Did you know Steve Black?? He hired me at Smith Barney.. Salomon was a very very rude awakening for Steve,Jamie and Sandy.... I have really good stories on Solly bond arb dropping close to a billion when a billion wasn't an odd lot
BTW, I'm just reading this article: 12 Stocks Turned $10,000 Into $1.7 Million In 12 Months https://www.investors.com/etfs-and-funds/sectors/sp500-stocks-turned-10000-into-million-12-months/ "Had you invested $10,000 in January and reinvested your money into the top stocks currently in the S&P 500 each month this year, including in December, you'd have $1.7 million. Meanwhile, had you put $10,000 in the S&P 500, you'd have just $11,630."
Those are trash returns. If you have 1 year and a crystal ball and this is the best you can do you seriously suck. I know in the 80s there were mighty moves in FX & commodities so maybe leverage was less necessary, but I vaguely heard there were already big leverage accessible, as usual it's extremely hard to find as no one gives a fuck and history forgets, at best people will pretend they care because they think to pretend they care means they're not just in for the money and it will make them rich. I know (I think) Jesse Livermore sometimes used big leverage, and collaterized his boat to get more millions to get more leverage, but I don't know more.
I think the real leverage in the 80s was in the LBO space. Danaher was acquired in the 80s for 80mm (78 was debt). Now it’s a 50bn company or something.
I have been meaning to start a thread "The Anatomy of the Great Trading Fuckups" PS. I have seen people drop a yard (or 10, for that matter) and it's always entertaining in hindsight
that insurance thing cost 10? Even the other notorious trade that started with an M didn’t cost that much.