The Bull & Bear | Winter 2016 – Success at McGill

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The Bull & Bear

WINTER 2016

Student Politics leads to Success?

Samosas and Quantum Computing Busty & Bass: Success After Grad Stressful McGill

SUCCESS AT MCGILL

A PUBLICATION OF THE

THE BULL & BEAR WINTER 2016

FEATURE 3 Successful McGill: Year in Review

BUSINESS 4 High Frequency Trading 6 Fintech Start-ups vs.

Traditional Financial Institutions 9 A Samosa Introduction to Quantum Computing 11 Negative Interest Rate Policy, Cash and the Effective Lower Bound

OPINION 13 Stressful McGill 15 Are Student Politics a Venue to Success?

16 Turning Point: An Open Letter to America 20 Aditya Mohan: Canada’s Bio-GENE-ius

ARTS & CULTURE 22 Busty & the Bass: Catching up with McGill Grads 27 Sinjin Hawke: From the Arts Building to Yeezy’s Studio 28 Album Review: The Life of Pablo 30 Album Review: Untitled Unmastered.

The Bull & Bear is published by the Management Undergraduate Society.

The content of this publication is the responsibility of the Management Undergraduate Society and does not necessarily represent the views of McGill University.

EDITOR’S NOTE Jennifer Yoon

EXECUTIVE EDITOR

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n a particularly jarring episode of my chubby-cheeked childhood, I lost my parents at Ikea. While I toddled in circles around the increasingly suffocating maze of impeccable minimalist furniture, I learned just how terrifying being lost can be. Not knowing what’s coming next, no sense of orientation, and no understanding of where you are and how you got there.

Yes folks, it’s that time of year: we have no idea when or how it happened, but March is here, and it has, per usual, left us with absolutely no understanding of when and how it snuck up on us. We find ourselves, almost at the end of the school year, often feeling lost. Spring is just close enough that our library hours become, slowly but surely gobbled up by the great (if a bit nippy) outdoors.

Our work – in whatever iteration that might come – is neglected in favour of impatience for the spring, and a desperate need for a pre-spring ‘pick-me-up.’

That’s why our March 2016 issue is about success at McGill. We hope that the stories you read inside these pages about different kinds of student success – Busty & the Bass, Kanye, Samosas (because who doesn’t think a ‘mose is always a success), and SSMU. We also have great reviews of two of the most acclaimed albums of 2016 as of yet. We hope you enjoy reading these stories as much as we enjoyed putting them together.

Jennifer Yoon Executive Editor Jonah Silverman Managing Editor Mustafa Oguz Caylan Zayd Omar Business Editors Jenny Liao Liz Wu Media Editors

Ava Bradley Casey Rosner News Editors Ben Butz-Weidner Opinion Editor Annie Tseng Layout Editor Shubha Murthy Web Editor

FEATURE

SUCCESSFUL MCGILL: YEAR IN REVIEW MUSIC McGill is an incubator for all kinds of talent. It’s hard to walk through the ghetto without overhearing a wayward guitar float through an open window. Coming this summer, however, McGill’s musical talent will be displayed to a much larger audience. Osheaga, synonymous with the return of the school year and the promise of adventure, will feature McGill’s own Busty and the Bass. Busty is a nine-man funk-a-licious jam band, and definitely worth checking out (or re-visiting) this August. Enjoy the subtle harmonies and floozy base line as the stage, as the boys of Busty, clearly friends before bandmates, fill Montreal with noise.

You should absolutely not miss Haute, the dynamic two-person producer/powerhouse vocals team featuring Romain Hainaut and the magnanimous Anna Magidson.

Check out Fonzie, the newest hole-in-the-wall bar/ art collective that was designed, curated, and imagineered by Architecture student Jules de Laage. Students everywhere peruse the art on the walls and the rims of their beers; the bar-back’s intimation – “It’s the only place I’d be on a Friday night –” are justified!

FEMALE EMPOWERMENT McGill Women in Leadership (MWIL) held their second annual leadership conference, Trailblazers’ Testimonies on March 13th. The list of speakers was a broad array of notable leaders in diverse fields: it included Pina Marra, Senior Advisor of Capital Management at Desjardins; Eleni Bakopanos, of the Federal Canadian Liberal Party; Dr. Marthe Kassouf, Researcher at the Research Institute of the Hydro-Quebec, and much more.

The theme of the conference was ‘Leadership Styles.’ According to Ifeoluwa Kolade, Co-President of MWIL, the theme was chosen so that attendees could hear about multiple accounts of what leadership looked like for the trailblazers – the speakers who helped light the way for other women in their fields.

Social Enterprise As a student body, we collectively have an Atlas Complex: we’re perpetually carrying the world on our shoulders. The sheer number of student-run volunteer programs, outreach initiatives, and coordinated responses to current events speak to our enormous empathic capacity. Recent grads D’arcy Williams and Matt Dajer and their booming social enterprise, Heart City Apparel, combines street art printed on clothing, the profits of which go to homeless reduction programs. Never has ‘doing good’ looked so good. Similarly, Soular Backpack’s founder, Salima Visram, developed technology that allows children without access to electricity to study in the evening, charging with the sun along their daily walk to school. Since our last feature on the ‘Soular Backpack,’ the project has grown into its own. A cursory glance at their 2015 report deserves serious accolades: “Soular was named one of 2015’s top 30 Social Enterprise Startups by the Gifted Citizen. In addition, we were invited to attend the Forbes Under 30 Summit in Philadelphia, which gave us the opportunity to connect with other founders. These connections will surely prove fruitful as the year progresses.”

Activism

Students at McGill want to make a mark in this world. The activity up to now in the school year has reflected that yearning – and students are making a difference in the world! Externally, McGill students are weighing in on pressing current events, like climate change and responsible environmental investments.

Divest McGill, which focuses on environmental issues, made news after staging multiple protests this year: during the early months of the school year, they created a ‘tent-city’ outside James Administration Building. They also staged protests during the visit of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon on February 12th, 2016.

Divest was not the only way students were getting involved in politics throughout McGill. For better or for worse, students used the SSMU as a means to fight and stand for what they believe would be a better world. The examples of the motions considered at the Winter SSMU GA – including the motion to increase Indigenous course content at McGill, and (of course) the controversial Boycott, Divest, and Sanction motion.

ENTREPRENUERISM Students are making waves in entrepreneurship here at McGill: here are some outstanding student collaborations that are moving and shaking the business world.

Micohabitat is a young innovative company with an old entrepreneurial spirit. They offer personalized roof-top gardens that incentivize business owners to offer a sustainable option to food production. This way, they are helping Montreal break into the emerging trend of green living: bringing fresh fruits and vegetables to residents, restaurants, and corporations.

The 2016-2017 Dobson Cup is well under way, and we can expect innovations in the near future. Winners from last year’s cup have gone on to create microfinance initiatives, as well as more technologically integrated products like ‘Tote’, a shopping app.

“Bizcollab,” is a consulting and business service created by students in Montreal.

debate McGill is famous for our academics, our research, and our ability to simultaneously create, and tear apart an argument – all with cool poise and precision. Abroad, our reputation precedes us: students across the world recognize our school for our dedication to Wiz Khalifa’s proverb: ‘work hard, play hard.’ McGill’s newly-minted Moot Court has won competitions across the United States, bringing our school some well-deserved acclimations. In the same vein, this January welcomed the twenty-seventh successful Model United Nations Conference, McMUN, attracting students from all backgrounds and nationalities. “McMUN represents success at McGill because it is indicative of our ability to innovate,” a Former Secretariat member said. He then continued to explain that “each sub-committee in McMUN gives participants the platform, and the tools for innovative solutions.” Through these events, McGill student made valuable connections while also honing their skills in negotiation, debate, and group resolution.

Keep an eye out for these successful students – you may never know who the the Justin Trudeau might be!

BUSINESS

PHOTO VIA INDIEGOGO

HIGH FREQUENCY TRADING What Main Street Does Not Know Laura May

BUSINESS WRITER

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rading is not the profession it used to be. The vision we entertain of traders screaming bid-ask prices in a pit is dated at best, and more often than not, completely off. It still may be very exciting, and great risks still loom over the trader’s shoulders, but shouting the loudest is no longer the best skill a trader can have. Speed is.

What is High Frequency Trading?

High Frequency Trading (HFT) has until recently remained an attention-free topic outside the financial sector, with Michael Lewis’ Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt being one of the few major publications to bring the subject to the public’s attention. Today, this topic has become more widely discussed and debated among the few who looked for this Wall Street secret hiding in plain sight. The term HFT might sound cryptic at first, like most financial jargon, but the concept is rather simple.

HFT refers to an automated way of trading using complex algorithms, and powerful computers to trans-

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act a large number of orders at extremely high speeds.

The strengths of the algorithms employed are based on their predictive accuracy, and as such, the more profitable trades an algorithm predicts the stronger it is considered to be. Indeed, such algorithms are able to analyze the markets and spot emerging trends in a fraction of a second, turning a mispricing into an arbitrage profit at lightning speed. Currently most of the firms using HFT are hedge funds, though bulge bracket banks have also entered the space.

How does HFT work?

Here, a concrete example will be more helpful: Imagine that you have the following rule about buying stocks: whenever a stock goes up by more than 1% in 5 minutes, you buy 100 units of it, expecting the stock to continue soaring in value on this trend. This simple rule can become a basic algorithm set to make trades on your behalf every time these ideal conditions are met and

winter 2016

BUSINESS instead of manually entering each order, you can sit back, and let your computer do the work. If the strategy does not work in your favour, you can just go back and tweak it until satisfaction ensues.

HFT firms have been very proficient at finding such conditions and creating automated trading strategies that anticipate market movements. That is why, in the span of milliseconds or even nanoseconds, their trading systems send hundreds of baskets of stocks out into the marketplace at bid-ask spreads (the difference between ask price and the bid price) that are advantageous to the traders.

This allows traders to exercise greater control over the laws of supply and demand, and consequently to sell at higher prices and to buy at lower prices in the marketplace. Overall, by correctly foreseeing the trends in the marketplace, institutions that implement HFT can gain highly favourable returns on trades, resulting in significant profits.

Have the HFT strategies “rigged” the system (Lewis)?

Since the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) deregulated electronic trading in 1999, these HFT firms progressively asserted themselves in the marketplace.

These firms now account for about 73% of the total daily market volume on U.S. exchanges. Although supporters of the HFT model will continue to claim that they merely enhance market liquidity, which in turns benefits all market players – pension funds, mutual funds and retail investors like you and me – there is also evidence supporting a strong correlation between market volatility and HFT activity in that market. This increased financial system risk poses a significant drawback to HFT trading.

Others have spoken out against HFT, such as Santa Barbara Independent columnist Brian Tanguay, describing it as the newest complexity seeding the market, not unlike mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and collateralized-debt obligations (CDO) in the 2000’s. “This complexity favors the few middlemen sitting between investors and the market who make money from their earnings on fees, commissions, and rebates from order flow and volume”, Tanguay warns. Former RBC trader and IEX founder, Brad Katsuyama, surmised,: “The fact that people who make the most money want the least possible clarity — that should be alarming, too.”

How do HFT strategies prey on investors?

The true controversy started when it was made clear that this opaque business, with record high returns, was as shady as it seemed. Using predatory trading techniques, HFT firms are able to move in and out of short-term positions at high volumes and high speeds, which sometimes aim to capture only a fraction of a cent in profit on every trade. The rapid trading of these stocks raise the prices almost artificially, making the trader a lot of money at the expense of the investor.

This predatory strategy called “front-running” was made possible thanks to well-intentioned but ineffec-

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tive policy decisions. Indeed, after the SEC deregulated electronic trading in 1999, many new trading exchanges came to life, each coming up with their very own listed securities, prices and other bells and whistles. In order to counter the apparent complexity of the multitude of new exchanges, and with the good interests of retail investors in mind, the SEC implemented the Reg NMS in 2007, which legally compelled stockbrokers to fill their clients’ orders at the best available price regardless of which exchange it was found on. If a large order was being placed, some shares would be purchased first on the cheapest exchange out there before moving onto the next most expensive exchange and then so on the next and so forth. In the case of a large institutional investor like a pension fund, such as the Canada Pension Plan, a market order for 100,000 shares would likely be filled on eight or more exchanges, each trade occurring milliseconds after the last and making more in each subsequent exchange.

