Millionaire TradersQ: The only time it wouldn’t have worked is if things stayed the
same?
A: Yes, or if we had a slow rally, I would have gotten hurt. But
I would check my risk every day. I’d run scenarios several times
during the day to see what my worst-case scenario was and how big
my problem would be and could I live with it. Then I remember it
was a Sunday, and it started snowing in New York like I had never
seen it. There was three feet of snow or something like that.
Q: This was what month?
A: February 1996. I woke up that Monday morning and I thought,
oh this is beautiful. There was a freeze that hit Florida during this
whole snowstorm and I felt like this was a Christmas gift come
late and I must have been a good boy last year. I remember the
market being closed that Monday because New York was snowed
in or it was George Washington’s birthday. But when I came in the
following day, the market was called to open 5 percent higher and
it did. It shot 5 percent higher and I was long and, the next day, we
came in and it was called 5 percent higher and it opened 5 percent
higher, which was the limit at the time. By then I started scaling
out of the position. You just naturally want to get out of stuff.
You’re ringing the register. You’re seeing money that you might
want to spend some day [laughter]. It was hitting the account, and
by the end of that day I was still slightly long futures and slightly
long options, but I was out of probably about 85 percent of the
positions. I rang the register on it. By now it was on the TV. One
friend, whom I hadn’t heard from in awhile, phoned me to say,
“Hey Indi, you’re trading oranges. I saw the orange on CNBC with
the icicles. Did you catch it?” I said, “Yeah, and I was on the right
side, don’t worry, I caught that move.” By now it was the third day.
The opening call was about 3 percent higher, and I had a problem
with that because, I was thinking, wait a minute, it’s all on CNBC
now, the orange with the icicle is on the TV. I was thinking that all
my friends are calling me up about it and the market only opened