ENTREPRENEUR

#technologist #softwaredeveloper

Hey there! I'm Shanif - a young professional with a background in technology and a passion for investing and trading. I've been developing software since 1997 and have been trading options profitably since 2008.

I have a BS in Computer Science and Systems & Information Engineering, and recently earned my MBA, focusing on Quantitative Finance and Entrepreneurship. These days, I focus on generating high returns with options trading and building up a successful mobile software business.

Though I love connecting with people in real life, I have a strong web presence. Feel free to get in touch.

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Review Of “Against The Gods: The Remarkable Story Of Risk”
January 15, 2011 Shanif Books

I just finished reading a book by Peter Bernstein titled “Against The Gods.” It was recommended to me by a friend I met at Stern – one who is as interested in the investing world as I am. He said it would be a good read, something relevant to anyone looking to get into the hedge fund industry, and since I’ve recently gotten back into reading, I thought I’d give it a shot. Unlike the last book I read, though, this one was a bit dryer and it took a much longer time to get through.

The book takes a historical look at the development of mathematics, and more specifically, the branches of math that led up to the development of modern day portfolio theory. Note that I said it focuses on a historical look at the math, not on the math itself. This was a key detail that I didn’t realize when I first picked up the book.

Bernstein focuses primarily on detailing the individual mathematicians that developed the theories that led up to those in use today. He starts out by detailing the Hindu-Arabic numerical system and its massive benefits over the Roman numeral system due to the inclusion of zero. He then proceeds to work his way chronologically through the various discoveries of the Greeks (basic probability theory), men of the Italian Renaissance (formalized probability theory), the Age of Enlightenment (statistics, regression to the mean, the normal curve, sampling), the early-to-mid 20th century (game theory), ending with the theories of modern day economics and finance (CAPM, Prospect Theory, incomplete rationality).

At each stage, Bernstein outlines each individual’s contribution to mathematics, and he does touch on the basic practical applications of each man’s breakthroughs, but he fails to truly describe the intricate details of the subjects he discusses. This is probably a beneficial thing for a majority of the readers out there, myself included. I did not want to get bogged down in mathematical proofs or endless equations. However, I would have been interested in learning more about what the actual theories were and how they were applied, rather than taking a chronological journey through the development of probability and statistics.

For me, I wasn’t as interested in the history of things as I was the application.

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resume
Experience
01/2008 - Present
Options Trader
Independent

Founded an invest­ment club focused on gen­er­at­ing con­sis­tent, peri­odic income by using the aid of custom-developed ana­lytic method­olo­gies and com­puter pro­grams to trade options

• Generated an average annualized return of 40%

• Coor­di­nated the research and analy­sis efforts for myself and two partners

• Devel­oped and auto­mated sev­eral quan­ti­ta­tive analy­sis algo­rithms that assist in the invest­ment process by pro­vid­ing rank­ings of pub­licly traded com­pa­nies based on finan­cial fun­da­men­tals, list­ings of stocks with the high­est options pre­mi­ums, and pre­dic­tions of stock move­ment based on trend­ing and momen­tum cri­te­ria. Cre­ated the algo­rithms using the fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples of weighted trade stud­ies and later auto­mated them using Ruby on Rails

• Cre­ated a web­site that enables the pub­li­ca­tion of invest­ment arti­cles and pro­vides access to the afore­men­tioned auto­mated algo­rithms, a port­fo­lio man­age­ment tool, and edu­ca­tional resources

• Per­formed mar­ket research on pub­licly traded com­pa­nies, focus­ing on indus­try stand­ing, his­tor­i­cal per­for­mance, com­pet­i­tive advan­tage, and future prospects

• Man­aged legal, finan­cial, account­ing, logis­tics, long-term strat­egy, and invest­ment objectives

08/2010 - 07/2012
Software developer and member of founding team
oGolf

Member of the management team on an early stage startup that developed technology to provide data analytics and game management software for golfers.

• Created a website allowing golfers to review a comprehensive set of analytics about their game

• Developed financial projections and investor presentations, presented the new business and software at conferences, pitched to potential investors, and demoed the product to customers

• Developed strategy and marketing plans for growing the business

• Recruited new talent to assist with software development, marketing, and operations

08/2006 - 03/2010
Associate
Booz Allen Hamilton

Provided information and communications management solutions to public and private organizations as an IT consultant at a large, multi-national consulting organization.