As usual, an example will make things clearer: Imagine that the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) is interested in buying 100,000 shares of Apple at $101.50 a share. CPP will instruct its broker to make the purchase.

The broker enters the trade into the computer, and a matching algorithm is used to purchase these shares at the lowest available market price.

Once 15,000 shares are purchased on the NYSE, the HFT firms identify that a large buyer exists in the marketplace, and is looking for the cheapest available Apple stocks. The HFT firms therefore rush ahead of CPP to buy all the existing shares still trading at $101.50 on the other trading venues. Once CPP finally arrives milliseconds later, at the exchange searching for 85,000 shares, the fund notices that no Apple share is left at $101.50.

CPP will therefore be forced to buy the stock at the new market price of $101.52 at which point HFT firms sell their recently acquired shares pocketing the spread of two cents per share. In the blink of an eye, CPP overpaid by 0.02 cents per stock shares on an order of 85,000 shares, making for a total of $1,700 in only seconds for this single mundane transaction. Meanwhile, the HFT firms made that much in profit, with no remaining exposure on their trading books.

This front-running strategy is the bread and butter of HFT and is responsible for billions in profits for the smart money HFT hedge fund and the billions in loss for the real money personal brokerage accounts, and pension funds and mutual funds.

HFT firms can no longer be ignored, and investors need to know about them. You might still shy away from the markets for now, but we will all soon enough contribute to some sort of a fund, and HFT firms will surely be around then.Whether the firms are facilitators and market-makers, rather than mere parasites is a debate saved for another day. However, know what is lurking out there and make the best informed decision when the time has come for you to enter the financial arena.

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BUSINESS

FinTech Startups vs.

Traditional Financial Institutions The Path Towards “Fintegration”

ILLUSTRATION BY LISA EL NAGAR

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hile in many countries FinTech is gaining weight and increasingly cooperating with traditional banks, in Canada, however, adoption has been slower because of weak consumer awareness and resistance from traditional banking players.

despite a strong potential for disruption, banking has been relatively untouched.

There are several reasons for this: First, the low disruption witnessed in banking can be partly explained by the existence of strong regulations in the industry - a direct consequence of the most recent IN THE BANKING INDUSTRY, DIGITAL DISRUPTION IS financial crisis. Such regulations created barriers to entry YET TO COME particularly difficult to overcome for disruptors.

Second, the banking system is oligopolistic in nature, In recent years, new technologies have disrupted making it even more difficult for new players to compete numerous industries, along with having changed the against banking giants. overall consumer experience. However, as a report by the Third, big banks’ legacy technology systems render Leading Edge Forum (LEF) highlights, digital disruption their structure rigid, thus making innovation relatively impacted different sectors disproportionately. difficult to implement.

According to LEF, the music industry experienced Security and privacy are big concerns for customers the most drastic transformation. The first disruptive wave when it comes to trusting new and untested technologies was when Amazon and iTunes entered the industry with to manage their savings and investments. The mysterious their online purchasing platform. The second one was vanishing of $350 million worth of bitcoins in the Japathe trend of subscription services such as Spotify and nese MT Gox bitcoin currency exchange in February 2014 Deezer. is one example (among many others) of the security conThe publishing industry ranked second. The increascern brought on by new technologies. ing popularity of eBooks and online subscriptions revoluLast but not least, it is not necessarily in the banks’ tionized the reading experience. interest to innovate.

Towards the end of LEF’s list we find the banking According to a recent SunTec report, “Customers do industry, slightly before insurance and manufacturing;

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winter 2016

BUSINESS value services which save costs and increasingly, time.

The rise of banking apps and online banking are examples of innovations in the sector. From a bank[’s] perspective these are additional costs, which do not guarantee more revenue.[They] are increasingly seen as status quo services and are additional ‘opportunities to fail’ on customer service.”

Banks make a big chunk of their profits from the transaction fees they charge as part of their payment systems. However, Financial Technology (FinTech) startups are inventing cheap and convenient alternatives. This poses a direct threat to banks’ profitability, as transactions and other procedural fees are eliminated.

Today’s sense of accelerating disruption is gaining momentum and it is logical to expect that more is on the way. In other words, many believe that the industries which have so far stayed dominantly traditional (despite the rise of new technologies) are about to experience great disruptions.

There are many reasons to believe that the banking system will follow this expected pattern, as financial technology startups are gaining territory and threatening the current banking model. The question is: should banks partner with or compete against potential disruptors?

of J.P. Morgan told his shareholders about FinTech firms.

“The potential for disruption is strong across the entire banking industry value chain. We expect increasingly fierce competition between traditional banking incumbents and emerging financial technology [FinTech] players,” highlights LEF research director David Moschella.

Peer to peer lending, mobile banking, blockchain (the technological innovation that underlies Bitcoin), and other such innovations are making financial services cheaper and more customer-friendly. For example, in foreign exchange payments, startups are matching individual holders of euros and dollars to lower exchange fees by 90%, according to The Economist Intelligence Unit.

Overall, startups are re-imagining financial services in ways that banking giants can no longer ignore.

While a disruption can provoke important challenges for traditional players, FinTech startups are not a direct threat to their existence. As of today, FinTech accounts for less than 2% of the market. This share is expected to increase greatly in the future, but even FinTech executives expect banks to stay the dominant players for some time.

“Lots of banks have such incumbency advantages that it is hard to see a startup beat them head on. Instead we’re seeing more FinTech players and banks working together to deliver innovative solutions and superior customer experiences,” says Sam Hodges, co-founder and U.S Managing Director of Funding Circle.

BI Intelligence forecasts that traditional institutions will respond to the threat created by the disruptors by partnering with them. This is because it will most likely prove easier for banks to integrate innovative services developed by startups rather than to build them in-house while still competing against startups And FinTech and traditional players do complement each other’s business to some extent. FinTech startups generally offer a single product, while customers prefer having all their banking needs met under one roof. It is remarkably difficult for start-up companies to build common platforms: if they significantly grow in size, they may have to comply with new sets of regulations.

Such compliance would offset their predominant advanSOURCE: LEADING EDGE FORUM tage – their flexibility. For this reason, startups need the integrated platforms and service offerings of banks to THE FUTURE OF THE BANKING INDUSTRY: TOWARDS make their innovations appealing to customers. Inversely, “FINTEGRATION” banks need the startups to keep up with innovation and In the past five years, more than $25 billion have been stay competitive in an increasingly complex industry. poured into FinTech, according to a report by The EconTherefore, it seems that “fintegration” – the merger of omist Intelligence Unit. This makes it a prime target for financial services and digital technology – is on the way. venture funding.

Traditional banks see the rise of FinTech startups more as a threat than an opportunity to modernize their business. According to a study from Goldman Sachs, FinTech startups are about to steal away up to $4.7 trillion worth of business. This sentiment is widely spread among traditional players: “They all want to eat our lunch. Every single one of them is going to try”, Jamie Dimon, the CEO

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BUSINESS WHY IS THE CANADIAN BANKING SYSTEM LAGGING BEHIND IN TERMS OF INNOVATION?

According to the Ernst & Young LLP’s FinTech Adoption Index, the FinTech adoption rates (measured as the percentage of digitally active people who used at least two FinTech services in the last 6 months) are the following: 29% in Hong Kong, 17% in the United States, 14% in the UK, 13% in Australia, and only 8% in Canada - well below the other countries’ average of 16%.

Canadian banks are reluctant to adopt FinTech technologies because they see them as a threat, which may explain the low FinTech adoption rate observed.

In effect, FinTech and traditional banks are competing for talents in Canada. “When we want to make a change we talk about it in the morning and we’re building in the afternoon,” comments Darryl Knopp, who left the financial services industry after a 20-year career to take a job in Vancouver-based online lender Grow. “That’s an inspiring environment. It’s very difficult to do that at large institutions.”

FinTech also threatens Canadian banks’ business model. In particular, innovative products developed by

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startups reduce drastically the transaction costs incurred by customers; these costs are an important source of revenues for traditional banks. Peter Routledge, Chief Financial Services Analyst at National Bank, explained during an interview for BNN that FinTech was a serious threat for Canadian banks. He explained that while in other countries banks agreed to cooperate with FinTech firms such as Apple, he was glad to see that it was not the case in Canada. In effect, he believed that such cooperation with Apple would infringe on the banks’ relationship with its customers (for example, the increased FinTech companies would have to banks’ customer base). By cooperating with FinTech companies, banks are indirectly accepting to lower their margins. This goes against the banks’ mission of profits for its shareholders, according to Peter Routledge.

Additionally, the lack of consumer awareness of the different options offered by FinTech providers plays a role in explaining Canada’s low FinTech adoption rate.

“In Canada, the strength and breadth of our traditional financial services institutions means that it’s just that much harder for a smaller FinTech company to make itself a household name,” says Gregory Smith, partner at EY’s financial services advisory practice. “But FinTech in Canada is still quite new and it certainly plays a role in awareness. I suspect as [FinTech’s] customer base grows, awareness will significantly increase as well.”

Consequently, adoption could triple over 2016; the younger generations are already familiar and comfortable with FinTech technologies, the increase would come primarily from Canadians over age 55 and earning more than USD 150,000 a year, according to Ernst & Young.

Canada is lagging behind when it comes to FinTech adoption, but probably not for long. For now, Canadian banks feel threatened by the potential of the Fintech industry, and for legitimate reasons. However, a strategic response may be to start working hand in hand with Fintech startups before it is too late for them to react to the disruptive trend that has already started changing their industry.

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BUSINESS

Vanishing Chutney and Meatless Chicken A Samosa Introduction to Quantum Computing David Belgrod

BUSINESS WRITER

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hutney or no chutney. Meat or no meat. Warm or not warm. These are all questions we ponder when purchasing samosas. But what values do we attribute to these choices when selecting this intricate delicacy?

To chutney or not to chutney: these are our only thoughts when perusing the box in Leacock lobby. Logically, one could say that if a samosa has chutney (a) then it is a chutney-filled samosa and if it doesn’t have chutney then (b) one could reason it is chutney-less. But chutney is not the only factor in play. Now let’s throw meat into this potato mess. If we know our samosa has chutney and meat then we would have a meatless chutney-filled samosa. With these 2 options, we have a total of 2^2 (or 4) options of samosas. As we slowly gather more information about our samosa in 2 state information (chutney/no chutney, meat/no meat.), we could add more categories like chicken/no chicken and beef/no beef in order to build a more complex samosa system. For example, if we know a samosa has meat, but not chicken or beef, we could have a pork samosa. We wouldn’t know the exact meat but, because we have narrowed our options we would have a better idea of our samosa.

But writing out every single bit of information is tedious. Let each piece of information (chutney, meat) be referred to as a ‘bit’. Let our chutney-filled samosa be labeled as ‘1’ and our chutney-less samosa as ‘0’ (We will discuss soon why the chutney samosa is 1 and the non chutney is 0). The first digit will represent the bit for our chutney information and the second will represent the bit for our meat information. So, we can even go further and have a meat chutney-filled samosa as ‘11’ and a meatless chutney-filled samosa as ‘10’ and build on from there.

If we just make the most basic samosa, with the least effort, our samosa would have neither any chutney nor meat and we would express it as 00. In order to have to chutney, we have to exert our energy and grab our straws filled with chutney and put chutney inside the samosa. To put meat in a samosa, we have to use energy to cook the meat and place it inside the samosa.

The same idea of exerting energy works for a compass as well. For example, a compass by definition points towards the magnetic north pole, indicating that it is as its lowest energy state when it points north and for that we classify our compass (and our chutney-less samosa) as a

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0. If we were to open the compass up and move the needle 180 degrees in the opposite direction, we would have to exert the most energy to push the compass to the furthest point from where it wants to be, towards the north. This is why we classify a chutney samosa as 1, as it requires us to fill our samosa with chutney.

