A Few Good Traders

This is making the email rounds today:

Conversation between me and one of my trader’s this am:

‘I eat breakfast three hundred yards away from four thousand hedge funds who are trained to pick me off. So don’t think for one second that you can come down here, flash a client relationship, and make me nervous.

Son, we live in a world that has risks, and those risks have to be avoided by men with models. Who’s gonna do it? You? The Sales Force? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for your client and curse the desk. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know: that your client’s loss, while tragic, probably saved p and l. And that my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves p and l.

You don’t want the truth – because deep down, in places you don’t talk about at parties, you want me in those screens. You need me in those screens. We use words like roll-down, carry, gamma. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punch line.

I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very bonus pool that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it! I’d rather you just said "thank you" and went on your way. Otherwise, I’d suggest you pick up a prop book and stand a post.

Either way, I don’t give a damn what you think you are entitled to!’

Its attributed to a GARRY MCDOUGALL, HSBC, TSY & CAP MKTS At:  3/16  9:37

Gary, if you can confirm or deny this, please ping me . . .

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  1. EKC commented on Mar 16

    This is a mash of Jack from “A Few Good Men”.

    BR: Hence, the title of the post!

  2. Matt commented on Mar 16

    Somehow not as compelling as Jack Nicolson’s US Marine version. But almost as good as Carl Spackler’s dali lama speech.

  3. royce commented on Mar 16

    If not for the sales force, where would this guy get his money to trade with? This kind of stuff is so freakin ridiculous. Put a gun in his hands, send him to Iraq for a year, THEN he can make speeches like this.

  4. SJGMoney commented on Mar 16

    Lighten up Francis (Royce)!!

  5. royce commented on Mar 16

    Dang, is he joking around? Ah, well. I’m not up on trader humor.

  6. B commented on Mar 16

    I’m gonna stick my dirty laundry out in public. While I don’t know how things will come to pass today and tomorrow, we are in a similar technical situation that we were on January’s option expiration Friday. Anyone recall that day? Anyone? Anyone? lol.

    It’s not a high probability trade that we will get there, but the SPX might try to run to 1276. That is a monster drop from here but……….It’s fun to play a little with some anecdotal technical data.

  7. duncan Robertson commented on Mar 16

    its easy to be brave with other peoples money

    its a different deal doing things with your own loot

  8. john commented on Mar 16

    Don’t care what anyone says – that was flat funny – super parody and the rest of yuse guyz shud get a funny bone.

  9. David Silb commented on Mar 16

    You had me at sell (sniff, sniff)

    God people it’s a joke. You know, the things you say to get a chuckle and that afterwards people stand around akwardly looking for some quick way to die instead of encouraging you to continue.

    You know. Or you don’t know and that’s why you ain’t getting this.

  10. anon commented on Mar 16

    You say it is the 9th inning. I just saw Jeff Weiss, technical analyst on CNBC who said that this market continues to impress with strong weekly stats on just almost anything you can look at.

    I know you look at technicals in your multi-dimensional approach. What do you see that he does not from an intermediate perspective). I am not counting your call for SPX 1235 in the short-term. The more important call is your bearish outcome.

  11. KirkH commented on Mar 16

    You know, Kirk Gibson was wounded when he hit that homerun in the ninth… On Kudlow yesterday, great wince when the guy in the bottom left quadrant said something like “It’s different this time”.

  12. calmo commented on Mar 16

    God people it’s a joke.
    Aye. You can tell straight off: no sweaters.

  13. dirge commented on Mar 16

    Isn’t that the speech that nicholson’s character right before he’s convicted?

  14. angryinch commented on Mar 16

    Seems a lot of folks are counting on EOQ/EOM strength to keep the market levitated for the next two weeks.

    Hasn’t generally been the case, especially when we have a rally in early-to-mid-March.

    In 11 of the past 15 years, the SPX has declined—often quite substantially—from the week after March OpEx to the EOQ and usually into the first and second week of April.

    This has been true in both bull and bear environments.

    The only year when the market topped prior to OpEx was on Fri Mar 24 2000.

