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A Trader’s Story

Chen Pin Hua Solo Exhibition

Date:2021/07/17 – 2021/07/24

Artist:Chen Pin Hua

Venue: VT Artsalon (B1, No.17, Ln.56, Sec. 3, Xinsheng N. Rd, Taipei City 104, Taiwan)

<A Trader’s Story> is a trilogy of real trading statements: <Turnover 100 Million>, <Trading 10000 Lots> and <30000 Bull>. The statements began at my first trade in life and ended in a total failure of being short squeezed as Dow Jones Index broke through 30,000.

In the 39 months period, more than 6 billion NT dollars (200 million US dollars) of contract size got traded, ranging from stock, warrant, day-trading, future, option, foreign exchange futures to global equity indexes futures and options. The high and occasionally ultra- high leverage made my life intertwined with ecstasy and despair every 5 minutes.You might be able to find my curiosity, my lust, my sorrow, my excitement, my horror, my sleepless nights, my overtrading addiction, my thirst for knowledge, my antisocial personality, my altruism ideology, or you may see the numbers, time, and numbers in the statements.

Turnover 100 million
<Turnover 100 million> is my trading record of stock market, from zero to 100 million NT dollars (3.3million USD) turnover accumulated, with about 10 million in warrant and 90 million in stock day-trading, during Oct 2017 to Jul 2018.

Trading 10000 Lots
<Trading 10000 Lots> is my trading record of derivative financial products, from zero to 10000 lots position accumulated, from local to global exchanges, with about 60 billion NT dollar equivalent in contract size traded, during Aug 2018 to Apr 2020.

30000 Bull
<30000 Bull> is my trading record at the end of 2020, the year with pandemic outburst. When Dow Jones Index exceeded 30000, as Donald Trump anticipated on January 5th, 2018, I was just entered market and suddenly facing a life-changing decision: to long or to short. Surprisingly, I found all my learnings forced me unable to long. With hope of not to expanding the financial bubble, in my suggestion, caused by quantitative easing policy worldwide, I was full position short, and got short squeezed, lost a great amount of capital and mental stability.

Negative One
<-1> is my ongoing project, in which I draw a painting and sell it with a price of negative one (which also means I must give the collector 1 NT dollar), and then license the digital reproduction of the painting to the public domain with CC0 license. This project would be an extension to my previous project, <Time Travel>, in which I shared more than 10,000 files of my digital photography works with CC0 license.

The negative number comes from different concepts: a progress from positive to 0(CC0) to negative price of an artwork; imaginary number squared; the crude oil price went negative on April 20, 2020; the continuation of the <30000 Bull> work which I failed to short the equity market; the behavior of buying a collector with 1 NT dollar, etc….