In traditional computing, it’s safe to say that if we have 01, a chutney-less meat samosa, upon taking a bite we’d expect to discover a similar flavor profile. If we know that our first bit tells us that we have no chutney, that is definite. ...But what if we didn’t? What if we started with a 01 samosa and by the time we took our first bite we suddenly had the opposite, 10, a chutney-filled meatless samosa?

This is the very idea of our samosa constantly changing states. Welcome to quantum computing. This is the important difference between traditional computing and quantum computing.

To get a better idea of this difference, let’s look at qubits, a unit of information in quantum computing comparable to a bit in traditional computing. We said before that a samosa’s first bit can be either 0 (no chutney) or 1 (chutney). This bit only contains 2 states. A qubit however, can be both 0 and 1. It sounds weird to think of a samosa with and without chutney. But imagine when filling your straw with sweet chutney, air bubbles start to form. They could be shrinking or growing so we would have more or less chutney, respectively. Likewise, our compass needle can point to either the north pole or the south pole or can move anywhere in the compass.

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BUSINESS Before our bit would either be 100% 1, 0% 0 (chutney) or 100% 0, 0% 1 (no chutney). But now, our qubit is in superposition; the idea that we can be in both states at once. We can be anything from 85% 1, 15% 0 to .00001% 1, .99999% 0. We have infinite possibilities.

If we had 2 qubits, we would have potentially 4 superpositions: 01, 00, 10, 11. We can create 4 different types of samosas from only 2 pieces of information, whereas before we would only have 1 samosa from knowing if it definitely had chutney and/or meat.

“So, if our samosa can be either of these 4 options then which one do we have?” we might ask. Well, we can only tell by taking a bite or ‘observing’ the samosa. When we observe our samosa all the qubits collapse to one state and we will taste either only chutney or no chutney at all.

All meat or no meat.

Why would we even want these qubits if all it gives us is uncertainty? Why not have bits that allow us to indefinitely know what we are going to taste? If we let our 3rd bit be chicken/no chicken and 4th bit be beef/no beef then to say our 2nd bit is 0 (meatless) would automatically mean that our 3rd and 4th bit would also be 0. In layman’s terms, we can’t have chicken or beef in a samosa if we already know it is meatless. With qubits we wouldn’t have to put our samosa through this logic test since the qubits are in superposition containing both states (like meat and not meat). We could have any of 2 * 2 * 2 * 2 = 16 combinations of qubits that would give us samosas that would be meatless yet have chicken and beef at the same time.

Odd to conceptualize, but quantum computing allows us to use the same number of qubits as number of bits and create different types of samosas exponentially faster. We can create more complex systems with less information, much like we can create more samosas with less qubits than bits, using superposition. So, if your friends wanted to be able to create chicken samosas for themselves then you could provide your 4 qubits to them and they could make the samosa of their pleasing.

Suppose we have a box of samosas. We can’t see what’s inside but we pull samosas out at random. Each samosa contains 2 bits (chutney, meat). If we want to concoct a chutney-filled meat samosa, how long would it take before we get the bits needed? We go into our box and pull out a chutney-less meat samosa (01). Great, we have our 1st needed bit, meat. Now we need to find a samosa with chutney inside, so we are looking for a 10 or 11 samosa. If we pull out a 00 or 01 samosa, it will be useless to us. We would keep going until we finally get a 10 or 11 samosa.

Best case scenario we get a 11 samosa our first time but that’s best case. If we dealt with qubits instead, we could pull any samosa out of the box and be able to make a 11 chutney-filled meat samosa. It would take only 1 pick because the two qubits would hold all the possible samosas inside one samosa.

However, it’s possible that the probability of a 1 in

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chutney and/or a 1 in meat is very slim. We can observe or bite into our samosa of qubits and get 01 at first, then bite again and get a 10 samosa. We would have to keep biting or observing the samosa until we finally got the 11 samosa.

So we are comparing the speed to pick the right samosas in traditional computing using bits and the speed it takes to observe the right samosa in quantum computing using qubits. For larger problems dealing with a lot more information, the time it takes to observe the samosa using qubits isn’t even close to the time it takes to pick out the right samosa using bits. We might have to observe the samosa only a few times but if we used bits it would take us hundreds, thousands, and even millions of samosas to finally be able to build the samosa we want. So we can say that for larger complex problems, quantum computing is exponentially much faster than traditional computing.

On top of superposition, what would you say if I told you that if you took the chicken out of your samosa (making it chicken-less) then your friend eating his samosa would suddenly discover that there’s no chicken inside anymore? It’d be a good prank for sure, but how could your samosa’s chicken qubit be some how connected to your friend’s chicken qubit? This idea that some qubits have a connection or a high correlation with others is called ‘entanglement’ in quantum computing. If we observed our chicken qubit at one point and saw it was 1 then we would know that, at that exact moment, the entangled chicken qubit would also measure to 1. Essentially,if the chicken qubit in our samosa is entangled with another chicken qubit in another samosa, we can tell how the other chicken qubit will change instantaneously as our qubit changes. A paper published by the University of Waterloo describes entangled qubits “can ‘dance’ in instantaneous, perfect, unison, even when place at opposite ends of the universe”, so distance does not affect this relationship.

With entanglement theory, we can fathom the ways in which samosas are connected (thru chutney, meat, etc.). If for example, we found that all qubits in one samosa were entangled with all qubits in another samosa, then both samosas would be potentially identical and we wouldn’t have to work with that other samosa.

Quantum computing through superposition and entanglement allows computing to be exponentially faster and help us solve problems at speeds that would take regular computers years by comparison. Now, for some real life applications of this scenario: as these theories are based on quantum physics, a deeper understanding of quantum computing can help us find solutions to related issues. This can be applied to protein folding, and the design of more effective pharmaceuticals.

Regardless of where quantum computing can take us, hopefully when I take a bite out of my next samosa there won’t be anything inside of it but warm potatoes and obviously sweet sweet chutney.

winter 2016

BUSINESS

Negative Interest Rate Policy, Cash and the Effective Lower Bound Eric Blachut

BUSINESS WRITER

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nterest rates are a policy tool, a signal, and, most fundamentally, a price: the price for tomorrow’s money, today. As with any other prices, there are interesting distortions when they are zero, and particular conditions that must be met for transactions to occur when they are below zero. Think of electricity, which occasionally trades at negative prices during off-peak hours for two reasons: the cost to shut-down and start-up large power plants is high, and power companies have limited ability to store excess electricity.

The global experience with negative interest rates, which have enjoyed an unprecedented spread, tests the boundaries of conventional theory and is prompting interesting discussions on how far rates can fall and what can be done to further depress this lower boundary.

As a policy tool, interest rates have been one of the primary channels for shaping monetary policy since the advent of the modern central bank in the early 20th century. The theoretical underpinning is simple: when interest rates are lowered in a recession, the price of money today has fallen relative to tomorrow, encouraging people and companies to borrow and spend, which boosts demand and output. Since the 2008 financial crisis, central bankers have enthusiastically embraced this policy; by mid 2009, rates were at near zero in Europe, Canada, and the United States. Then, as global recovery slowed and Europe came under increasing economic stress, rates broke through zero. The European Central Bank (ECB) was the first to implement negative rates, cutting their deposit rate to -0.01% on June 11, 2014. In the ensuing year and a half, negative rates have gone from unthinkable to relatively commonplace. As of February 2016, $2.35 trillion of global government debt has negative interest yields, 80% of that from European governments.

Switzerland currently holds the lowest central bank policy rate, at -0.75%. The Bank of Japan’s decision in January to adopt a negative policy rate makes it only the newest member of a growing club.

The pervasiveness of negative interest rate policies is perplexing as it flies in the face of the conventional wisdom that nominal interest rates have a hard lower boundary: the zero lower bound. Physical currency offers a guaranteed nominal return of zero and so, the thinking goes, if interest rates dropped below zero savers would

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hold their money in cash rather than lend it at a negative rate. This boundary is the limit below which monetary policy loses its effectiveness. If businesses respond to rate cuts by spending their excess cash or taking on more debt, the policy has accomplished its goal; if they instead withdraw their cash and store it, the policy is a failure. The idea is to get money flowing to boost spending, and storing physical currency has the opposite effect.

The past 10 years of 3-Month LIBOR for Swiss francs (CHF), US dollars (USD), British pounds (GBP), and euros (EUR)

So, why would anyone tolerate lending out money at a negative rate? In short, cash is costly to store. Large financial institutions, money managers, and corporations have a need for high quality cash-like assets in both the short and long term. Physical currency has storage costs (bank vaults, safes, armoured trucks) and is not suitable for all of the transactional purposes that some businesses require. This leaves companies and banks no choice but to pay for the privilege of holding cash-substitutes.

However, this argument may not hold the same weight for individual (retail) banking customers; the costs of storing cash under the mattress is a smaller burden for those with modest accounts. Indeed, banks have so far been reluctant to pass on their reduced lending rates to retail depositors. With the exception of Alternative Bank Schweiz, a small Swiss bank which is charging -0.125% on deposits, no bank has yet imposed negative rates on retail customers. This friction between the negative rate banks are getting on their excess reserves and the zero rate they are paying depositors reduces the effectiveness of further

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BUSINESS changes to monetary policy and is having a significantly negative impact on the profitability of European banks.

It is however also difficult to impose negative interest rates on retail depositors, who in part store their money in banks because of the growth over time from positive interest rates.

Surprisingly, retail clients have faced the consequences of negative interest rates more directly on the borrowing side. In Europe, some floating rate residential mortgage contracts established before the financial crisis gave borrowers rates as low as Euribor (an interbank rate benchmark denominated in euros) less 1.1%. A fall in European rates has resulted in some homeowners receiving monthly reduction on their principal rather than interest charges!

As negative rates have persevered in defiance of the zero lower bound, policymakers and pundits are now questioning the scope of further rate cuts before reaching a hard lower boundary. While banks, businesses, and individuals have shown tolerance of the so-far modestly negative rates it is unclear how low rates could go before further cuts would lose their effectiveness as a policy tool, that is: the effective lower bound. When Mario Draghi, president of the ECB, cut Eurozone rates by 10 basis points to -0.20% in September 2014 he declared: “now we are at the lower bound, where technical adjustments are not going to be possible any longer”. However, a year later Draghi reassessed his position and the ECB cut rates again in December 2015 and March 2016, leaving the deposit rate at -0.4%. The experience of smaller European economies, like Switzerland, Denmark, and Sweden, with rates nearing -1% shows that the position of the effective lower bound is far from clear.

Some economists argue that with minor changes to our economic system central banks could circumvent any lower boundary and impose arbitrarily low interest rates.

They advocate for ways to eliminate the arbitrage-opportunity of earning zero interest on hard cash, sometimes going as far as to discuss the eradication of paper currency altogether. One intriguing suggestion from economists Gregory Mankiw of Harvard and Miles Kimball of the University of Michigan is to impose an exchange rate between physical currency and bank deposits. Essentially, if banks imposed a discount for the withdraw or deposit of paper currency (for example, withdrawing $105 from your account would get you $100 in cash) it would remove the relative attraction of cash storage over bank-deposits at any interest rate.

An implicit assumption behind these arguments is that the transactional value of cash is falling. With the universality of electronic transfers in business and finance, and a surge in consumer e-pay systems (Apple Pay, Google Wallet, Stripe, Square), paper cash is increasingly obsolete. The average consumer uses cash only for small payments: while physical currency makes up 40% of US consumer purchases, it accounts for just 14% of

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purchases by value. Essentially, economists would like to segment the uses of cash to target the use of cash as a store of value without impacting its utility for consumer purchases. One way to accomplish this is to restrict or eliminate large-denomination bank notes. The corresponding increase in storage costs would lower the effective lower bound, yet would have little impact on consumers, who don’t have much of a need for large bills. The existence of high denomination notes has a significant impact on storage costs. Consider a comparison between three currencies: the euro, the US dollar, and the British pound, whose largest bills are €500, $100, and £50 respectively.

