Question for anyone who made this move: -Do you miss being a broker? -Would you make the move again? -Do you trade just your money or some client's money as well? -What was the biggest difficulty you faced making the move?
--No, I don't miss being a broker except for some of the cool guys I worked with. The crazy all night happy hours. The Morgan Stanley NYC training in WTC was one of the best things ever. Anyone else here do it back in 1997, stay at the Southgate? That was the sh*t! I was there during St Patty's day....oh man..good times. One thing I would do different would be to have kept my 10 or 15 best clients and gone to a independent office or IB friends and family account. One minor difficulty was getting over L.O.D. (long only disease) that most brokers have.
You mean the manager who made you sell crap with a quota, posting the monthly sales contest results on the compliance managers door, the wet, soggy tuna sandwiches at the required sales meetings...featuring Angelo Mozilo and his fake tan, loud shirts and even louder ties; the delayed quotes, the market only orders, the buying at the offer and selling at the bid, the clients that wanted to know why the commissions were so high, the 20-29% payouts, the monthly push to sell xnumber of VISA cards or financial plans, the broker with the 1970s clothes that had the local Rotary Club wired, the rookies who came and went so quick it was like Vietnam (you did not learn their names until they were there 6 months or more), the research reports that came 1 month to late to be of any good, the wench in the wire room who you had to pay off on a busy day to place your orders in a timely fashion, in a word...no, not for a second.
I would miss the client with $5000 who expects, no demands, service at the level of Goldman Sachs Private Client status. And even if they got that would complain about something.