The Treasure Hunterbeing long the volatility. I guess they thought this guy knows that
now’s the time to be long vol. They did mention it, at one stage,
that my equity swings were getting a little bit too wide for what
they do. They said we told you to buy and sell options and they
looked at my position and, let’s say, sugar was trading at 10 cents
at the time, and they said, hey, you are long the 10-cent calls, you
are long on the 11-cent calls, but in the 9-cent calls you should sell
something. Don’t just buy every strike [laughter].
Q: Long strikes all across the board right?
A: Anyway, at the end of the year, I tried to grind my way back,
and I’d been in the ring for six months since, I think I had got in
May 1989 or June, and by December that’s the yearend. So by the
first month, let’s say it was May 1989, I made 40 grand and then
the second month I lost 20, and the third month maybe 40 and
then treaded water back and forth. But by the end of the year I
was down about 20. It was time to go in for a review, so I figured,
“Okay, well, I’m fired. I’m out of here.” So it’s the end of the year,
and I’ll never forget it, I go into the interview and the director
sits me down and he looks across the table and he’s like, “You had
a pretty good year.” I’m like, “Oh, cool. They got the wrong file
[laughter].” The way it worked was that you had a base salary of
$24,000 plus 20 percent of the profits that you made. So I asked
the director, “What’s my bonus?” He said, “No, you don’t have a
bonus, you’re down 20,000, but you had good year for a first year.”
He said that most of our guys get killed in their first year, and he
said that you were active so you should have lost 100 to 200,000
dollars this year. I was like, uh, okay, and from that day on I just
decided all right, Indi, you are either going to have to learn how
to do this like a professional and learn money management skills,
not just shoot your mouth off by saying taken and sold. Otherwise
next year, they’re probably not going to be as forgiving. If you are
down again, you’ll be looking for another job doing something you
probably don’t love as much as this, because trading was exciting
for me.