I thought it would be intertesting to start a thread on the Pro Firms board to see what the funniest things people have ever seen at a prop firm: Examples: 1) Someone who lost a ton of money in one day; 2) Someone who made a ton of money ina one day; 3) Someone who came to work with boxers on (I have seen that); 4) Anything at all that people would think is outrageous. Lets try to keep it clean and keep NAMES out of it. We all know everyone has a lot to say about Worldco but please past only factual information and not lies about people. I think this thread could be interesting. LOL
Oh man I've spent two hours laughing my A$$ off about the stories of Worldco from the head of my current group. That place by far takes the cake. I would not even try to relate what went on there, just the characters they had. He was with all russians, Im sure every nationality at that firm has its own set of stories. I heard a lot about Walter, too. BTW, if anyone can get a hold of that training video where Walter stumbles in all coked up to make some comments, I would pay to see that. My initial LLC at Assent was crazy. The office next door, which was some children's christian fund used to complain that there were loud animal voices coming out from our room all the time. It was definitely a zoo. One of the heads of the group (who actually was a bigtime scumbag) was the orchestrator with nonstop noises, degrading comments and dances. He would get up and pretend to be a gorrilla/monkey (great impression btw) and then run up to some traders and act like he picking their hair for bugs like the primates do. It was funny as hell, even if just a bit disturbing. At lunch he and the other head of the group would take these 2 rubber slabs that were originally taped on the desks by the keyboards and start sword fighting with them. All you would see is these two jokers whacking the 2 slabs against each other back and forth and occasionally hearing "OWWW" cause they hit each others hands. Then that would get boring, so they would start whacking an empty chair with them. Then they would pretend they were interviewing someone in that chair and go "Soooo you wanna be a trader huh?" and whack the chair in the spot where the guy's nuts or head would be. And when that got boring after 15 min, the one guy would sneak up on some traders and whack the back of their chair just to see the trader jump in total surprise. There was a ton of other nonsense, it was just a zoo. It definitely was not cool when you were the one getting picked on but otherwise it was hysterical.
At any given time, but usually after a 7:30am number, at our old office you could see people doing various amounts of things outside the office. Seeing how "normal" people were usually arriving for work at the other offices at that time it was pretty funny. One guy liked to hang upside down from a tree limb. Two Italian guys would always slam open the front door and destroy the bushes in front of the office complex. Others, myself included, would run upto the train tracks and start throwing rocks at the telephone poles while swearing at the top of our lungs.
Ahhhh brings me back memories.. of the good old EMLX scam. Was working at a daytrading firm in new york, and I can honestly say at least half of us made over 10k that day. But not on EMLX- it was halted at the time. Good old QLGC which dived on the EMLX news and came back just as fast when the news was reported as a hoax. We couldn't hit the buy fast enough.. Personally made 74k (on an account which was worth less than 50k to begin with.) One of our guys hit 800k and another cleared over 500k. Miss those days!!
Arent you the same guy who bashed daytrading on another thread in the last couple days? Yes, it is you. All of a sudden you have good stories to share concerning daytrading? Whats up with that.
Daytraders for the most part lose their shirt. This is the perfect example. Many of the guys who came in to our firm during the bubble are now broke. Hundreds of thousands down the drain.. and most were in their 20's without an education. Look at them now.. I'm not unique in this case. I lost 80% of my net worth but at least had a degree. But I have known the game fairly well, and the players in them. These guys weren't stupid by any means.. but they saw people who were making sick money by a few clicks of a button and got suckered in. After many of these traders left, owners of these firms became more desperate for commisions, and they reached out to ANYONE they could get their hands on. At this one firm- Block Trading which is now defunct- they would roll in senior citizens who literally looked like they came straight from Atlantic City and thought this was the newest form of slots. Trust me, I looked around at different firms, and for the most part, these were the new breed of customers. Then came the marketing ploy. Many of the owners went after college kids. The common gimmick was "Why not spend your tuition money on a real education?" In some sense it should be illegal for firms to recruit like this.. but then again, daytraders are merely customers. Of course college kids fell for it, and then became slaves to the industry because they couldn't get a legit job without a degree. There are guys here like Hydroblunt and others who trash people who try to get real jobs.. due to the fear of being "replaced by a black box" or "quality of life issues." All i know is that the few traders who are successful, NEVER talked like that. They knew there was no glamour in this shit. They were the first ones to admit they are in a dead-end job, but they had to make the best of the situation. And they are still making money after so many years. For me, I had some great days over the last 8 years.. and still excited about being profitable after 03-04 being a total disaster. But whether you want to believe it or not, the guys who actually believe this is some kinda dream job are kidding themselves. I would welcome some replies..
yes good comments sammybea. Only guys who have been around the block understand this, while the kids who talk trash all the time are in for a wake up call in a few years. Senor Zen
a this firm that I knew who came in with boxers and a shirt hung over them and her looked his shaving habits were very 3 days. Olus he would wear those sandles with the nylon ties on them - The dude would come in for the open, leave nad coem back for the close!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! LOL usually he would come back in the afternoon with jeans on or pants.