Compared to euros, storing the equivalent of one billion USD takes four times as much space in dollars and seven times the space in pounds.

Such notes are in high demand. The $100 bill makes up nearly 80% of the value of circulating US cash, while the €500 note makes up roughly 30% of the value of circulating euros. As large bank notes have little utility for the average consumer, the demand for them is spurred primarily by their utility in crime and tax evasion, as a store of value, or as a medium of exchange in foreign countries. Policymakers see the end of large-denomination bank notes as a way to not only facilitate monetary policy, but also to clamp down on the so called shadow economy: raising tax revenues to help make committing crime more difficult. For this reason, the ECB has recently announced that they are considering eliminating the €500 bill. In addition, former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers has called for a global agreement to cease the issuance of banknotes with values of over $100 USD. While phasing out physical currency or increasing storage costs of paper cash would perhaps lower the effective lower bound, some think it wouldn’t necessarily allow for arbitrarily low rates. The University of Chicago’s John Cochrane and the New York Fed’s James McAndrews have both argued that if rates drop too far below zero, people will take advantage of prepayment of taxes or utilities and use barter systems like gift cards to store money at an effective rate of zero. Removing these opportunities, they claim, would require a dramatic change of institutions and represent a large political and legal challenge.

The increasing reliance of many facets of our lives, from communication to transportation to education, on electronic and online systems of payment has left us in a position where an institutionalized disfavour towards physical cash is not unthinkable. As the dramatic shift in the monetary policy paradigm over the last five years has left policymakers backed up against the effective lower bound, it’s no wonder economists are searching for ways to continue to fulfill their monetary-policy mandate as the world becomes normalized to negative rates. While we can continue to hope for a global recovery that will render further rate cuts unnecessary, improving the efficacy of monetary policy is an important discussion for the interim.

winter 2016

STRESSFUL

MCGILL Luke Devine

OPINION WRITER

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he culture of success at McGill University is omnipresent, and, at times can be overwhelming. Many students enter McGill as the wunderkind of their respective high school, but are hit hard by the law of the shifting mean. In other words, those who used to score well above the academic average now just barely meet it. The inherent pressure of McGill’s rigorous academic standard and heavy workload is exacerbated by a student culture that regards academic mediocrity as a hard, often unacceptable pill to swallow. But at McGill, success for the less spectacular (i.e. the majority of us) requires

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OPINION one of two things: (1) an exceptional work ethic, which often implodes by fourth year; or (2) an unorthodox edge.

The latter manifests itself in the rampant abuse of study drugs, plagiarism, and other various loopholes that often work against the students who resort to them. Success at McGill often comes at a heavy cost, and it is important to pay attention to the detrimental side effects of McGill’s rigorous academic standard.

Vyvanse, Adderall, Ritalin – to name a few – are legitimate medications prescribed to treat Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), and Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). The problem, however, is that they are now regularly falling into the hands of students without ADD or ADHD, who abuse them to gain an academic edge over their peers. What’s worse, it seems like an increasing number of perfectly capable students feel that they would not stand a chance without these stimulants.

This sort of sentiment is most likely owed in part to the classic campus-wide perception that everyone, excluding you, is doing well. Let it be remembered that your fellow McGillian has no reason to point out any lack of success and every reason to trumpet their rare successful breakthrough. Now whether or not study drugs actually help those who abuse them to do better in school, their widespread misuse undoubtedly feeds the trap of academic anxiety. If you sense that everyone around you is using them, you are more likely to feel anxious about your relative standing. The perception of their supposedly widespread use, along with a widespread perception that they work, convinces many students that they are at

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OPINION a disadvantage by not using them. In this way, students may perceive yet another shifting mean within the university setting, and do whatever it takes to stay atop once again. Looking past the deleterious effects of study drug abuse, their pervasive use on campus is indicative of a greater structural issue: an unhealthy, systemic pressure at McGill to academically succeed. After all, study drugs are usually used as a last resort, when someone needs to force themselves to engage with the contents of a reading or finish a 15-pager in a day. If they are seemingly being used on a regular basis by a notable percentage of the student body, then obviously something about McGill’s academic culture is awry.

Perhaps, then, the only solution is to equip newly enrolled students with a series of empty platitudes: ‘take everything with a grain of salt’, ‘a B is not the end of the world’, or, the one that peeves me the most: ‘you are more than your marks’. Thanks; tell that to my grad school applications. Of course, most McGill students realize that marks are hardly the determining factor for their future success, but the pressure-cooker created by the constant McGill grind often makes that insight elusive and anathema to those who are unable to grasp it. Therefore, insofar as McGill’s academic culture serves as a breeding ground for stress and anxiety, an adequate solution may require a degree of separation from campus itself. Taking

At McGill, success for the less spectacular (i.e. the majority of us) requires one of two things: (1) an exceptional work ethic, which often implodes by fourth year; or (2) an unorthodox edge.

Still, the use of study drugs is not as unambiguously “unorthodox” as, say, plagiarism. Sure, I have seen friends in computer science copy and paste code whole-scale from one student’s assignment into another’s, but that’s not necessarily indicative of any greater trend. Cheating, like corruption, is pretty hard to gauge and so it is difficult to accurately determine exactly how rampant plagiarism is on McGill’s campus. But, if Reddit McGill is any indication of this campus zeitgeist then cheating – to whatever degree – is quite popular. And surely the same structural forces that drive study drug abuse must undoubtedly also contribute a higher rate of incidents of academic plagiarism. To address cheating at McGill, one possible course of action is for McGill to step up its academic integrity game. McGill could intensify its efforts to crack down on cheaters, like the anonymous Reddit Professor, who went a great deal out of his way to verify a student’s medical note; or the disgruntled Computer Science Professor who created a website to raise awareness of McGill’s allegedly backwards plagiarism protocol. At the end of the day, however, the pressure to perform is still going to be weighing down on students’ shoulders, and not everyone is going to stay the straight and narrow.

Indeed, a merciless crack down does little to address the actual root cause of what leads someone to cheat: a student culture of success by any means. This is where the water gets murky. If McGill’s rigorous academic standards are a contributing factor to study drug abuse and a rate of plagiarism, they are also a contributing factor to McGill’s prestige – and prestige is paramount for this University. Therefore, lessening the academic pressure at McGill to better care for students’ health may be counterintuitive in its own right. Herein lies an undesirable trade off between rigor and prestige, and a healthier student body and academic culture.

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a step back and evaluating the cost-benefit of sacrificing personal health for success is, in my opinion, the best remedy. Indeed, a great way of placing things in perspective – when one feels bogged down in tests, essays, labs, etc. – is to explore the world beyond McGill. Taking it a step further, the measly solution I propose is this: McGill students who feel the pressure most acutely should move out of the McGill Ghetto, or to a place where they can escape the trap of a campus caught in a whirlpool of anxiety and self-sacrifice. By creating a tangible separation between student and campus, the student can reclaim some peace of mind, and some piece of their personality.

It is important to remember that we are ourselves first and students second: and we shouldn’t sacrifice the former for success as the latter. Furthermore, being a student means more than getting the right marks. The hard truth, simply put, is that the McGill bubble can be dangerous when you never leave it.

winter 2016

OPINION

ARE Student Politics a Venue to Success?

SSMU Execs & Success, Post-Graduation Benjamin Butz-Weidner OPINION EDITOR

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o many, running for a position as a SSMU executive might seem masochistic. The grueling requirements, the overwhelming responsibilities, and campaigning are just a few of the things that execs have to deal with – all while being under the constant scrutiny of the press and the student body at large. This leaves one question: is it all worth it? Is being a SSMU exec really something worth the circus-wheeling politics, ’80 hour workweeks,’ and completing some of the truly asinine tasks of the executive offices?

Everyone agrees on the intensity of the responsibilities of those that make up the SSMU exec. It’s so much that the candidates bemoan the strain it puts on their mental health. The execs are often overwhelmed: the job is so large and too cumbersome to accomplish a goal as large as providing mental health services to almost 40,000 students – while also being a student.

Some might point out the clear lucrative benefit: they get paid! This is true – but they don’t get paid much. If someone is going to take on the Herculean tasks that come with being a SSMU exec (not to mention the liabilities it brings), one might imagine that those that have filled the post in the past would be sure to succeed following their time at McGill. If not lucrative, the benefit might be that the position is a springboard to early success.

It may only make sense that a job like this one must pay off in some sort adrenaline-shot for your resume, or be decisive in reaching success post-graduation. To find out if going through the hassle of the job was ‘worth it’

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post-graduation, I may have LinkedIn-stalked some of SSMU Presidents past; and according to the evidence gathered, that presumption might not be true.

On LinkedIn, Zach Newburgh’s (SSMU President 2010-2011) experience blurb about his time at SSMU is one of the lengthiest – which would suggest that Zach considers his experiences at SSMU to be formative. Zach seems successful, but I wouldn’t fully credit his tenure as SSMU President to be what fueled his success. He founded two different businesses, has been a partner in some others, and he’s won scholarships and awards outside his role in the SSMUniverse. With all that and his numerous endorsements en tout, it is not difficult to make the case that SSMU was not critical to his success after McGill.

The same can be said about Zach’s successor, Maggie Knight (SSMU President 2011-2012). Unlike Zach, who works as a business consultant, Maggie works as the operations manager for a “venture incubator” type organization. It seems that Knight’s job is definitely more in line with the responsibilities of the SSMU President. But again, even without her SSMU experience Maggie can not only list several other leadership posts; she’s been published, and has a wide array of experience outside those of a SSMU exec. Maggie would have still been qualified for the job she has now regardless of her time at SSMU. They both also have 500+ connections.

Considering their credentials and network, it might be inferred that being on the SSMU exec is not always a

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OPINION critical factor in making bygone executives’ resumes. The reality is, to many employers SSMU is never more than its basic truth: student politics. That is not to say that these posts are not large commitments, nor that to succeed in them requires desirable attributes like determination, dedication. Considering resumes alone, it simply seems the office might not be all that impressive in success post-graduation.

Being on SSMU exec might even be detrimental to success as a student. The candidates are right: the job is taxing. It is inevitable that a job of that magnitude could weigh into someone’s ability to focus entirely on school.

It is not uncommon for SSMU executives to take longer to graduate. It is also common that those seeking office at the top do so during a fifth year – a less demanding year more forgiving of the toll the SSMU gig may have on the student’s academics.

That brings us back to the main question at hand: is it worth it to be a SSMU exec? It seems that it depends on what you are looking for. If you are a student looking to balance ‘meh’ grades with extra-curricular stardom, your energies might be better served elsewhere. If you are campus politico with an agenda pertaining to some specific allocation of the budget, or an ideologue looking to use student resources for purposes of persuasion, then yes, being a SSMU exec would give you plenty of influence to further the SSMU’s reputation for shadiness and

Turning Point

An Open Letter to America

Mitchell Clarke

OPINION WRITER

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oday, in 2016, we are living one of history’s great hinge points. America’s election will set the course of our future, for good or ill. Without doubt, this election season has seemed at points exciting, shocking, disgusting and even devastating- but it’s much more than just that.

It has now been forty years since the America’s shift to the right, ushered in by Republican Ronald Reagan’s 1980 election victory.

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favoritism.

On the other hand, , if you are someone who genuinely wants to make an impact on this campus, and you are somebody with a focused, narrow agenda (like balancing a budget, or solving a spacing issue) the office can be a manageable one – but one as only as manageable as its goals. If someone is to find fulfillment in that post they must be trying to accomplish something specific. You can’t please all of campus, especially one with a student body as large as ours. There will always be strongly opposed interests on campus, and a varied and heterogeneous student body – the SSMU can only serve so many demographics.

I have no idea if Kareem stays up late into the night tossing and turning in his bed weighing his prospects for the future. I’m sure he feels very satisfied with having made it to where he is now. I know a lot of previous presidents feel the same.

Maybe, then, Kareem and all his predecessors have been perfect fits for the job. They all seem highly content with their decision to assume those responsibilities. It seems to have been a formative experience, though not one that might have propelled their success. For those looking for the right things, a hotly contested executive position on the SSMU could be worth it. For any average McGill student, however, an extra 80 hours of work a week, an overinflated post, and the harassment of being a politician is likely not worth the benefits it yields.

