New York, NY · Open to select opportunities

Michael Lund

Builder-operator at the intersection of markets, product & AI.

Duke computer scientist and prop trader who turns ambiguity into systems — reading a situation fast, sizing the opportunity, and shipping the tooling that makes the next decision easier. I find the leverage, build the process, and compound it.

See the work Download résumé Email me
Projects & Work Samples

Proof of work — built and operated.

Featured · Chief of Staff work sample
Operate

Wage Garnishments: What the Company Must Do to Support Them Correctly

2026 · take-home from a Chief of Staff interview process

A take-home exercise from a Chief of Staff interview process at a payroll-tech company. Dropped into an unfamiliar legal-and-operational domain with about four hours, I mapped what the underlying payroll platform automates versus what the company would own end-to-end, and turned it into a decision leadership could act on — not a survey of options.

What the briefing does

  • Cuts to the real problem: "The math is the easy part — the challenge is moving money to the right place on the right clock, and answering the court."
  • Gives a phased recommendation: launch the common order type end-to-end now, run everything else on a written manual playbook, and let real volume decide the first thing worth building.
  • Is verifiable: every material claim carries a confidence marker and resolves to a tiered source list — statutes cited to the statute, not to commentary.
  • Is written for the reader: inline glossary, a capability map, a competitor teardown, per-stakeholder questions, and a first-order processing checklist.
Domain researchPrimary sourcesOps strategyDecision memo
Read the briefing (PDF)

A take-home exercise completed during an interview process — not a role I held, and not legal advice. Company names are redacted.

Featured · a full semester of work
Project · Build · 🏆 2nd, Duke FinTech Trading Competition

Crypto Sentiment + Random Forest Trading Strategy

2024–25 · Duke Math 585 capstone · team of 4

A BTC/ETH strategy that fuses a Random Forest price model with local FinBERT news sentiment and Google Trends data to predict 15-day-average returns, then sizes positions by conviction. Backtested on QuantConnect, it placed 2nd in Duke's FinTech Trading Competition — judged on risk-adjusted return (Sharpe ratio), not raw P&L, so the finish reflects disciplined sizing rather than a lucky bet.

What I owned

  • Designed and coded the piecewise "importance" function that converts a predicted move into a confidence weight — blended with a modified Kelly criterion for sizing, and part of the final winning strategy.
  • Researched and implemented the Google Trends alt-data signal (pytrends) in the QuantConnect backtest.
  • Structured the team into role-based workstreams and edited the final report.

The strategy (team)

  • Random Forest direction/magnitude model on 15-day-average returns to cut daily noise, benchmarked against linear regression.
  • Local FinBERT sentiment pipeline (in-house, no external data sharing) plus dynamic "working-memory" features.
  • Drawdown / liquidation risk controls; the backtest held up through the 2021–22 crypto crash where buy-and-hold fell sharply.
PythonRandom ForestFinBERTQuantConnectKelly Criterionpytrends
View on GitHub
More projects — hover for the summary, open for the dossier
Experience

Where I've built and operated.

Sep 2024 — PresentNew York, NY
Trader
Trillium Trading · Proprietary Trading Firm
  • Manage an intraday U.S. equities book with $500K in buying power — synthesizing Level 2 order flow, tape, technicals, and real-time news into discretionary trades and disciplined risk management.
  • Run an asymmetric, catalyst-driven book (avg winning day ≈ 2× the avg losing day), concentrating max size into a few high-conviction setups while capping risk to a single lockout per ticker.
  • Built a proprietary Bloomberg-style market-news feed with Claude-assisted development, web scrapers, and LLM APIs that shaves critical seconds off intra-trade information processing.
  • Built a personal operating system (Atomic Habits framework) plus trade-prep and review tooling — including a notes aggregator that cuts ~2 hrs of daily note-taking and an AI coach that flags behavioral patterns from daily report cards.
  • Mentored four junior traders on setups, risk rules, habit formation, and structured review; all four went on to record multiple consecutive profitable months in their first year.
Jun 2026 — PresentMiami, FL
Operations & Buying Consultant
TicketKings · Ticket-Resale Marketplace
  • Built a Claude-powered dashboard for a ~20-person resale business that models sell-through targets in the weeks before an event, giving the team a planning read on how to release inventory over days rather than dumping it; the team runs it themselves.
  • Collaborated on-site on live buying decisions during launch week, including the Gracie Abrams and The Chicks ticket drops.
  • Advise on buying across the EDM and dance-music market, applying firsthand domain expertise to flag mispriced inventory and demand trends.
Jun 2023 — Aug 2023New York, NY
Product Management Intern
Publicis Sapient · Digital Transformation Co.
  • Owned all product deliverables for a cross-functional intern capstone built on Suncor's business needs — user stories, PRD, and roadmap — and ran daily standups to coordinate the engineering team.
  • Managed sprint planning in Jira and Confluence and prototyped in Figma, translating requirements into a prioritized backlog.
  • Partnered with engineers to ship a full-stack digital prototype, iterating through continuous stakeholder feedback.
Jun 2022 — Aug 2022Palo Alto, CA
Finance Associate
NeuroSync · Neuro-Technology Co.
  • Crafted the pitch deck for a successful Series B round, helping secure $25MM through targeted market research and product strategy.
  • Built a 50-slide Confidential Information Memorandum (CIM) giving detailed insight to prospective investors.
  • Ran financial analysis to inform strategic decisions on performance and growth trajectory.
Jan 2022 — Aug 2022New York, NY
Project Management Intern, Marketing
Options AI · Stock-Trading FinTech Co.
  • Established a strategic partnership with trading-software company TrendSpider, driving customer acquisition and funded-account growth through an incentivized-funding program.
  • Launched and managed targeted digital and social campaigns with UTM tracking, using Google Analytics to evaluate performance and refine targeting.
Toolkit & Background

