The Treasure Hunterthe next day, they wake up at 5a.m.and commute from wherever
they live in New Jersey into New York City and you find that you
get bored pretty quickly. That was when the idea of the Emerging
Market hit. A few years earlier I was at a good friend’s wedding
there, I took a look at their markets with the thought that I’m going
to come back there and trade their commodity markets some day
and then I forgot about it. I thought to myself, rather than goof off
for nine months, why don’t I start a new business, which will fail
because 90 percent of new businesses fail, and I’ll go over to the
emerging market country and just hang out and party there. Look
up my old friend there and start a new business.
Q: What year was this?
A: 1997.
Q: So what was your new business?
A: To trade commodity options on the Emerging Market’s futures
exchange. They didn’t even have them yet, but I did persuade them
to list them a few months later and that first year was really tough. I
think I traded from June until December 1997. It was broken up a
bit because I went over there for three months, got semi-homesick,
and came back for a month or two and then went over there again.
I think I made like$24,000 during that time.
Q: Were you doing this pretty much by yourself?
A: Yes, by myself. I signed up with a brokerage firm over there
and then the exchange was going to list these new commodity
options and nobody knew what to do with them. They said look,
if someone puts up a bid, you put an offer, if someone puts up an
offer, counter with a bid. And I said, are there any restrictions on
me, like how far away I do the options and they said no. We just
want to see two-way markets. We don’t want to see someone put
an order in that never gets answered. I said alright I’ll do that.