In the 36 years following, the world has changed drastically, with many hundreds of thousands of Americans, and all peoples in the industrialized West, coping with a waning industrial sector, with employment moving from manufacturing toward tech and service sector jobs.

However, a large portion of the population, numbering in the millions, has been left out of the profits from this economic transformation. And what is worse, they were made to suffer, while others soared. ‘Grin and bear it’ was the unstated undertone.

Today, we see the results of what happens when people neglected for nearly four decades find a voice for their frustration. The voice I refer to, of course, is none other than Donald J. Trump.

Allow me to briefly resume the events that led to the appearance of this personality, full of malice and anger, in the race for the Republican nomination for President of the United States. The story begins with Ronald Reagan, in 1980, with his ambitious slate of economic reforms.

Following the hapless years of Democrat Jimmy Carter’s presidency (1977-1981), Ronald Reagan represented a new way forward. His supply-side economic reforms resulted in a vast re-allocation of resources in the United States’ economy. But like many of humankind’s endeavours, the success some reaped came coupled with misery for others – some might even argue the majority. Many lost employment, as manufacturing shut down and went overseas, unable to compete with the near-limitless

winter 2016

OPINION

supply of cheap labour available in East Asia, and the Indian subcontinent.

And then, in the midst of the situation’s worsening, true disaster struck. The United States suffered an outrageous atrocity on its own soil, when four fully loaded jetliners-turned-missiles slammed into civilian targets, killing thousands of innocent people of many nationalities. This, in its turn, precipitated a tragic sequence of events overseas. Two bitter, fruitless wars resulted, in two countries with their own long, colonial histories of foreign domination.

For all those people out there, reeling from unrelenting job loss and cultural dislocation, the crisis was personal. Awakening on September 12, 2001, they found themselves the victims of a treacherous sneak attack. The open society that America had strived over long years of turmoil, years of World War and Cold War, to build was brought low by an evil act of mass murder. What is worse is that it occurred in the one place these honest, hard-working people could still hold sacred: the homeland of the United States of America itself.

In the light of these facts, it is not hard to understand today’s toxic political environment. It is a brutally honest and childish environment. It is an environment that is unbecoming a nation which, to paraphrase Dr. King, has a long track record of bending the arc of its young history toward justice.

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Thus, we now find ourselves in 2016 at the end of an old order and the beginning of a new. It is an order being born on the disheartening foundations of widespread political recrimination and near-total economic anguish.

Trump’s supporters are individuals keen to be heard and noticed, and anxious for someone to re-make the America they feel used to know.

These average citizens in the Rust Belt and beyond no longer believe the national narrative of ‘progress through outsourcing,’ sold by two generations’ worth of politicians.

Despite their mistrust of those politicians, these individuals do believe television media’s constant barrage of doom and gloom, sensational headlines, and cheap ratings tricks. While a comparison to Weimar Germany is clumsy at best, the sentiments of the downtrodden and vulnerable people from coast to coast eerily mirror those of the German people following the Great War. Media outlets, on their part, miss no chance to exploit those sentiments for profits and ratings.

Thankfully, our world continues at least to be livable, if only just. There is no hyperinflation, nor Nazi Brownshirts indiscriminately murdering their fellow citizens for holding opposing political views. However, for these people on whom the government appears to have ‘given up,’ there must be an urgent betterment of their situation.

The consequences of the failure to do so are no less than the twisted disfigurement of what all hangs in the balance

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OPINION of this election’s results: liberty, civil rights, and the acceptance of all races, creeds and colours.

While a Trump rises today, the foresighted citizen or candidate of 2016 should see this as the first of many waves of dissatisfaction situated within a greater tempest of discontent. Equally though, this wave of bewilderment and anger has created an unparalleled opportunity to shape the next four years in a positive way.

It is nothing less than a chance to bring all these millions across the United State back into the fold. A chance to listen to all people, no matter their level of education, or the inflammatory comments they may make from day to day. We must treat any such comments as teachable moments borne of a time when Western democracy was in grave peril, and words failed us all.

If we are lucky and work hard, we will proudly say that this is the moment American democracy was reclaimed – for all citizens.

Because, at the end of the day, we must all breathe a collective sigh of relief and remember that Trump is merely an obnoxious shadow of the unspeakable horror that was Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, and Mao Zedong. He is a shadow, yes, but this truth does not negate the terrifying truth: he is also a harbinger of what can happen when large parts of the citizenry are pushed aside, when vast swathes of the population are condemned to misery, to suffer alone worsening mental health, drug abuse, and poverty.

If we collectively do not act in the interest of all, including those people who today feel left behind by the bewildering pace of economic, technological and social change, the election of 2020 will undoubtedly be worse. The Republicans of 2020 may sleepwalk their way toward a true implementation of doom, whose momentum cannot be stopped, and which causes insuperable harm to the nation. This dire prediction has not yet come true. But it will come true if we cannot at least make the effort to understand each other again! to listen to all people, no matter their level of education, or the inflammatory comments they may make from day to day. We must treat any such comments as teachable moments borne of a time when Western democracy was in grave peril, and words failed us all.

If we are lucky and work hard, we will proudly say that this is the moment American democracy was reclaimed – for all citizens.

Because, at the end of the day, we must all breathe a collective sigh of relief and remember that Trump is merely an obnoxious shadow of the unspeakable horror that was Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, and Mao Zedong. He is a shadow, yes, but this truth does not negate the terrifying truth: he is also a harbinger of what can happen when large parts of the citizenry are pushed aside, when vast swathes of the population are condemned to misery, to suffer alone worsening mental health, drug abuse, and poverty.

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If we collectively do not act in the interest of all, including those people who today feel left behind by the bewildering pace of economic, technological and social change, the election of 2020 will undoubtedly be worse.

The Republicans of 2020 may sleepwalk their way toward a true implementation of doom, whose momentum cannot be stopped, and which causes insuperable harm to the nation. This dire prediction has not yet come true. But it will come true if we cannot at least make the effort to understand each other again!

To loosely quote JFK’s 1961 Inaugural Address, “The world is very different now. For humankind holds in our mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty---and all forms of human life. In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger.

So then let the word go forth, from this time and place, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans [and all other Millennials worldwide]--born [at the turn of] this century, tempered by war[s in the Middle East], disciplined by a hard and bitter [recession of 2008], proud of our ancient heritage--and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.”

In conclusion, I turn to the words of President Lincoln, who stated that the healing of America must be done “with malice toward none, with charity toward all. Let us strive on to finish the work we are in---to bind up the nation’s wounds.”

For the sake of the world in 2016, let us hope that what comes next will bind up the wounds of both the American nation, and the world. For us. For all those people misguidedly supporting Donald Trump. For the planet. And for the sake of those generations yet unborn.

winter 2016

STUDENT SPOTLIGHT

Aditya Mohan Canada’s Bio-GENE-ius KC Moore

STAFF WRITER

OPINION

U

nlike other alumnae featured in this issue of The Bull & Bear, Aditya Mohan has not become successful since graduating from McGill: Aditya hasn’t left McGill yet! Even better, Aditya was already famously successful when he arrived. His early involvement and achievements in medicine has gained him critical acclaim. He has represented Canada at countless competitions, and won prizes that add up to a formidable resume. As someone having had the pleasure of knowing Aditya since the beginning of high school in Ottawa, let me tell you about the most accomplished person I know.

While I was learning trigonometry and chasing pucks around, Aditya was studying gene expression, researching viro-therapy as treatments to diseases, and bioengineering his own virus (named AM105, after himself ). I first knew of Aditya as “The Guy Who Wore a Suit To The Grade Nine Science Fair.” His project compared the costs of different techniques for extracting renewable energy out of the lipids in algal biofuels, as an alternative to the nonrenewable, environmentally damaging fossil fuels we currently burn to fuel the world. It won silver at the Canada-wide Science Fair, along with Best in Category and Best in Age Group.

“It was my formal introduction into science,” Aditya says. “Looking back, it was a very trivial project, but it was a good starting point. And if it weren’t for that grade nine science fair project, I have no idea where my life would be right now. It opened my eyes and showed me what other

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kids were able to accomplish. There were projects much better than ours, and that was inspiring, like if they’re able to do it, if others have done it, why not me?”

The initial interest in science came with those incessant questions all kids ask: why is the sun bright? Why is the sky blue? “I think it’s the nature of science that intrigued me,” he says. “Science gave me answers to those questions, so half of it is definitely understanding. After my work with biofuels, I realized the whole scientific venture of exploring my ideas was something I was really interested in, and I knew I wanted to do something more biology-based than the chemicals in algae.”

Like the best of us, or rather the rest of us, Aditya started at the bottom. “One of my ideas was injecting grape extracts into mice xenografted with Alzheimer’s,” Aditya laughs. “I had no idea why, but I thought, ‘wouldn’t it be cool?’ It’s difficult to do a biology or medicine project on your own, without any lab support. When I went to interview with one professor, right at the beginning of grade ten, he asked me, ‘How many amino acids are there in the body?’ I was like, ‘A lot?’”

Somewhere between learning the twenty amino acids and that mandatory Career & Civics class, Aditya began picking up steam. “Those initial trial-and-errors made me realize I needed to learn more. I started reading scientific papers almost non-stop. In the middle of grade ten, in total I think I sent out four hundred, five hundred emails.

Eventually one professor interviewed me. I was so ner-

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OPINION vous; I was trembling and stuttering, but she let me in her lab and that’s where I started my work.”

At the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, under the supervision of Dr. Angela Crawley, he began looking at adjuvant therapy as a treatment to HIV. The disease is currently treated by HAART, Highly Active Anti-Retroviral Therapy, which bombards the body with molecules that prevent viruses from spreading. The difficulty in treating HIV has to do with the fact that it is an integrating virus: once it invades a body, it integrates its genome within the cells. This leads to dormancy, so even if the disease is contracted, the symptoms might not start to show for a couple of months.

“One day some switch turns on, and you have HIV,” Aditya explains. “The idea of adjuvant therapy is that along with HAART molecules, the body is injected with another molecule that helps the immune system recognize HIV when it comes. Any kind of treatment or drug is only effective while it’s in the body, but the beauty of the immune system is that it’s trained to beat the disease.”

He studied a fairly new protein called TSLP, thymic stromal lymphopoeitin (that even he stumbles over in his explanation), and whether the protein was able to elicit the same sort of immune response as other adjuvants.

“My work with HIV really led me to see the impact that viruses have. You develop an appreciation for the enemy,” he jokes. Aditya presented these findings at his subsequent Canada-wide Science Fair, where he won silver for the second time.

His current project is the treatment of cancer with virotherapy. “With cancer, there was an emotional motivation. It became an area I wanted to help out in after attending a Relay For Life fundraiser.”

Cancer cells express certain proteins to an uncontrollable level. Genes control these proteins, and they have on-off switches. A specific protein can be very expressive in cancer cells, meaning that switch is always on, whereas in normal cells the switch is off.

Aditya used his previous experience with viruses and designed his own, AM105. He incorporated the switch into his virus but added an apoptotic gene, which causes cell death. The targeting mechanism of AM105 attaches to cancer cells it sees with the on-switch, meaning normal cells won’t be targeted because the switch is off. Once the virus is inside the cancer cell, it begins creating proteins that eventually kill the cell. This won him gold at last year’s International Science Fair and he was named Canada’s Bio-GENE-ius.

Recently, Aditya was named one of the Top 20 Under 20 in Canada, had an asteroid named after him, and ran the Project Pulse conference in Ottawa. Project Pulse connects high school and university students to medical professionals to help them build networks. “The reason I’m involved is because I can personally attest that getting your foot in the door is the hardest part of science,” he explains.

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When asked if age was a barrier to getting his foot in the door, Aditya commented that “being young is definitely more of an advantage than a disadvantage. Initially, it was difficult to get my ideas heard. As a kid, you don’t have any credibility, no work to back you up. But I think being young allows you more room to be more creative, open-minded, and develop your own way of thinking.

