My very first job out of college was training to be a Trader. In those days the trading floor is where you wanted to be if you wanted to try and make a living as a stock,option, or commodity trader. It was where the action was. You start out working the phone, taking orders, which you give to the runners, that take them to the assistants, who then give them to the traders. Taking orders on the phone was a crazy job. You literally have a phone on each ear taking orders, often for millions of dollars. I answered the phone “Chicago Shane” for two years from doing it so many time. People talked fast and wanted quick responses. This was back in 1991 before the general public could trade online. You moved up the ladder from phone clerk to runner. Running was exciting but you didn’t learn much. But you got to know the assistants and the traders in the pits. It was an in. Eventually one of the traders would make you an assistant and then you would move to trading yourself. It took a few years but it was a path. You could do it with a big company or you could do what I did and take the assistants position with a smaller trading group.
The problem I had was financing. You had to have a million plus in cash to trade. So you have to find a backer. But the trader that picks you to trade knows that most people don’t have that kind of money laying around so their group generally backs you. He’s the kicker. In exchange for backing you they get 80% of your revenue and you get 20%. A 80/20 split. And it was the norm back then. You really had no choice unless you were inherently rich. You pretty much had to make $400K trading to make any kind of money. Because you had to pay to clear your trades, pay your seat lease, office, etc. I barely made any money. But what a great experience. I learned so much. I always vowed that I would go back with my own money and crush it. Because I could keep all 400K instead of giving away $320k of it. Why did you quit? I didn’t. I got fired. I got fired because I didn’t listen to my backer. He had a few simple rules. One was I always had to be delta neutral, or have no trades on, during big announcements. So there was a big Federal Reserve meeting and I knew exactly what they were going to do with interest rates and made a trade. Well, I thought I knew what they were going to do. When they announced the results of the meeting my position did pretty well. I can’t remember exactly but to the tune of $20K profit. I thought it was pretty good and as my boss came down to the floor to talk to me. I thought I was going to get a pat on the back. Instead he brought me up to his office and fired me on the spot. He said I broke the rules, took on way too much risk for one trade, and he couldn’t rely on me to listen to him. That was it. I was done. Over the next few weeks I contemplated what to do. Finding a backer was difficult and add to it that I had to go there after being fired. I had just moved in with my new girlfriend (now my wife) and was embarrassed to tell her what happened. A little crying, a lot of worrying, but she was great through the whole thing. It was a big part of why I knew I would spend the rest of my life with her.
I’ll bore you with the details at a later date but the gist of it was I told my father what had happened and he said that he was going to open a new branch of the nursery in a college town and maybe that was something I would want to do now. It could be my own business and a lot less anxiety than trading and I could keep the money I made (that wasn’t exactly true but I got the point). So I moved from Chicago to little old Urbana IL and began the rest of my life. My girlfriend followed and we were married the next year. The end. (how I got into domain investing story to follow soon)
Quote of the Day: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” – African Proverb
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That’s a great story, Shane, very interesting.
Great story. I worked as an intern at a futures/options arbitrage firm on Wall Street for 3 summers while I was in high school. I got to go on the NYSE floor sometimes. It was very exciting, and just like you described (everybody with 2 phones, one in each ear, shouting out orders).
Eric,
My friends and family would love to come down to the floor of the Board of Trade and see the pits. Crazy with hand signals flying and all the screaming. They thought it looked like chaos but it was communication in its finest form. 9-11 closed the floor so nobody was ever able to come down anymore. Crazy memories