Writing
Peer-reviewed papers, books, and essays by VS Asset Management's principals. Hand-curated.
Peer-reviewed papers
- Samir Varma, Within-Venue Monitoring of BTC/USDT Liquidity and Resiliency on Binance: A Queueing-Theoretic Framework, Journal of Risk and Financial Management 19(5), 2026, art. 372.
- Samir Varma, The False Promise of Drawdown Rules: New Evidence and a Better Framework, Journal of Portfolio Management 52(1), 2025, pp. 145–161.
Books and chapters
- Samir Varma, Quantum Theory meets Gravity, IntechOpen (2026). Co-editor and chapter contributor. An edited volume on the semiclassical frontier — where quantum field theory meets curved spacetime. Chapters available open-access from 2025; book ISBN (978-1-83634-601-2) and DOI assigned January 2026.
- Samir Varma, The Science of Free Will, Iff Books (Collective Ink) (2025). Determinism, agency, and what 'free will' could coherently mean. Foreword by Tyler Cowen. ISBN 978-1-80341-731-8. Buy on Amazon.
- Samir Varma, From Investor Psychology to Strategy Design: Evidence, Mechanisms, and Implementation, IntechOpen (2026). Editor and chapter contributor to the volume Investor Behavior and Investment Strategies. My chapter is published online-first; further chapter submissions to the volume are open.
Essays
- The Emperor Has No Benchmark, Substack (2026). On why alpha depends on two things, not one.
- Big If True, Substack (2026). Can a government roll its debt forever? — a forgotten French perpetual bond is a strange piece of evidence.
- The Emperor Has No Identification, Substack (2026). Why asset demand elasticity estimates don't mean what you think.
- I Won't Show You Mine, Substack (2026). Why a pod-shop's standard IP contract was a walk-away in 2005 — and why the same form is landing on other researchers' desks today.
- Bitcoin Doesn't Bounce Back, It Slouches, Substack (2026). Plain-language companion to the JRFM Bitcoin liquidity paper — what queueing theory says about how BTC recovers from stress.
- The Conservation Law of Tax Alpha, Substack (2026). On the structural limits of tax-alpha strategies.
- The Simplicity Tax, Substack (2026). Why retail investors pay more for simpler products, and what that reveals about behavioral finance.
- The Emperor Has No Alpha, Substack (2026). Why specific trades depreciate and the firm-building implications.
- The Stop-Loss That Stops Gains, Substack (2026). Plain-language version of the JPM drawdown-rules paper.
- So You Want to Be a Quant, Substack (2026). Source of the Risk Manager koan adapted on principles.
- The $50 Trillion Question, Substack (2025). On whether Wall Street's favorite recession predictor still works.
- A Perfectly Efficient Market, Substack (2025). Why a perfectly efficient market is incompatible with meritocracy.
More publications
Full publication list, including physics, AI, and patents, at samirvarma.com/publications.