Formal education, while it’s great, at some point it trains you to think a certain way.”

“The older scientists who are more advanced and successful in their career are accomplished in their niche.

Sometimes it can be hard for them to broaden their range and look into adjacent areas. Youth have more of a broad sense than a niche focus, and that definitely helps with creativity.”

Pursuing his studies as a U1 student at McGill, Aditya is currently finding out how specific proteins and genes render certain people more genetically predisposed towards cancer, and how they can be applied to virotherapy.

“McGill has helped me become more confident about myself and what I want to do,” Aditya tells me. “There’s so much flexibility because of the sheer amount of opportunities - more clubs, people, events, and every day is different. I’ve met so many people from around the world, which has put my perspective in context, given me something to compare my world to, and that’s made me more sure of what I want to accomplish. Living alone, being independent, making my own decisions - there’s a lot of responsibility, but you learn more about yourself and grow as a person, and that’s a welcome experience.”

“It’s been a great year,” he continues. “I love McGill.

It’s one of the best universities in Canada, in the world, with amazing professors that make it an academic challenge. I find it has a great atmosphere, perfectly balanced, competitive but not cut-throat. The biggest challenge is balancing my workload. Between academics and research, it’s hard to make time for other things, and that usually means a compromise on sleep or social life.”

Since I rarely see Aditya despite being close friends and living in the same building, I can personally confirm the sacrifice he makes on his social life in pursuit of scientific achievement. But he says it’s worth it.

“If I’m working on a project and I come across a nifty piece of data, for that brief second, there’s that feeling that no one in the history of Earth has ever seen that information and you’re the first person to ever witness that. It also has to do with seeing whether the information can transcend just that project and ultimately be used to save lives.

Knowing that what I’m doing right now plays a role in a larger picture, that these efforts aren’t in isolation, that they’re going to help people, is so gratifying. I think back to all the work that’s been done in cancer, all the people who are much greater than me, and put their time into it. I’m carrying their legacy forward and adding my own name to it.”

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BUSTY AND THE BASS Catching Up With McGill Grads Michelle Guo

OPINION WRITER

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love for music and high-energy performance sparked the beginnings for the boys of Busty and the Bass, all nine members alumni of McGill University. From chill weekend gigs at Gerts (McGill’s student bar) to performing this coming summer at Osheaga, one of the most annual hyped indie music festivals in the north, Busty and the Bass has made McGill proud with their blended yet eclectic sound.

After winning TD Canada’s Rock Your Campus music competition in 2014, the band has continued to promote their collective of electro-soul, hip-hop, and dance music to impressed crowds across North America. Eric Haynes, Busty’s resident keyboardist and Milo Johnson, the band’s bassist, shared with us some inklings on the impact of their education at McGill as musicians and other musings about their craft.

PHOTO COURTESY OF KELLY JACOB

Who are your musical inspirations?

Eric: Our musical inspirations are probably as diverse as our backgrounds. I mean, we’re a nine-person band and we’re all from different cities all across North America so in our music, we have all sorts of influences—from hip-hop to funk to soul to R&B; all sorts of stuff really. It’s tough to narrow it down for a specific set of influences for the band. For me personally, even that’s hard.

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Milo: That’s a funny question. Actually, in prepping for the album that we’re working on right now, we found ourselves naturally listening to some albums in the tour van over the summer. There was a lot of D’Angelo, Frank Ocean, James Blake, Chance the Rapper, Dr. Dre… I like Parliament-Funkadelic a lot. It’s a funny question because most bands will probably give you a cut and dry answer to that but with us, it depends on which one of us you’re interviewing and what day of the week it is.

winter 2016

ARTS & CULTURE What was the highlight moment of your time at McGill?

Eric: For me, it was definitely the show in our fourth year (U3), where we got to open for the Arkells. That was really great and it was part of winning TD’s “Rock your Campus”. That was probably the biggest show we had done up until that point and all of our friends and the McGill student body had supported us through the competition. It was really nice to feel like we had a chance to give back to them with a free concert. It was really fun.

Milo: I really liked OAP (Open Air Pub). Every OAP show we did was pretty slammin’.

Eric: I even have really fond memories, for some bizarre reason, of the Gerts gigs that we did that in our first couple of years of getting started.

Milo: Yeah, we would be playing for 3 gigs a month for the entire year.

Eric: We played at so many Gerts shows and we would have to bring our own sound system and Chris, our trombone player, would often have to set it up, do sound check, and usually something would break during the show. So it’s always a good time.

Milo: Fond memories of course.

office, and fancy business cards and a title. Then yes.

Eric: Which we all do!

Milo: Yeah, everybody here’s got a title.

How do you think being part of a band while in school helped you develop as people?

Eric: It’s a huge thing to be able to work in such a large group. For me at least, it really contributed to my understanding of how to work with people both individually and in the context of a group and also what were my specific strengths and weaknesses are in terms of being able to contribute to the group’s progress or to the vibe of the group. For me, it was definitely a lot interpersonal growth through being in the band. It’s also interesting because we started playing in our first week of school so I’ve known these guys for five years now and it’s cool.

There’s definitely been a lot of growth between me and other people [of the band].

Milo: Yeah, I’d echo that statement. Pretty much spot on. It’s the same thing as doing anything “real” while you’re in school; it gets you out of your school box and makes you realize that there’s so much more shit in like actually putting something together than you think of.

What is your definition of success?

I guess that was one of the biggest things outside of the interpersonal stuff for me, it’s just like, all of the blockades Milo: I think every person’s definition is going to be that come up on your way of trying to do stuff; it actudifferent. I’ll expand on it a little bit; one thing that I sort ally forces you to deal with those as opposed to just think of found as we’ve come up is, if you define success by comof them, or not even think about them. So that was a big paring yourself to other people, you’re never going to be thing for me. They teach you certain things about how to actually happy because you’ll continue to keep striving for be a musician and how to be a band while you’re in school the next thing and never actually be fulfilled. Whereas if but they don’t teach you you define success in your anything about these others own terms, you’ll be a lot which is exactly I cite Montreal as a city as much more things, more fulfilled and therefore what we learned as we were achieve your goals easier influential than just McGill. I think it’s developing. The best part of than constantly trying to be meeting in school was that always surrounding factors that like “oh we just need to get to we actually had time to learn where those people are at!” contribute to your education, not just as opposed to getting just or like “where these people thrown completely in the where you went to school are at”. So I think, for me deep end. We grew so much personally, in the context of or what you studied. as people, as musicians runbeing a musician, I define ning a band, and every other success as making stuff I’m fulfilled by and making a facet of being in a band so if we hadn’t had the time in living off of it. school, we would have been completely fucked.

Eric: As a band, we’ve had a lot of different goals on Eric: That’s spot on. Also, if we also didn’t have that sort of our path to success. Not to say that we feel like we’re time, before we concerned about making a living and all successful at the moment. We’re always sort of striving for of the realities of life, maybe we wouldn’t have been able the next thing. But whether it’s being able to sustain ourto get the personal bonds that have been able to sustain us selves through our music or reaching as many people as so far in a band. But also just in terms of themusic induswe can, or even just making a full-length album, making try, I’ve learned so much more about the business of being music that we’re really happy with and all contributing to; a musician than we were ever taught in school by being there is a whole variety of goals that come in our definiin this band. I would encourage anyone reading to take tion of success. up a project they feel really passionate about and even Milo: I think on a grander scale, somebody’s successif they don’t feel like it’s going somewhere, just pursue ful if they’re achieving or exceeding the goals that they things outside of school and see what happens. Say yes to have set for themselves…if you got a good suit, a corner as much as you can.

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ARTS & CULTURE On the same note, how do you think your education has impacted your music?

Eric: I think there were some flaws in the music program that we had at McGill and the most of which sort of centred around a lack of clarity about what it takes to be a professional musician and make a living as a musician in the world of today; whether it’s in the internet, the economy, or just how the city of Montreal works. But, that being said, I did learn a lot from the program both in terms of technical ability on my instrument and also just in a sort of a way to learn that can be applied to any music.

I studied Jazz but I can take a lot of those principals and to sort of become more proficient in other styles of music as well.

Milo: I think for us, it definitely gave us a shared language that we use a lot.

Eric: It really taught us how to rehearse too, when we first started.

Milo: Yeah I think ultimately, the biggest thing school gave us was space and people. I cite Montreal as a city as much more influential than just McGill. I think it’s always surrounding factors that contribute to your education, not just where you went to school or what you studied. There are very few people that I know who went through a program in their undergrad and ended up working in a space that was exactly what they studied. It’s always the outside clubs and the hobby or skills that you develop that ultimately get you where you want to be and it was the exact same thing for us.

Eric: Yeah, and in terms of meeting people and making a network. That was a huge thing, both in terms of like, that’s how all the band members met; through the music program at McGill. Also in our first couple of years, when we didn’t have much of a fan base, it was a lot of our friends from our program that came out to see our shows and supported us, so that’s a really big thing too.

What are your favourite parts of music performance?

Eric: I just love being able to tour, go around and seeing new places, and playing music for new people and that hasn’t gotten old for me yet. It’s a really cool thing to do.

Milo: Ditto.

Eric: Being able to reach people through a performance even if it’s just by making them dance or making them feel good. When we perform, we’re just trying to have fun and hopefully make other people have fun too.

Milo: There is definitely something very special about seeing 800 people wave their hands like this *motions in the air*. It’s pretty sick Eric: Yeah and we’re still trying to make our live performance as powerful as it can be but I feel especially in this age of DJs and EDM, it’s really powerful to see people actually playing music onstage and I think it’s a really different experience for our crowd.

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What advice do you have for McGillians? Especially for those with dreams in music?

Milo: Go do stuff. I think that people take a really different approach to school and take a lot of different things out of it. I think in my own experiences and observations, the people who were full school all the time ended up graduating with a piece of paper and no idea what they were going to do. I think it’s a fucking privilege to have four years to be thinking about a few number of things and I think people waste that dicking around or focusing only on school. I would definitely say, go exploring, make connections, try to build shit while you’re still in school and you can fuck up and learn. When you’re out of school and having to support yourself, you’re not going to take the risk and start a nine-person band. That can be applied to any other person’s thing; when you’re out of school and have to support yourself, you’re probably not going to go for the reach job or the shit job that gives you enough experience to go for your reach job. I think that’s all stuff that happens when you’re in school and you’re young enough to do that.

Eric: Absolutely. I kind of wish I had done a better job of breaking out of the bubble whether it’s the bubble of the music school or the bubble of McGill. There is just so much going on in Montreal to experience and take part in that I would definitely urge people to do that. Also, [another piece of advice is] just to pursue your interests, even if it’s outside of your program or outside of what your teachers are telling you to learn about because that stuff that you’re just innately interested in, you’ll be able to find a place for it in whatever you end up doing and it’s going to give you a broad foundation of skills that you can apply to whatever you need.

Milo: Yeah, and I think also on that note, be really deliberate of going outside of what you’ve been comfortable with and what you’ve experienced because that’s the only way you’re actually going to find the middle ground.

