Welcome back!
I was in NYC recently, meeting with a potential institutional client for my new hedge fund. Following the meeting, I met up with an old acquaintance, whom I will mention as “Harry”, for supper.
Harry has a Sales Trader job, which is a person who handles the order for institutional clients such as hedge funds and mutual funds. He had an extremely successful career, and used to cover me, I was one of his accounts, in my “Ron Pollack Bulldog Days”. Though we did continue to keep in contact with each other, he and I retired from trading around the same period of time back in 2004. Business Adventure
Both Harry and I had varying, though generally little, success with business ventures after our time on Wall Street. After a while, Harry started to miss the game and asked me if I’d ever go back to trading. I also missed that, in fact. In early 2008 I informed him I would return to managing money; he was thrilled and was eager to get back into it also.
The launch of my new fund was postponed as a result of the market upheavals in the latter part of the year.
its surprise for me that a always happy and hard working man,harry ,handle million share orders in volatile stocks looked like a depress person. Firms were closing down everywhere, and he was relying on my account for his own return but that was not there. NYC
Shortly after my visit with Harry, I met a man I’ll call “Doug,” the head of a small brokerage with hedge funds as clients. I immediately thought of Harry and I put the two of them together. It was successful because Doug had offered Harry a test run, so Harry aced it. Within his first few phone calls to some old accounts he snagged a big order and it went up from there.
Now after only 4 months on the job, Harry is one of Doug’s top producers. Thus, it was no surprise to see Harry beaming when we met for dinner. Good money and having a blast,he’s making money. I was so pleased. In fact he said, “Stocks I am going to treat you every time you come to NYC,then Harry announced that dinner would be his treat.” We were at one of the City’s best steakhouses so I was doubly pleased.
,“Every day we’ve been hearing stories of doom and gloom like the end of Wall Street, the end of hedge funds, the end of the world as we know it,toward the end of the evening, I asked Harry this question. While events have proven disorienting, I’d be interested in hearing your opinions, given the success that you have enjoyed.” His answer was refreshing and went something like this, he said, “Ron, there are a lot of people hurting right now and I truly feel for them, but I am living proof that if you’re good at what you do, have the willingness to work hard and apply yourself and are realistic in your expectations, you can make it and even flourish in times like these. Although I’m not making as much as I used to, I cannot say I have anything to complain about. Individual who are like us are fighters, we are there when there is business to get finished. There will always be business to be done for those who find a way to be productive.”
Harry, here’s to you my friend! Continue to show us how to do it. signing off for now.