Someone ought to post a time line or steps for a successful deal. If anyone here understands the sequence for making money, you can see just where the time and place for significant action is. It hasn't been mentioned as yet.
Now do something about it. Y not give stevie a call and tell him bout your 4k accout that u make 20% a month on. come on call 'im.
03-02-04 11:15 AM "Its funny... To hear one lot traders argue whether or not Steven Cohen is "real" or not. Implying they have similar talents. Got to love this sight." Very true. I'm sorry folks but hedge-funds "rarely" trade on a technical basis. They are 99% fundamentally researched based, and yes, they pay atleast .04 per share, and sometimes .06 cents per share for "information". But that doesn't give you a lock trade by any means . . . As one poster mentioned earlier, it's what you do with that information that is the most important thing. Yesterday's example of the semiconductor sector getting downgraded by JP Morgan was a very good example of getting a "call" but deciding whether or not it was a "good" call or not. Suffice to say, it was not. I am pretty familiar with SAC's operation due to a friend of mine that was a senior trader for a premier investment bank equity derivatives desk and was aggressively recruited by Stevie Cohen. They trade a ton of volume, and are extremely aggressive when it comes to sector trading. Cohen is totally for real, and so are his returns.
Paying top dollar for service is what guys like Steve Cohen do. Setting up accounts is hard work. Getting brokers to pay special attention to your account is hard work. Having brokers call you takes making it worth their while. Churning your own account occasionally...generating commissions to a broker.. to make yourself a valued customer is a cost of doing business. There are a lot of "Steve Cohens". They are known by name by every wirehouse. They are not known by nor are they a factor to the deep discount brokerages. When a "hot" IPO comes to market, and your best friend is a broker at Merrill Lynch, can you get 20 shares of the stock? Probably not. When you have a thousand accounts with a thousand different brokers, can you then get some size? What do you need to do to get those shares? What makes you a prime client? What makes a broker in Fargo, North Dakota call YOU to tell you he can get you 100 shares of a "hot issue" when you are in NYC and have never laid eyes on one another? There is no magic. There is no "breaking the rules". It is all a matter of "I'll scratch your back, you scratch mine". You want service? Special attention? It's easy. Do a lot of business. Be a good customer. Have a lot of money. Understand DVP. Know how to work with brokerages. Virtually all these guys have worked very hard as retail brokers. Knowing how the game is played is essential to playing it. It is impossible for anyone to do what a Steve Cohen does without knowing the business inside out and from every angle. Peace, RS
Do you mean to tell me that they started off cold calling and pitching stocks to joe public? You can probably learn the ins and outs without doing this.. I am not saying you are wron, jus that it is totally the opposite of what I thought...
Cold calling! Did you think you could've gotten this far this fast with anyone else, huh? Naw... you'd still be cold calling widows and dentists tryin' to sell 'em 20 shares of some dog shit stock! I took you in ... a NOBODY! I opened the doors for you .. showed you how the system works.. the value of information .. how to get it! -Gordon Gekko- stock and real estate speculator
Yes, that is essentially what I am saying. Some brokers have an edge. A rich kid from Great Neck may have started with a good book and not had to do much cold calling. I know one guy from Great Neck who had only his father's account to start. The day he passed his series 7, he was given the largest office in the local branch of one of the biggest wire house firms (Hutton). His father's company was (and still is) listed on the NYSE. This particular guy was not a broker for very long. He had enough money to go to Hollywood and become a motion picture producer. But he is not unique. Not all retail brokers have to start by pounding the phones and cold calling 12 hours a day. But yeah.....basically these guys DO come from a retail background. It is how you learn the rules. Like I said in the last post....it is very hard to play any game without knowing the rules. From baseball to trading. Can any of us Americans expect to step onto a Cricket field (or whatever it's called) and play the game successfully? Could a kid from Budapest play baseball? Knowing the rules of the games is even more important than having 19 inch biceps On a personal note....I was a retail broker at one of the big firms many years ago. After two years I moved over to another one of the big firms. I had to go through a two or three day "new affiliates training" thing in NYC. A presentation was done for all of us by the head of each department. When we were given the presentation by the syndicate (new issue) guy, he mentioned my best customer by name. Whether or not he knew there was someone in the room from the city I worked in (where my customer happened to live, but only did a small % of his business), I don't know. I just kept my mouth shut. They "officially" did not want my customer's business. And I "officially" did not have an account with him. We played within the rules. If we did not KNOW the rules, we could not have done business together. Knowing the rules, and playing by them enabled us to do a LOT of business together. With no problems, and without breaking any rules at all. Peace, RS
So across the sound (head north when you get the 32A), its a sector game with asking the rights Q's to sector leader execs (Commute in and go to lunch with institutional investments pros club and just tab the Q's from the tables. Then watch which table the speakers go to after lunch). Speakers are all from rising sectors. As you say, knowing what's being pumped and being ahead of the herd is where it is. What I liked was being retired about five years out of grad school and riding into NYC from Greenwich for the luncheons as a guest of II firms and writng out the Q's. The only reason I got involved was social and doing personal amateur sector analysis for my own benefit. Luckily everyone here can do that too. Anyone can run ahead of what is being pumped for the hedges and the herd.