With me personally, I was doing a bunch of different things

PHOTO COURTESY OF KYLE HUTCHINS

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ARTS & CULTURE

PHOTO COURTESY OF KELLY JACOB

outside of music activities that made me realize and sort of can. see potential in Busty that ultimately influenced where we What message do you hope to deliver with your music? are now. I think it’s that same thing with a lot of my friends that aren’t musicians but were working in International Milo: I think in one camp, I want people to know that Development and did an engineering degree. It’s always our shit is real because so much of what people are listencross-disciplinary small companies that peak my interest ing to is just like one dude who was really good at comat least and I think that you just have to start looking. All puter program. As cool as that is, there’s a limit to it and of this shit’s already out there and it’s so fucking easy too. I think people are realizing that, which is cool, but that’s Once you’re on the right train of thought, Google a com- definitely a big thing people do realize when they come pany and email their contact email. The Internet is a very to our live show. Especially listening to our music, knowpowerful tool and I think people forget that and just apply ing that these are real musicians playing this together and to the big posting that seven thousand other people are it’s not just one dude and forty layers on a computer who sending their resumes to. Maybe go for a lunch to a bunch presses space bar. of informational interviews. People say that relationships Congrats on Osheaga! How did you get this opportunity? are everything and I didn’t really start to understand the meaning of that until Milo: The Sparknotes the last couple of years. version is that we worked Being able to reach people through a Nobody hires you with Evenko, the company because your resume performance even if it’s just by making them that put on our Prom show looks better, they hire dance or making them feel good. When we that we did in our fourth year you because you are at Corona (Virgin Corona perform, we’re just trying to have fun and Theatre). Our manager the best candidate or they know you. I think hopefully make other people have fun too knows a bunch of people that was something there and they came out to that wasn’t stressed to me enough in school and I don’t our M for Montreal show in November. Then, one of their think was stressed to very many other people. bookers had heard of us for a while and after seeing our Eric: Yeah, I feel like there is also a very big fear of show at Club Soda, we were in. failure and it’s really important to try things in spite of Eric: Shoutout to Osheaga for supporting emerging that. The other thing that Milo said that sort of made Montreal talent! That’s a cool thing for one of the dopest me think a little bit was seeing the potential in a project music festivals in North America to do. because when we started working together in the first year Do you have any upcoming projects? of Busty, which was basically just a jam band that played at house parties, I certainly didn’t feel a long term potenEric: Yeah! We’ve been writing music basically since tial in that. It sort of took all of us a different amount of August and are currently in the studio recording. So in the time to come around to the idea that this could be a really next few months, keep your eyes out! We’re going to be powerful long-term fulfilling thing for us to do. That just releasing a bunch of new music that we’re really excited goes back to saying yes to as many opportunities as you about and can’t wait for everyone to hear.

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ARTS & CULTURE Trading is not the profession it used to be. The vision we entertain of traders screaming bid-ask prices in a pit is dated at best, and more often than not, completely off.

It still may be very exciting, and great risks still loom over the trader’s shoulders, but shouting the loudest is no longer the best skill a trader can have. Speed is.

What is High Frequency Trading?

High Frequency Trading (HFT) has until recently remained an attention-free topic outside the financial sector, with Michael Lewis’ Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt being one of the few major publications to bring the subject to the public’s attention. Today, this topic has become more widely discussed and debated among the few who looked for this Wall Street secret hiding in plain sight. The term HFT might sound cryptic at first, like most financial jargon, but the concept is rather simple.

HFT refers to an automated way of trading using complex algorithms, and powerful computers to transact a large number of orders at extremely high speeds.

The strengths of the algorithms employed are based on their predictive accuracy, and as such, the more profitable trades an algorithm predicts the stronger it is considered to be. Indeed, such algorithms are able to analyze the markets and spot emerging trends in a fraction of a second, turning a mispricing into an arbitrage profit at lightning speed. Currently most of the firms using HFT are hedge funds, though bulge bracket banks have also entered the space.

Have the HFT strategies “rigged” the system (Lewis)?

Since the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) deregulated electronic trading in 1999, these HFT firms progressively asserted themselves in the marketplace.

These firms now account for about 73% of the total daily market volume on U.S. exchanges. Although supporters of the HFT model will continue to claim that they merely enhance market liquidity, which in turns benefits all market players – pension funds, mutual funds and retail investors like you and me – there is also evidence supporting a strong correlation between market volatility and HFT activity in that market. This increased financial system risk poses a significant drawback to HFT trading.

Others have spoken out against HFT, such as Santa Barbara Independent columnist Brian Tanguay, describing it as the newest complexity seeding the market, not unlike mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and collateralized-debt obligations (CDO) in the 2000’s. “This complexity favors the few middlemen sitting between investors and the market who make money from their earnings on fees, commissions, and rebates from order flow and volume”, Tanguay warns. Former RBC trader and IEX founder, Brad Katsuyama, surmised,: “The fact that people who make the most money want the least possible clarity — that should be alarming, too.”

ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT

SINJIN HAWKE

How does HFT work?

Here, a concrete example will be more helpful: Imagine that you have the following rule about buying stocks: whenever a stock goes up by more than 1% in 5 minutes, you buy 100 units of it, expecting the stock to continue soaring in value on this trend. This simple rule can become a basic algorithm set to make trades on your behalf every time these ideal conditions are met and instead of manually entering each order, you can sit back, and let your computer do the work. If the strategy does not work in your favour, you can just go back and tweak it until satisfaction ensues.

HFT firms have been very proficient at finding such conditions and creating automated trading strategies that anticipate market movements. That is why, in the span of milliseconds or even nanoseconds, their trading systems send hundreds of basketsFreddy of stocks out into the marketDetchou place at bid-ask spreads (the difference between ARTS & CULTURE WRITER ask price and the bid price) that are advantageous to the traders.

This allows traders to exercise greater control over the laws of supply and demand, and consequently to sell at higher prices and to buy at lower prices in the marketplace. Overall, by correctly foreseeing the trends in the marketplace, institutions that implement HFT can gain highly favourable returns on trades, resulting in significant profits.

How do HFT strategies prey on investors?

The true controversy started when it was made clear that this opaque business, with record high returns, was as shady as it seemed. Using predatory trading techniques, HFT firms are able to move in and out of short-term positions at high volumes and high speeds, which sometimes aim to capture only a fraction of a cent in profit on every trade. The rapid trading of these stocks raise the prices almost artificially, making the trader a lot of money at the expense of the investor.

This predatory strategy called “front-running” was made possible thanks to well-intentioned but ineffective policy decisions. Indeed, after the SEC deregulated electronic trading in 1999, many new trading exchanges came to life, each coming up with their very own listed securities, prices and other bells and whistles. In order to counter the apparent complexity of the multitude of new exchanges, and with the good interests of retail investors in mind, the SEC implemented the Reg NMS in 2007, which legally compelled stockbrokers to fill their clients’ orders at the best available price regardless of which exchange it was found on. If a large order was being placed, some shares would be purchased first on the cheapest exchange out there before moving onto the next most expensive exchange and then so on the next and so forth. In the case of a large institutional investor like a pension fund, such as the Canada Pension Plan, a market order for 100,000 shares would likely be filled on eight or more exchanges, each trade occurring milliseconds after the last and making more in each subsequent exchange.

From the Arts Building to Yeezy’s Studio

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bout a year ago, Saturday Night Live had a special episode to commemorate their 40th year on television. To celebrate their anniversary, they invited, among many other musical guests, Kanye West. When the time came for him to perform, a strange scene greeted the audience: instead of Kanye’s usual extravagant performances, he kept his movements and flashy showmanship to a minimum throughout the whole set. More unexpected still, Kanye was joined by Vic Mensa and Sia to perform a song that had previously only been heard in part at his ‘Yeezy’ Season 2 fashion line launch event. As the song began, they crouched under a low, lit up ceiling. The beat of the song, although fairly stripped down, was dark, haunting, and hard hitting, evoking feelings of loss and sadness, matching the song’s lyrics. As the song played on, different instruments and levels of intensity were incorporated, complementing each artist and their lyrics, enticing the audience. This song, titled “Wolves,” gave old fans some hope for the album. It sounded more like oldie 808s & Heartbreak than the more polarizing Yeezus-era Kanye.

It felt like a critically-acclaimed return to form. Who they little knew at the time was Sinjin Hawke, who played a critical role in the song’s construction – and no less than a Montreal native and McGill alum.

Born Alan Brinsmead, Sinjin Hawke is a Canadian-American producer who is now based in Barcelona.

His father – initially a French Horn Performance graduate from the University of Toronto – is a computer graphics designer who played a role in the animation teams of movies such as Toy Story, Shrek, and Spiderman. His father’s work had a large impact on how a young Sinjin saw and approached music in the future, both in visually and sonically.

Although Hawke was born in New Jersey, his parents moved him to Montreal at a young age. He grew up learning and making all different styles of music as a child. He began with classical, before switching to R&B and hiphop around the age of 11. He was strongly influenced by legendary producers such as Just Blaze, and DJ Premier, whose extravagant and orchestral style he attempts to emulate.

Sinjin studied Music Technology at McGill University from 2006 to 2010, and, during this time, he began to turn towards different forms of electronic music. His interest in the genre led him to launch a weekly party in 2009 called ‘Boom Clap’ at the Blue Dog Motel on Saint Laurent Street. His parties attracted the interest of more known local producers and DJs such as Lunice and DJ Rashad, which inspired him to put more effort into making music. He began to DJ more frequently, making remixes of popular rap and R&B songs that he would then play at his Boom Clap events and, little by little, Hawke gained more and more notoriety. After graduating he kept honing his craft in Montreal until 2011. That was the year when he quit his job and moved to Barcelona, a place he refers to as his ‘sanctuary’. Despite having been relatively unknown on a worldwide scale, Pelican Fly, a Belgium based record label, spotted him, and helped him release

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ARTS & CULTURE

his first project, The Lights EP, at the end of the year. The EP helped him build a name around the world, which resulted in him spending most of 2012 touring across North America, Europe, and Asia, all the while releasing more popular club remixes.

These experiences played to his advantage in early 2013, when he applied to the Red Bull Music Academy.

The academy offers a yearly series of workshops and conferences aimed at helping young artists connect with each other and industry veterans.Through this program, he was able to come into contact with one of his influences, Just Blaze, and they worked together to make “One”. After the song was engulfed in praise, Hawke also collaborated with Gangsta Boo, a former member of the Academy Award winning rap group Three Six Mafia, to make another song. Hawke thus found two of the best possible introductions to the world of hip-hop; and meeting Kanye – whose team keeps Yeezy’s finger firmly on the pulse of the world of music – was inevitable.

These days, you can find the mysterious Sinjin Hawke working on a multimedia artistic collaboration, co-founded with his fellow producer (and girlfriend,) Zora Jones. They call it Fractal Fantasy, named after a short animation video that was created by his father in the 80s. Driven by their love of alternative electronic music, and fluid, abstract animations, this project is displayed in a website that features their productions playing alongside interactive videos. With his Kanye West collaboration, Wolves, Hawke is able to add another element to his already- diverse CV. Here’s hoping that he keeps seeing the success he deserves!

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THE LIFE OF PABLO Review Stefan Macleod

ARTS & CULTURE WRITER

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eading up to the release of his eighth studio album, is confusing. You would think that West’s affirmation that Kanye West hinted that the greatly anticipated “this is a god dream” would have some bearing on what is album would be “a gospel album with a whole lot to come, but instead West delivers the most inconsistent of cursing on it”. This was an exciting prospect. Soul/ and strangely stitched together first half of an album in his gospel music is certainly not uncharted territory when it career. ‘Father Stretch My Hands pt. 1’ is the first indicacomes to hip-hop (from beat samples, to lyrics etc.), but tion of this. Presumably with the lines “I just want to feel given West’s production prowess, there was a reasonable liberated” and “If I ever instigated I’m sorry” the track is expectation that this promise meant a unique take on the supposed to be some kind of apologetic love song, but it’s genre. The 38-year-old Chicago rapper has repeatedly the poor use of auto tune and cringe worthy lyrics about a demonstrated his talent in drawing from a wide array of model’s bleached asshole that makes that a bit of a stretch. musical genres and moulding them into very listenable As for ‘pt. 2’, it’s certainly a banger, but as it turns out most pop-rap albums. His last album Yeezus was a shining of what makes this song so appealing is largely the work example of this. Granted, it was not my favourite album, of a different artist. Kanye adds a decent opening first it nonetheless gave only to lead into us an effective mix is almost West goes on a tirade of crude sexual comments over a what of Kanye’s often an entire rip of w e l l - d e l i v e r e d , beat that is so weak that it’s hard to believe that Hudson the song ‘Panda’ simple lyrics couby Desiigner.