Skills, credentials, and foundation.

Skills & Tools

Engineering & Data
PythonJavaC SQLExcel & VBAVibe Coding Claude / LLM APIsWeb Scraping
Quant & Analytics
Quantitative AnalysisStatistical Modeling Performance AnalyticsMachine Learning
Markets
BloombergLevel 2 Order-Book & Tape Discretionary Risk MgmtCatalyst Trading
Product & Operations
Process DesignAgile FigmaJiraConfluence PRDs & RoadmappingSprint Planning
Certifications
Akuna Options 101 / 201 Algorithmic Trading (QuantConnect) AZ-900 Azure Fundamentals

Education

Duke University
B.S. in Computer Science
May 2024 · GPA 3.4
AwardsAir Force ROTC Full Scholarship · Academic & Physical Excellence Awards · Dean's List with Distinction
Leadership & ActivitiesFounder, Difmo LLC (DJ & event services) · Duke Men's Varsity Cheer — Founding Member, Cheer Leadership Council · ACC Professional Development Academy (1 of 7 Duke reps) · Duke Sports Analytics Club · Duke FinTech Club
Selected Trades

Judgment, sized and executed.

Three setups where a prepared thesis met a live catalyst — mapped in advance, executed with rules-based risk.

TSLA Short
+$23,283
on a $1,000 lockout
Trump–Musk public feud
June 5, 2025

Read Tesla's record valuation as resting on the Musk–Trump alliance. Mapped retaliation and reconciliation scenarios in advance, then took three independent max-size entries — one per escalating catalyst — as the feud erased ~$152B (~14%).

GLD Short
+$14,531
on a $1,500 lockout
Gold's record volatility reversal
January 29, 2026

With gold gapping to all-time highs (~$5,600/oz) a third straight session, prepared a defined-risk reversal short anchored to VWAP and the prior high. Used the gold vol index rolling over to confirm exhaustion; held to the bounce as gold flushed ~$380 (~7%) in 30 minutes.

RH Long
+$13,851
on a $500 lockout
Vietnam "tariffs to zero" reversal
April 4, 2025

After "Liberation Day" tariffs, built a country-by-country map pairing each rate with its most exposed equities. When Trump posted Vietnam's offer to cut tariffs "to ZERO," recognized within seconds it removed RH's largest overhang while participants sat offside — and executed the prepared thesis.

Figures reflect realized P&L on the noted risk lockouts. Past performance is not indicative of future results.

About

A decision-maker who ships the systems behind the decisions.

I sit in a seat that pays me to be right under pressure. As a discretionary trader at Trillium, I synthesize order flow, tape, charts, and breaking news into high-conviction bets — concentrating size into a few setups while keeping risk tightly capped. It's judgment as a daily practice.

But the part I care most about is the compounding. When I hit friction, I build my way out of it: a Bloomberg-style news feed that shaves seconds off every trade, a notes aggregator that reclaimed two hours a day, an AI coach that flags my behavioral leaks. I use a computer science degree from Duke and a "vibe-coding" workflow to turn one-off problems into permanent leverage.

That combination — sharp judgment plus the instinct to systematize — is what I bring to a team. I read the situation, own the ambiguous work nobody else has picked up, and leave behind process that outlasts me. Increasingly that looks like a chief-of-staff / operator role: the person who turns a founder's intent into things that actually run.

Contact

Let's talk.

Open to chief-of-staff, operator, trading, and product roles where sharp judgment and a bias for building both matter. The fastest way to reach me is email.

2020mikelund@gmail.com Connect on LinkedIn Résumé (PDF)