gains is putting in the hours to get my new algorithms to a “good enough” state. The impending travel/change of locations has allowed me to default to a bit of a more time-wasting/procrastinating/unorganized state without a set routine. On the bright-side I think the change in environments has allowed me to come up with some good new ideas, so hopefully I’ll put my head down and be able to grind them better soon.
Living in such nice places recently has also allowed me to reflect on more important things. I’ve been eating amazing food, living in luxury, and had pretty open schedules to read/workout/nap in the middle of the day and whatnot. It’s crazy how much of a lifestyle arbitrage there is between expensive US cities and places like Mexico City (or of course visiting my friend’s wonderful home as a guest). For me one of the best parts of living good for a little while though isn’t enjoying the amenities at the moment (although Sushi Kyo in Mexico City was a few hours of bliss), but more getting that feeling of having had “enough” or even more than enough. There isn’t much higher levels of hedonic enjoyment at some point, and then it’s about working on things that are more internally meaningful.
With that short update I’m going back to work in cryptoland, but I’ll leave you with an assortment of pics from Mexico City and Utah.
Andrew Manser 
Amazing! Glad you enjoyed your stay.