If you’re wondering if it’s safe to put some new money to work in the stock market, the first question you have to ask is: How much fear is already priced in?

I put that question to several hedge-fund managers, traders, sales traders, analysts and day traders I know.

The collective sentiment could be summed up in two words: cautiously optimistic.

This, personally, scares me. Most finance professionals seem to think there was some capitulation (a feeling of maximum pessimism where people can’t take it anymore and panic sell) last week, which usually signals the end of the pain trade. But I’m not sure we saw enough of it.

So, I asked: What are you afraid of?

“It’s all performance anxiety,” one hedge-fund manager said. “We’re not worried about another 2008.”

That thought echoed through each and every call I made within the industry.

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Trying to predict who will be the next president is a sport on Wall Street. Hedge funds and banks spend enormous amounts of money, time and resources on trying to get an edge on who will win. The 2016 president election will dramatically change the asset allocation and exposure of everyone’s portfolio.

A few elections ago, when I was working on Galleon Group’s trading desk, we spent all summer devising a game plan for each of the candidates: George W. Bush and Al Gore. We thought Bush would be great for health-care and defense stocks but Gore would be better for all other sectors. So we planned accordingly, even up to the recount in Florida.

In normal election years, it’s much easier to quantify which candidates will be good for the market versus the ones that will weigh heavily on it. Typically it’s like predicting the outcome of a bowling ball and a feather put on both sides of the scale — one will go up and the other down. But this is anything but a typical election year. There is … the Trump factor.

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It was a perverse year on Wall Street. “The Big Short” movie and “Flash Boys” book reminded us of how evil some of the players in finance are – though, I’m not sure we’re any closer to knowing how big the bad apple population is on Wall Street.

Martin Shkreli put on his bad boy skinny jeans and set a new bar for Most Hated Man in America. So, congratulations, to all you other hate magnets – this one’s on Shkreli! Maybe you want to send him a fruit basket or a membership to the Dollar Shave Club. It’s your call.

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Recently I was contacted by a journalist from the New York Times – he was writing a piece for the Fashion & Style section. Here it is…

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My friends and I got to the theater 40 minutes before the film started and we were about 40th in line. By the time the doors opened, there were at least another 80 people behind us.

There was a definite buzz and anticipation for “The Big Short” and I have to say — I wasn’t disappointed.

“The Big Short” was four intertwining stories about investors who made massive bets against the housing market and banking system that led up to the financial crash of 2008. Yeah, we all know how that movie ended. But the film artistically captured the essence of how difficult and painful it can be while waiting to be right.

If I had to sum up the film in one word: Conviction.

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I may be doing some more stuff with the Insider Magazine in 2016. Some fun stuff… We’ll see. Here’s a recent interview I did with them…

The Insider Magazine interview