    1992: March 23-April 8, -5%
    1994: March 21-April 1, -7.5%
    1995: March 29-March 31, -2.6%
    1996: March 19-Apr 11, -5%
    1997: March 11-Apr 14, -10%
    1998: March 25-March 31, -2.1%
    1999: March 19-March 24, -5.2%
    2000: March 24-April 14, -14%
    2001: March 27-April 4, -7.5%
    2002: March 19-May 6, -11%
    2003: March 22-March 31, -6%

  15. Bynocerus commented on Mar 16

    […] Hopefully, the daytraders will fade the open this AM and drop us back down to 2250 on the COMP so I can get my money back to work doing something other than sitting in the money market (trading is lots of fun provided you actually get to trade more than once or twice a year – as has been the case for me in 2006).

    Posted by: Bynocerus | Mar 9, 2006 8:53:33 AM

    Well, the daytraders have granted me my wish. Now if they can just keep the dip buyers out of play I can take action.

    Posted by: Bynocerus | Mar 9, 2006 1:15:23 PM

    I hate these parabolic moves; You see some nice gains get eaten away when the market doesn’t have any support. Right now the QQQQs next support is 41.25, and that’s tentative at best. We need to base for a few days or it’s back to the lows.

  16. Bynocerus commented on Mar 16

    Come to think of it, in the last two years, the market has pulled one of these bounces, in almost identical fashion, three times: Mar-04, Feb-05, and Dec-05. Each time, the market wasn’t done punishing the bulls. Two years and two degrees of freedom don’t make a very good data set, though.

  17. B commented on Mar 16

    March 04 & Feb 05 definitely comes to mind. That said, Any correction will likely be muted without ten year rates cranking it back up. The breadth on this rally really sucks. I don’t give a hoot what the advance/decline line says. None of the speculative indices are rallying. I don’t trust this to be anything more than an OE squirt fueled by being oversold. Still no higher high on the Qs or Semis or the Biotechs or or or. I don’t mean new highs, I mean higher highs. And ain’t no way tomorrow will be an up day. No way.

    Something funky is going to happen and I don’t know what it is. The schitzoids have convinced themselves long rates will stay in check now. At least for the hours that comprise the last few days they have. Let’s see what happens now that the ten year has just closed the final gap ……. which has allowed this rally. They’ll need another dose of medication when they realize that further rate drops will mean more inversion (since they can only think about one thing at a time), threatening corporate profits. Bonds ain’t gonna stay here. They have to do something. I’m wondering what is going to cause rates to move. The dollar is looking a little toppy and now we have the hooligans jawboning about slapping Smoot Schumer tariffs on Chinese goods. A complex chain of events that leads to global protectionism and less foreign purchases of our debt? I love Washington. Poll results suck for Congress so they do something to show they are listening. That would be toying with the creation of a global depression. I think law schools need to have mandatory courses in economics since every friggin politician is also a lawyer.

    Sorry Barry. All politicians are bad. All attorneys are politicians. All attorneys are bad. LOL. Some incorrect Boolean logic. Btw, did you know in Japan they limit the amount of attorneys? Instead they graduate engineers who build things, make things and design things. LOL. Same thing in China. Except they just don’t graduate engineers. They also graduate alot of stir fry chefs. Or so it seems by the five hundred thousand Chinese restaurants in the US.

    Weaker dollar means…uh…currency crisis…..imported inflation…..a phase shift in our standard of living…..blah blah. Is that what gold has been telling us?

  18. dsquared commented on Mar 20

    I always thought that Cruise’s character should have replied:

    “Perhaps so, but the actual offence you are accused of here is murdering one of your own troops while he slept and I therefore cannot see how this is possibly relevant”.

  19. Greek Complexity commented on Mar 24

    A Few Good Traders

    [via The Big Picture] (I even stole the title of Barry’s post!)Conversation supposedly between Garry McDougall of HSBC and one of his traders: ‘I eat breakfast three hundred yards away from four thousand hedge funds who are trained to pick

  20. Greek Complexity commented on Mar 25

    A Few Good Traders

    [via The Big Picture] (I even stole the title of Barry’s post!)Conversation supposedly between Garry McDougall of HSBC and one of his traders: ‘I eat breakfast three hundred yards away from four thousand hedge funds who are trained to pick

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