David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

get to the airport.’ I jump in the elevator,
and I say, ‘I hear you’re going to
LaGuardia.’ He says, ‘Yeah.’ I say, ‘Can
we share a cab?’ He says, ‘Sure.’ I think
this is awesome. With Friday afternoon
traffic, I can spend the next hour in the
taxi getting a job.”
The stranger Cohn had jumped into
the cab with happened to be high up at
one of Wall Street’s big brokerage
firms. And just that week, the firm had
opened a business buying and selling
options.
“The guy was running the options
business but did not know what an
option was,” Cohn went on. He was
laughing at the sheer audacity of it all. “I
lied to him all the way to the airport.