Pet The Rabbit

My first boss as a trader was Lars.  He was quite the character and very personable, which led salespeople to introduce their clients to him whenever they were in the office.  He was also just a touch insane, which sometimes led to awkward situations.

One day a sales guy, Tim, from Chicago was in our office.  Salespeople from the branches usually drop in to the trading floor a few times a year to schmooze with the traders and on occasion they bring customers with them.  Tim stopped by to joke around with Lars and me for a while, and also to mention that he had just been assigned Banc One, which at the time was one of the largest banks in the Midwest.   He told Lars to be on his best behavior, because his new client was going to be in the office later that day.  Lars laughed and said I’m a professional I know how to talk to clients.  The sales guy and I both cracked up and he walked away.

Later that afternoon Tim returned to our desk with his new client.  Larry was on top of his game and quickly had the client talking about his kids, hobbies, and wife.  All was going well until the client mentioned he loves hunting.  No big deal a lot of people hunt, but for some reason this became the focal point of the conversation.  Lars asked him what he liked to hunt.  Deer and pheasant.  Lars asked him if he ever brought his kids hunting.  No, they are too young still.  Did he ever hunt rabbits?  No, the client replied they are not very tasty and my kids have a pet rabbit.  Without blinking Larry stood up, pulled his pockets out of his pants and asked the client if he wanted to pet his rabbit. 

Tim and I were flabbergasted.  Luckily the client started cracking up and said he had never heard that one before.  For the next 20 minutes Lars and the client were cracking each other up with dirty jokes.  I guess it just goes to show that the slightly insane can spot their own kind.

The PATH Runs Every 30 minutes!?!

Every year a fresh new crop of Ivy League graduates descends on Wall Street.  Hired into a pool of analysts, these bright-eyed individuals start out their careers as sales assistants, research assistants, or trading assistants.  They fill out the lowest rungs of the trading floor.  Only a few will succeed and advance to the point where they become a senior sales person, a research analyst, or a trader.  What separates those who succeed from those who fail?  Mostly it’s how well you handle adversity and how well you fit in with your team.  My odyssey on Wall Street began in sales, which I will touch on later, and ended in trading.  In both sales and trading I began at the bottom as an assistant. 

On my first day as a trading assistant my new boss, Lars, told me to show up the next morning at 6:30 a.m.  This seemed exceedingly early to me, (as a sales assistant, I had been showing up each morning around 7:15 and was usually the first person from sales onto the floor) but I wanted to trade with every fiber of my being, so rather than protest I quickly agreed.  Having never taken the train into Manhattan that early before, I assumed that if I arrived at the PATH station in Hoboken 30 minutes before I needed to get to work, I would have no problem making it to The World Financial Center by 6:30. 

So, the next morning I set out for the train and arrived just after 6:00 to see The World Trade Center train pulling away.  No worries I thought, another train will be along in 5-10 minutes.  Wrong!  That early in the morning the PATH trains only run every 30minutes, not the every 5-10 minutes I was used to.  Each moment that passed my anxiety level increased.  By the time the train pulled up, thankfully for me a little early, I was at my wits end.  It was now 6:20a.m.  The trip across the river only takes about 10minutes and I spent the whole time calculating how quickly I was going to be able to race through The World Trade Center, over the bridge to The World Financial Center, and up to the trading floor. 

When I reached my desk at about 6:40, I was out of breath.  Without looking up Lars said, “Traders start the day at 6:30, you’re in sales again today.”  With my shoulders slumped I dragged myself back over to my old desk in sales.  The whole trading floor was in tears.  Thankfully my old sales colleagues were understanding and let me spend another day helping them out.  I never again missed that 6:00 train.  As it turns out Lars also rode the 6:00 train each morning.  It soon became part of our daily ritual to sit in the same car and same seats as he passed on his trading wisdom to me.

Years later Wall Street had changed a lot.  The “Ivy League Pinheads” had started to take over as derivatives became more widely used.  I had moved on to trading my own book and a new crop of analysts came onto the floor.  As luck would have it Lars needed a new trading assistant.  The new trading assistant he hired, Kyle, was from a very different background than me and as Lars would find out was well connected in the firm.

Some things never change, and Lars told Kyle that he needed to be in to work each day at 6:30.  Well just like it had been for me, arriving to work at 6:30 is a hard thing for those who aren’t used to it.  A few days into his new job and after a few beers in a bar, Kyle overslept and didn’t arrive to work until 7:15.  In the way that only Lars could, he told Kyle to go home for the day.  “If you can’t make it in by 6:30, you can’t sit with me.”  Unlike me, Kyle had just started at the firm so he had nowhere to go.  Also being well connected in the firm, Kyle was not going to tolerate this sort of treatment.  He immediately went to HR. 

