Ken Kubo

Who am I?

I was born in Queens, NY, grew up in the U.S. and went to college in Japan, worked for a couple of years there and came back. My career is in finance; mostly as a trader involving everything from algo trading of commodities and financial futures, equity derivative products, special situations and statistical arbitrage (early years of HFT).

Currently I actively invest in equity markets and do some freelance tech work among other random things. Most of my day is spent (or supposed to be spent) reading annual reports, company financial filings, listening to or reading transcripts of earnings conference calls and things like that.

My Marshall History

I joined the club back in 2011 and played the Monday night U1600 pretty regularly, rarely missing any cycles. Now I play the Wednesday U1600 every week. I joined the board in the fall of 2017.

Not So Important Stuff

Unlike many around here, chess was not my main hobby growing up. My main thing was music, starting clarinet in 4th grade, piano, and as a heavy metal head-banging guitarist in high school to playing jazz guitar in cafes and restaurants in NYC. When my kid was born, this became impractical so I looked for other hobbies. At first, I started with chess. Then I became a chess parent and eventually, added programming as a hobby. I did have some experience programming on a TRS-80 when I was in high school and writing trading algorithms in C during my hedge fund days, so wasn't completely new to it.