• Man­aged time­lines, resources, and a staff of up to 10 soft­ware devel­op­ers and testers in the tech­ni­cal imple­men­ta­tion of a project man­age­ment appli­ca­tion that allowed over 4,500 users on 500 projects to eas­ily col­lab­o­rate on key deliv­er­ables, orga­nize project sched­ules, review bud­gets, and cre­ate finan­cial pro­jec­tions. Coordinated the efforts of staff from mul­ti­ple depart­ments across the firm to imple­ment a new devel­op­ment process that reduced the num­ber of hours needed to cre­ate and test new soft­ware by more than 50%, elim­i­nated the need for over­time work, and ensured the timely deliv­ery of new func­tion­al­ity. Received a per­for­mance award for ensur­ing prod­uct qual­ity, meet­ing dead­lines, and effec­tively man­ag­ing personnel

• Led and man­aged the tech­ni­cal imple­men­ta­tion, logis­tics, time­lines, and activ­i­ties of myself and two other devel­op­ers in the deliv­ery of a web-based traf­fic sim­u­la­tion engine that pro­vided a test­bed for industry-specific appli­ca­tion devel­op­ers to test their pro­pri­etary algo­rithms. Received a per­for­mance award for “lead­ing the team and ensur­ing crit­i­cal dead­lines were achieved with­out sac­ri­fic­ing quality.”

• Assisted in domain admin­is­tra­tion for a server farm con­sist­ing of Share­Point front-end web servers, Microsoft SQL Servers, domain con­trollers, and a SAN

• Lead devel­oper for a Ruby on Rails and Flex-based appli­ca­tion designed to auto­mate the deploy­ment of SOA-based mil­i­tary ser­vice offer­ings. Imple­mented a REST­ful method­ol­ogy for sav­ing and deliv­er­ing data to a Flex front end

• Par­tic­i­pated in uni­ver­sity recruit­ing and inter­view efforts for the firm. Pro­vided rec­om­men­da­tions that led to the hir­ing of approx­i­mately one-quarter of the total staff on sub-team, as well as the hir­ing of approx­i­mately 30 junior staff straight from college

• Pro­gres­sively increased man­age­r­ial respon­si­bil­i­ties over the course of two pro­mo­tions in three years

06/2006 - 08/2007
Software Developer
Wamily, LLC

Member of the management team on an early stage startup that developed web-based group communication, management, and coordination software.

• Worked with a team of web devel­op­ers to cre­ate an Inter­net busi­ness cen­tered on a web­site that would allow its users to eas­ily man­age and inter­act with their real-life groups in an online setting

• Devel­oped wid­gets for com­mu­ni­ca­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion, per­mis­sion mod­els and secu­rity imple­men­ta­tions, and user inter­faces for site features

• Cre­ated soft­ware using Ruby on Rails, CSS, HTML, JavaScript, Pro­to­type, script.aculo.us, and MySQL

• Assisted in recruit­ing 500 alpha users and raising $20,000 in angel investments

• Par­tic­i­pated in board meet­ings to determine long-term strategies

05/2005 - 08/2006
Intern Research Assistant
Booz Allen Hamilton

Provided research and development support as a technology intern to a large, multi-national consulting firm.

• Pro­vided a fully func­tional, database-backed web appli­ca­tion for use by over­seas mil­i­tary per­son­nel in a short­ened time­frame of 3 weeks as part of a 3-person devel­op­ment team

• Cre­ated a col­lab­o­ra­tion site that pro­vided Navy lead­er­ship with near-real time crit­i­cal infor­ma­tion to stream­line the deci­sion mak­ing process in the Navy Gulf Coast Region in the after­math of Hur­ri­cane Katrina

• Designed and cre­ated sev­eral web part solu­tions using APIs from Active Direc­tory, Microsoft Map­Point, Microsoft Pow­er­Point, and Microsoft SharePoint

• Cre­ated a Macro­me­dia flash proof-of-concept dash­board for a sta­tus report­ing appli­ca­tion inte­grated with SharePoint

08/2005 - 05/2006
Researcher and Lead Developer
University of Virginia

Developed software, created algorithms, and analyzed information management processes that would optimize the battery life on micro-sensor hardware devices as part of a university thesis project.

• Coor­di­nated the efforts of a five-member team focused on devel­op­ing an approach to opti­mize the use of resources on wire­less sen­sor networks

• Designed, imple­mented, and main­tained a sim­u­la­tion engine capa­ble of sim­u­lat­ing enemy solider move­ment and sen­sor net­work func­tion­al­ity in cus­tomized, load­able, user-defined sce­nar­ios. The appli­ca­tion was writ­ten in C#, sup­ported XML-based load­able sce­nario files, and uti­lized var­i­ous opti­miza­tion algo­rithms (such as Dijkstra’s algo­rithm and A*). The sim­u­la­tion engine pro­vided users with an intu­itive graph­i­cal user inter­face for sim­u­la­tion con­trol as well as the abil­ity to view and report on sim­u­la­tion progress

• Per­formed sta­tis­ti­cal and quan­ti­ta­tive analy­sis on results to deter­mine opti­mal resource allo­ca­tion pol­icy for the tested scenarios

• Lead author and pre­sen­ter of a paper at the IEEE Sys­tems and Infor­ma­tion Engi­neer­ing Design Sym­po­sium describ­ing results

01/2004 - 05/2005
Researcher and Developer
Personal and Academic Projects

Developed a variety of software for a myriad of purposes on several different platforms and programming languages.

