I remember when john glenn was blasting off in the space shuttle in 1999. For some reason they had it on the jumbotron in the financial room at the Cbot. The entire floor of what 2000+ people was silent when the thing lifted off. absolute silence. I've never seen anything like it. 20 seconds into the shuttle's flight someone yells, "BOOOM!!!" everyone had a chortle and got back to work. I guess you had to be there.
10 minutes before close...quietest trader in the room loses it and throws his mouse down on his desk. mouse breaks and the little roller ball thing inside rolls down the back of his desk. he's outright bunds and market clearly going against him and starts screaming at risk manager to get him out. funny thing is...risk manager has logged out of all his systems because he wants to make his train home and basically leave asap. the next thing...trader and risk manager are on their knees under the desk searching for the bloody ball to put back in the mouse. trader screaming...and baboon of a manger sweating his t*ts off that they can put the mouse back together before bunds shut for the day and he has outright directional exposure. anyway...1 minute to go and they can't reach the ball...IT comes running to the rescue and plugs another mouse in...30 seconds to go...they've plugged it into his CQG (charts) screens. market closes as they finally plug mouse in to his machine. trader going mental...risk manager looking sheepish...and other traders literally on the floor screaming in laughter at the sheer incompetence of it all!! they hedged things out in the US in the end.... ahhhh the life of a screen monkey! ps...these things never seem as funny in print!
On a very busy day in the old bond pit, before the new building was built every single person would be covered head to toe in sweat. There was a "slightly" out of shape arb clerk who often arrived hungover that would in the middle of all the chaos reach in his pants and load up his index finger with "fromunda" cheese. When a runner would arrive to pick up his firms paper fill, the arb clerk would teasingly pull back the paper as the runner was reaching for it and with his other hand wipe his index finger under the runners nose. Imagine the initial confused look followed by confused disgust mixed with the hope that the smell wasn't what he feared it to be. Not hard to believe the arb clerk's career never really seemed to take off. This is one of a thousand old floor stories. If they weren't so distasteful you could probably write a book.
I heard a story about one of the best traders in our office, he was having a particularly bad day and ended up punching his screen smashing it in the process. The screen was just showing a blur of red white and blue TT colours except for one little corner where he could make out one of his ladders and carried on trading that market whilst I.T were desperatley trying to hook up another screen for him. A true pro!