About Me.
Data Driven.
Tech Enthusiast.
Quantitatively Inclined.
Hi! My name is Tommaso Zanatta. Nice to meet you!
The Beginning
I’ve always been a curious person, always asking questions and with lots (some would even dare to say too many) of interests. I graduated from the I.T.I.S. Einaudi-Scarpa in Montebelluna, Treviso, where my coursework was focused on International Relations and Marketing. I then moved to the amazing Ca’ Tron, where I enrolled in the Digital Management Bachelor’s of Science at H-FARM College.
I had the opportunity to study in a multicultural and diverse environment, parallel to the continuously evolving and technologically advanced campus. My dissertation was about the impact of AI-powered Chatbots (focused on Generative Pre-Trained transformers)on the supply chain management, more specifically on how they can streamline processes. Lately, I’ve been measuring myself against rigorous mathematics, statistics, probability, processes and lots of other words at the Computational Finance Master’s of Science at the University of Padua.
Mathematics, IT, Digital Processes, Optimization, and… Data(?)
During my time at H-FARM College, I was also continuously developing my programming knowledge, being passionate about Python from the early years of High School, I then moved on to Dart, because I was fascinated about the process of actually creating something tangible, like a mobile app. I had, almost by chance, the opportunity to start working as a Flutter Developer during summer, where I started the process of improvement that led me to the current state of my knowledge in this domain. During the third year of my Bachelor’s, I continued working at the same company, getting to know better the colleagues, people who I can now call friends.
Present and Future.
Graduated
After my graduation, I didn’t stop learning and improving, reaching the conclusion that I wanted to continue my studies, shifting my focus towards Finance. This is another example of my curiosity, given that I have always been interested in the stock market, and while I hate to admit it, I was always curious about mathematics and statistics, numbrs in general, but I never put in the effort to actually learn them. If you already know me, you probably know that I’ve always shown this tendency, even when, during my Bachelor’s, I kept up the blog (seems like it was the v1 of this website).
On that personal blog, I would post articles about what I thought would be the ‘next move’ on a stock, along with my trades, asking on my specialized profile on Instagram through stories which tickers my readers and friends wanted me to give an opinion on. Ah, to return to that time. I loved the fact that I was sharing free and actionable knowledge, and people were actually engaged!
My journey went on with my realization of what I imagined my future to be, and when asked ‘what do you want to do in your life?’ the answer was always ‘I want to be a trader, an analyst, someone who is engaged in the markets.
So, the topic of my Master’s was clear. I enrolled at the University of Padua, after applying to various American Universities, because, and I will be forever thankful for this, of my Mathematics Professor at H-FARM College who told me that with my level of preparation in quantitative subjects it would have been quite hard for me to follow the lectures. He was most definitely right, I studied High School and Bachelor’s level Maths for an undefined period of time prior to the start of the MSc. Day and night, Khan Academy and the MIT OpenCourseWare became my best friends, and I started to understand the beauty of Mathematics.
I am currently wrapping up the MSc, while actively reshaping the way data drives innovation in my mind. I never stopped working as a Flutter Developer and I will never have the words to thank my colleagues and bosses enough for the trust, opportunities, support, and friendship they never stopped giving me.
FAQs
(questions that were actually, yes, actually, asked.)
What made you choose Computational Finance after International Relations and Digital Management?
I have always been told that ‘if you apply yourself enough, anything is possible’, to which I would then add ‘and if you didn’t make it, you just didn’t apply yourself enough‘.
The choice of following International Relations in High School was based solely on the fact that it was the only course with three foreign languages in the curriculum. I needed the grades, hated studying and languages were my best bet, it was my efficient-frontier subject portfolio.
I didn’t want to pursue higher education, but someone, who shall remain nameless but I will be sure to thank later on, told me ‘you don’t have what it takes to do it‘, well, guess what.
As mentioned above, I developed the love for mathematics and quantitative subjects during my time in college, where I was understanding business, but that wasn’t enough for me. I wanted to know the math behind money, what drives economics and markets.
What’s the most exciting project you’ve worked on?
This is where you could catch me off-guard. If I’m working on a project, it’s definitely because it excites me. Rarely I put on the effort of wasting the limited time I have. Everything must be optimized, you know me at this point.
I guess integrating trading systems and backtesters saved me a ton of headaches, so yeah, let’s go with those kinds of projects.
What’s your knowledge stack for markets?
08:00 a.m. means a long macchiato, a packet of biscuits, and the copies of the daily editions of the Wall Street Journal and Europe Financial Times opened on my iPad while I highlight things that I deem interesting or I feel would be useful to know more of.
By 08:30 a.m. I skimmed all the major news and market sections of both newspapers, so I’m ready to get to know more about what caught my eye, so I would fire up Arc Search and just rapid-fire questions.
What are the next steps?
Good question.
Any Questions?
Need my CV, want to contact me for anything? This is the place to do it!