• Devel­oped and tested a C# desk­top weight man­age­ment appli­ca­tion using Access as the data­base back­end, and later migrated it to the Inter­net using PHP and MySQL

• Lead devel­oper on a team that cre­ated, doc­u­mented, and tested robot con­trol and com­mu­ni­ca­tion soft­ware for the Evo­lu­tion ER1 robot. The soft­ware allowed users to remotely con­trol the robot by way of a spe­cially cre­ated com­mu­ni­ca­tions protocol

• Devel­oped a pro­to­type for an inter­ac­tive Macro­me­dia Flash map that retrieves exter­nal data and allows users to eas­ily view them in a geo­graph­i­cally orga­nized format

• Cre­ated a dis­crete event queu­ing model sim­u­la­tion of a din­ing facil­ity located on cam­pus using Rock­well Arena, based on data gath­ered and inter­preted by the project group

• Cre­ated a pro­to­type Peer-to-Peer appli­ca­tion based on the Gnutella search and com­mu­ni­ca­tion pro­to­col in Microsoft Visual Stu­dio .NET using C# and TCP/IP socket programming

02/2003 - 09/2003
Branch Manager
College Works Painting

Participated in an internship designed to hone and cultivate the entrepreneurial skills of college students by allowing them to run their own local branch of a large, nationwide business.

• Oper­ated a local house paint­ing busi­ness, which gen­er­ated over $15,000 worth of gross rev­enue in con­tracts with 25+ clients

• Respon­si­ble for sales, pay­roll, recruit­ment, oper­a­tions, cus­tomer rela­tions, and marketing

09/1999 - 07/2002
Volunteer
American Red Cross

Volunteered as a member of the executive management board of the youth community service organization of the Washington, D.C. chapter of the American Red Cross.

• Served as pres­i­dent (2001-2002), vice pres­i­dent (2000-2001), and mem­ber of a local youth com­mu­nity ser­vice orga­ni­za­tion as part of the National Cap­i­tal Chap­ter of the Amer­i­can Red Cross

• Man­aged and coor­di­nated the exe­cu­tion of var­i­ous com­mu­nity ser­vice projects and their logis­tics, includ­ing fund-raising, logis­tics, mar­ket­ing, and man­age­ment of personnel

• Served as one of five United States youth rep­re­sen­ta­tives to the inter­na­tional Youth Exchange in 2000

• Received var­i­ous for­mal vol­un­teer recognitions

• Gained skills in lead­ing multi-person projects, effec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and time management

Education
08/2010 - 05/2012
Master of Business Administration
NYU Stern School of Business

Completed two years of a rigorous MBA program at a top business school, focusing on acquiring the skills required to improve my trading activities and start a new business.

• Graduated with specializations in Quantitative Finance and Entrepreneurship and Innovation

• First Year Activities: Asso­ciate Vice Pres­i­dent of Tech­nol­ogy for the Stern Hedge Fund Asso­ci­a­tion and Asso­ciate Vice Pres­i­dent of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions for the Entre­pre­neurs Exchange Club

• Mem­ber of the Tech­nol­ogy and New Media Group and the Asso­ci­a­tion for Invest­ment Man­age­ment and Research

• Completed one course on Doing Business in China at the Guanghua School of Management at Peking University

• Studied abroad at Bocconi University in Milan, Italy

08/2002 - 05/2006
Bachelor of Science
University of Virginia

Completed four years of study in the engineering school, focusing on acquiring software development, statistical analysis, modeling, simulation, and data analytic skills.

• Received a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and double majored in Systems and Information Engineering

• Received a minor in Math

• Part of a team-oriented effort to improve resource usage in sen­sor net­works. Main author of a paper pub­lished at the IEEE Sys­tems and Infor­ma­tion Engi­neer­ing Design Symposium

• Graduated with distinction

• Achieved Dean's List in 3 different semesters

Personal
Languages
English (native), Spanish (basic), Urdu/Hindi (basic listening comprehension)
Analytics
Monte Carlo sim­u­la­tion, dis­crete event sim­u­la­tion, sta­tis­ti­cal analy­sis, com­par­i­tive trade stud­ies, multivariate and single variable regressions, discrete and stochastic decision models
Certifications
Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (2000). Certified Scrum Master (2009)
Technical
Java, C#, Ruby on Rails, HTML, JavaScript, SQL, and XML
Clearance
Top Secret (Expired)
Interests
Playing the electric and acoustic guitar • Web development • Fitness and weightlifting • International adventures
Skills
Web development
Database Management
Mobile development
Graphic Design
Technical Management
Communications
Network operations
Server operations
Foreign Languages
Data Analytics
contact
Contact info
  • Name: Shanif Dhanani
  • Address: New York, NY, USA
  • E-mail: shanif.dhanani@gmail.com
  • Phone: 703.477.1438

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