Rather than being laughed out of the HR office as he would have been years earlier, HR took his complaint very seriously.  Lars was called off the floor to appear in the HR office.  Infuriated by the nerve of his new first year analyst, quite a few names were thrown around as Lars headed off the floor.  Many would stick as nicknames for Kyle, for the rest of his career.  HR demanded that Kyle be treated fairly and be allowed to sit on the trading floor.  An irreparable rift had now formed between Kyle and Lars, and it wasn’t much longer until Kyle left the firm.

The blue collar work ethic and the locker room atmosphere of Wall Street was slowly crumbling.  In its place was emerging a kinder, gentler, more politically correct Wall Street.  Really.

Lars and the Hubcap

If you have ever read Liar's poker by Michael Lewis, you know that trading floors are predominantly a male domain.  Whenever there is a lull in the action, trading floors quickly devolve into testosterone fueled antics.  The crazier the pranks and antics, the better.  No one personifies the locker room atmosphere of the trading floor quite like my first boss as a trader, Lars.  Lars was one of the hardest working guys I have ever met.  He was also one of the craziest. 

As someone that had worked himself up from running tickets for other people, to running his own trading book, he knew just about everyone in the firm.  For that matter he had at one time worked with almost everyone in the firm.  There was one middle office guy in particular, we’ll call him Rico, that brought Lars particular joy.  The function of the middle office is to make sure that everything on the front lines, the trading floor, runs smoothly.  This entails checking out trade details with counterparties, calculating traders daily PnL (profit and loss) statements, and anything else that traders or salepeople may require.

Lars had hired Rico to work for him in the middle office, back when he ran it.  Lars bought Rico’s kids gifts on their birthdays.  He had attended Rico’s wedding.  They were very good friends, and they enjoyed making fun of each other the way only really good friends can.  Each day Lars and Rico would try to one up each other.  Lars would call Rico a spic and Rico would call Lars a dago.  Nothing was out of bounds.  Not wives, not race, nor sexual tendencies escaped them.  Each morning would start the same.  One or the other would pick up the phone (the middle office sat on a different floor) and the game was on.   

“Hi, is the spic in yet?  Please tell him to come up to the trading floor I have something under my desk  that I need him to take care of.”

“Hey is that greasy wop in yet?  Tell him I’m sorry I chipped his wife’s tooth last night.  I’ll be gentler tomorrow.”

“Hey spic, get up here.  There is a C and C party going on. 

What’s a C and C party?

Cock and Cake, but don’t worry we already ate all the cake.”

Lars even went so far as to take vacation photos just for Rico.  Once on a trip to Puerto Rico he saw a sign advertising Spic and Span.  He immediately pulled his car over and made his wife take his photo beneath the sign.  Upon returning to the office he proudly presented a framed photo to Rico, telling him that he really shouldn’t graffiti billboards like that.

For me though, the crème de la crème was Christmas 2000. Christmas on Wall Street before caps on gifts was a sight to behold, but that's a story for another day.   Anyway, it was and is quite common for the trading floor to give gifts to the people who have supported them all year.  Gifts of cash, wine, even iPods were common.  I knew that 2000 was going to be special, because when Lars walked into the office that Christmas Eve he had a big box and a gigantic smile on his face.  Over the intercom he called Rico up to the trading floor.  A few minutes later when he wandered across the floor, Lars presented him with the gift wrapped box and thanked him for all his hard work.  When Rico ripped open the box all that was inside was an old rusty hubcap!  The entire trading floor lost it.  It was one of the most inappropriate things I have ever seen and we loved it.  Rico was never able to top that one, but the antics continued for several more months.

Then the shocker came.  Rico quit the firm shortly after year-end bonuses to take a similar job at another firm.  He told us it was because the firm stiffed all the middle office guys on bonuses.  Rico made everyone believe he was leaving on his own terms and held no ill will towards anyone but the firm.  Well it was only a matter of days later that Rico filed a lawsuit against our firm, and Lars in particular, alleging discrimination.  It seemed that Rico was going to get his bonus out of the firm one way or another.  Lars was obviously quite shaken.  He was called before our legal council to tell his side of the story.  Under oath he had to explain among other things the hub cap and the spic and span photo.  Of course all the witnesses from the trading floor backed Lars’s story that it was a two way thing and was all in good fun, but the damage was done.  The firm settled with Rico out of court for an undisclosed amount.  While Rico was able to extract a small settlement from the firm, he had done real damage to one of his “best friends”.  Lars and Rico to my knowledge have never spoken since the day they sat across from each other, in a top floor conference room, with the rusty hubcap sitting between them.