Mohawke was involved in its creation. pled with hard Now, I don’t hitting electronic mean to say that production, with credits ranging from Arca to Daft Punk. the first half of this album is an utter train wreck because Yeezus couldn’t have been more in line with what it was of the some bad lyrics. Tracks like ‘Famous’ and ‘Feedback’ trying to achieve – it was abrasive, loud and didn’t give give a glimmer of hope that the album might land on its a fuck what you thought. The Life of Pablo, however, cer- feet, even if the theme of ‘Ultralight Beam’ isn’t revisited. tainly doesn’t live up to West’s promise, nor does it come But even these tracks don’t fit well with each other. ‘Feedanywhere close to having as cohesive a theme as Yeezus back’ is great, but it might as well be a track on Yeezus did. Instead, we get a jumbled up mess of tracks that occa- with its aggressively delivered “Wake up!” and harsh elecsionally show greatness, but mostly just left me confused tronic production. The beat to ‘Famous’ is great, especially and disappointed. the chopped up vocal sample that closes it off, but thematThe opening track ‘Ultralight Beam’ gives us the ically the track teeters between a typical bravado-driven impression that West actually is keeping his promise – banger and a sappy pop song (courtesy of Rihanna). the gospel influence is there and it is magnificent. As if The first half of the album is closed out by ‘Freestyle the swelling chords and full gospel choir wasn’t enough 4’, which is possibly the worst track of West’s expansive to deliver the kind of hopeful, feel-good motif this track career. Here, West goes on a tirade of crude sexual computs forth, Chance the Rapper gives a heartfelt verse that ments over a beat that is so weak that it’s hard to believe rounds out this incredible track. But what happens next that Hudson Mohawke was involved in its creation. It’s

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ARTS & CULTURE not like we haven’t seen this kind of vulgarity from West add insult to injury, a beautiful outro from Frank Ocean is before – sometimes it can be pretty funny (‘Yeezy taught tacked onto the end of this track as if to say ‘Look! It could me’) – but here it just feels forced, and insecure. have been good!’ ‘Wolves’ puts a serious damper on what On the short a cappella track ‘I Love Kanye’ West is otherwise the highlight section of this album. gives a surprisingly self-aware verse about his critics being The final two tracks of this album, ‘Facts’ and ‘Fade’ too attached to the “old Kanye”. Now this might have been are by no means bad, but they remind us of how all-overa poignant introduction to the second half of the album the-place this album is thematically. The former is a diss if it wasn’t for tracks like ‘Freestyle 4’ that paint the “new track directed towards Nike (more insecurity) and it’s not Kanye” as an insecure loser, not the next Picasso. really clear what the latter is all about. The beats on both The first real track of the second half, ‘Waves’, presents of these two tracks are pretty enjoyable, but they aren’t a listenable but nonetheless bland and forgettable pop complemented with the kind of engaging lyrics present anthem. There’s nothing criminal about on the tracks that lead up to them. Effeclines like “you set the night on fire” and tively, these two tracks close out the album It’s not that I’m on “sun don’t shine in the shade”, but they with the same ambiguity that is pervasive board with Kanye belong in top 40 radio stations, not a throughout it.

Kanye West album. It’s only until ‘FML’ West toting himself as Sometimes TLOP feels like it’s just that West starts to piece together some showcasing West’s crude and insecure the new Google, but kind of coherent theme. The Weekend persona in the most uninteresting way delivers a chilling chorus over a sur- Yeezus at least showed possible (‘Freestyle 4’, ‘FSMH pt. 1’), and prisingly effective stripped down beat that this kind of bra- sometimes it feels like West is trying to that complements West’s honest and make a serious statement about some kind vado can be pretty focused verse about his depression and of personal struggle (‘FML’, ‘Real Friends’). entertaining. the effects it might have on his family.

Unfortunately though, the album is so Continuing on this positive streak, inconsistent that it’s never clear precisely ‘Real Friends’ delivers the kind of sincerity and down-to- what – if anything – this struggle is. There are moments earth lyrics that one would expect from “the old Kanye” of greatness here, but a handful of great tracks don’t make (see ‘All Falls Down’). West raps about the effects of fame up for an even larger handful of duds. The Life of Pablo on his social life and the friendships that have been lost had my hopes up- but for now, if I want to be entertained in the wake of his hectic lifestyle and the greed that sur- by Kanye West while listening to some great hip-hop, I’ll rounds it. This isn’t exactly the most unexplored theme put on To Pimp a Butterfly while scrolling through his in pop/rap, but he avoids the cringe inducing auto-tune twitter feed. yelps that typify the first half of the album. What is so great about ‘Real Friends’ is how unambitious it is in comHIGHS: ‘Ultralight Beam’, ‘FML’, ‘Real Friends’, ‘No parison to the da Vinci like ambition with which West More Parties in LA’ identifies himself. There are no quick cuts to soul samples LOWS: ‘Freestyle 4’, ‘Waves, Wolves’ or strange beat change ups with awkwardly delivered auto Btune verses. West delivers multiple verses that all put forth a coherent theme; Ty Dolla $ign jumps in on the chorus, this time with an actually effective use of auto-tune, and the song ends. ‘30 Hours’ and ‘No More Parties in LA’ continue this simple appeal, with West delivering thoughtful and sometimes hilarious bars like: “All pink fur, got Nori dressing like Cam”, over beats that are not ground-breaking but nowhere near as obnoxious as the production on the first half of the album.

One final low point is ‘Wolves’, where West showcases a unique and enjoyable beat only to ruin it with some of the most insufferable lyrics on the album, comparing himself and his wife to the biblical Joseph and Mary. I don’t even have a huge problem with Kanye’s obsession with comparison. It’s not that I’m on board with Kanye West toting himself as the new Google, but Yeezus at least showed that this kind of bravado can be pretty entertaining (see ‘I am a God’). On this track however, musing about what would happen if Mary “was in the club / surrounded by hella thugs” is nothing short of annoying. To

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ARTS & CULTURE

UNTITLED UNMASTERED. Review Jon Herlin

OPINION WRITER

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iven that Untitled Unmastered. is comprised of impressive. I mean rather, that his voice is an instruunused demos from the To Pimp a Butterfly ses- ment in the sense that he’s changing his timbre in order sions, it’s unsurprising that its production is stylis- to evoke a different mood in each song, that’s he’s trying tically similar to its predecessor. And given that the pro- to evoke different selves, different versions of Kendrick. duction on TPAB was fantastic, I doubt anybody is going The best example of this is the track ‘Untitled 02’. There’s to complain. As with TPAB, the production on Untitled is this wailing trumpet on the beat that kind of reminds me refreshingly instrumental: the album draws from various of Miles Davis’s trumpet on Bitches Brew: it plays chrogenres, but primarily favours restless jazz beats instead matic scales and its borderline atonal, but it creates a kind of the formulaic trap beats that dominate the rap game of beautiful dissonance. And during the hook, (“get God today. At this point, Kendrick’s producers have essentially on the phone”), Kendrick’s voice mirrors the trumpet: it cultivated a stylistic niche for him, and the beats on this cracks and wavers all over the place. But throughout the album fit comfortably into that niche. They’re complex verses, it has a sort of murderous certainty to it it. These and provocative without being overwhelming; they’re full vocal juxtapositions are what make the song the best and of substance but they aren’t self-indulgent. In short, they most interesting on the album. provide the perfect counterpoint to Kendrick’s rapping.

Another great thing about Kendrick’s delivery is that And when it comes to rapping, Kendrick’s versatility he enunciates his lyrics, which is refreshing, given that is unmatched in mainstream rap today. He’s like Eminem: today, most rapper’s lyrics are unintelligible. In particuhe can’t be pinned down to one style, he’s proficient in all lar, Atlanta rappers such as Future, Young Thug, and Rich of them. Indeed, Kendrick’s flow on this album is as rest- Homie Quan all swallow their syllables and drown out less as the jazz beats that he raps over: it hardly remains their lyrics with enough autotune to kill a horse, such that consistent line by line, let alone throughout each song or what they’re saying becomes secondary or unimportant the entire album. For examto how they’re saying it. With It functions simultaneously as a ple, on ‘Untitled 01’ he iniKendrick, however, it’s about tially comes in hard and fast blowjob joke and as a call to arms both: he’s got a message and with lines that emphasize end he’s saying it with style. about individuality, about using rhyme, but toward the end of Lyrically, Untitled is actuthe song, he switches it up to a your head to question authority and ally very good, and if it were more jagged and spondaic flow any other rapper, I’d probably so forth. that emphasizes triplets and say that its lyrics are excellent. internal rhyme: “ Crucifix, tell me you can fix / anytime I Of course, Kendrick needs to be held to a different stanneed / Imma start jotting everything in my diary / Never dard – the standard of his own work – and when the lyrics would you lie to me.” As a result, you’re always on your of Untitled are compared to Kendrick’s full length LP’s, toes. It’s really hard to get bored with his rapping. With they’re revealed to be good, but not great. For example, other rappers, it’s the same thing over and over again: not there’s a recurring lyric throughout the album, “head is so with Kendrick. the answer / head is the future,” which is incorporated Kendrick’s vocals on this album are as unique and var- most significantly on the extended outro on ‘Untitled ious as his flows. We don’t get the robotic, autotune-laden 07’. It functions simultaneously as a blowjob joke and as wail that rappers such as Future – or lately, Kanye West a call to arms about individuality, about using your head – essentially incorporate on every track. Instead, we get to question authority and so forth. And though it’s kind an authentic voice—a voice that expresses the full range of funny, it’s not really going to fly for Kendrick. Another of emotions and that essentially functions as an instru- example is the sexual encounter that is narrated as the ment in itself. I don’t mean that in the traditional sense: intro to ‘Untitled 01’. This is possibly the worst part of the Kendrick isn’t really varying his pitch that much; he isn’t album, and it doesn’t fit with the content of the song at all. really singing, and when he does sing, it isn’t really that That said, Untitled Unmastered. is still an inter-

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ARTS & CULTURE esting and thought provoking project. Even though the lyric is a really profound insight into Kendrick’s position title wants to draw attention to how unpolished this EP as an artist right now. He’s got the talent, but we’ve kind is, Kendrick still takes a solid shot at cohesion. It’s not of elevated him to this messianic status, when in reality, a concept album by any means, but there are certainly he’s also a normal guy who jams out with his friends, as recurring themes throughout, most of which are the same exemplified by that extended guitar outro on ‘Untitled 07’. In this regard, then, as those explored on TPAB. Moreover, Kendrick deliv- Moreover, Kendrick delivers an insightful the album title is somewhat ers an insightful self-reflex- self-reflexivity or self-awareness on this sly. It wants to lower our standards; it wants to warn ivity or self-awareness on album that expands on and perhaps us not to take this project this album that expands on too seriously. And yet by and perhaps surpasses that surpasses that of TPAB extension, it also wants to of TPAB. The chant “Pimp pimp, hooray!” – a play on “hip hip, hooray!” and a cel- redress how we think of Kendrick’s music: it’s about the ebration of the acclaim that To Pimp a Butterfly received art just as much as it’s about the statement.

Therefore I’m going conclude in line with terms that – recurs throughout the album, and it demonstrates that Kendrick is very much conscious of his importance, both Kendrick lays out for us, that is, I’m going to emphasize for rap and for America as a whole. On one level, Kendrick the art more than the statement. Untitled Unmastered. knows that he’s one of the only rappers with a message is comprised of a lot of pretty good songs: besides those other than money, hoes, lean, and cars. And on another mentioned already, ‘Untitled 05,’ ‘Untitled 06,’ and ‘Untilevel, he knows that what he says has the potential to tled 08’ are all praiseworthy. But with the exception of ‘Untitled 02’, nothing on this album matches the highs of create real social change, for better or for worse.

Some of the best on the album express perspectives Maad City or TPAB, such as “Money Trees,” ‘Swimming on this, for example, on ‘Untitled 1’ he raps, “I made To Pools,’ ‘King Kunta,’ or ‘i’. Ultimately, this project is very Pimp a Butterfly ‘fore you / Told me to use my vocals to much a collection of leftovers, of songs that are worth lissave mankind for you.” What he’s saying there is like, “I tening to, but that belong on an untitled EP. didn’t want to take on this position of the redeemer, but you thrust upon me. I never wanted to be larger than life, 8/10 but you’ve given me this responsibility.” And I think this

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