Millionaire Tradersin about 6 to 12 months, and all I heard was this sheepish laugh.
Then I thought, “Oh no, so being told you will be put in the ring
in 6 to 12 months is the same thing as someone telling you that the
check is in the mail.” I felt like I had been had and thought that I’m
probably going to be down here for three to five years answering
phones unless something changes. But I stood behind this trader
every day for 6 months and afterwards would pick his brain clean.
I was his clerk, so I asked him why are you doing these trades, why
are buying this, why you selling that? Low and behold, believe or
not, about 9 to 12 months later I was in the ring trading sugar and
coffee options. I was getting my revenge on some of those guys,
and that’s how it started on the floor.
Q: Did somebody on the floor stake you?
A: Yes, the guy I worked for also had shares in different trading
companies. So he owned shares, sometimes big interests in a trad-
ing group on the sugar exchange, and one on the oil exchange, and
back then there were about five different commodity exchanges
on one trading floor in the World Trade Center building. So one
corner of the building was the cotton exchange, one corner was the
coffee, sugar, and cocoa exchange, one corner was the COMEX
gold exchange, one corner of the building was the New York Merc
Crude Oil markets, and then in the middle was a small little New
York futures exchange that traded stock index futures and, I think,
the CRB index. So he had shares in a company that was trading
on the softs, which are coffee, sugar and cocoa, and as soon as
that opening went up, I went for the interview with the director of
that company, which was at a local bar, as most of my commodity
interviews were. After a few beers and probably several questions
about sports I got the job [laughter].
Q: So first you were taking orders and just fulfilling orders?
A: Yes.