Were you able to keep that 2 millions... ? They say making money trading is easy, keeping it is another story. Congratulations, in any case.
You do not always have the same fate to invest in the Forex market, you need knowledge and experience to get good results and identify opportunities when they arise. Understanding the graphs is a great opportunity to meet the market trend, with techniques and signals.
Etrade sent their most active traders and guys with big accounts to Florida's South Beach, we all got to listen to Greg and Oliver Velez (mainly Greg Capra) preach the merits of doing a strategic venture with Etrade. Etrade's top clients would receive the discount of 50% or if the Prestine's Trading model worked, Etrade might include this program in their "Elite Private Trading" section, if they were to develop it. I still have their book, I will post the cover of this POS model Greg Capra's was preaching was "easy money for all". To the story. I met a young Jewish man, I forgot his name but he was very cool. The DOW and NASDAQ were both acting insanely volatile in 2002. He buys a massive block of Dow and S$P 500 futures, DIA, QQQQ and SPY option contracts and by the end of the day he had made so much money, Greg and Oliver were shaking their head, asking him if he needed a job, wanting to know his secret method. He went ball's to the wall, on a massive "gap down day" and made several million. The DIA, SPY and QQQQ contracts he made $3,000,000 and the Futures he bought pre-market during their massive sell off toward the bottom of the Dow's and Nasdaq and SPY's final double-bottom I heard he made eight figures total that day. Something I do know,is Pristine Trading witnessed a Jewish kid wearing cheap cloths make the most money Greg and Oliver ever saw in real-time, me too, it was insane risk taking and lucky he caught the bottom and road it up several hundred points before the close. Do you remember when the Dow gaped so low it almost broke 7000 and flew up to 8000 intra-day that year? That was the day the Pristine saw a real trader!
About 20 years ago, the wheat market was trading in a 3-5 cent range for the day. We were standing around in the pit picking off the orders, and when the orders were slow coming in, we would play around with the bids and offers, trying to pick each others pockets. When the market was illiquid, locals would try to move the market by bidding it up or offering it down, and we could move it around a few cents pretty easily with little resistance. However most guys had a vested interest in not getting the reputation for âspearing,â which is the act of hitting the bid when someone is trying to bid the market up. A person who practiced spearing was usually a newbie, who would try to make a quick 1/4 cent, or $12.50. This would sometimes piss us off, as a bunch of spearing could hold a market back for the short-term, believe it or not. There was a new local who leased a seat and had never traded more than one or two contracts at a time, who would always spear you if he had a chance. By spearing, he was taking short-term gains, not looking at the big picture, and avoiding the big moves because nobody would give him more than one or two contracts. Since he never traded more than 10,000 bushels (or 2 contracts) at a whack, he wasnât a presence, but a fringe player. However, he had an overpowering ego, was loud and obnoxious, and thought he was a big shot because he had a badgeâ¦.and was well capitalized. The only time I saw him really trade was when I was offering March wheat at 6.80. I was a quarter cent above the market and was offering it to keep a spread in line. The other players knew that I had size, and didnât want to go through me, and no one hit my offer. We were all looking at the Chicago market, when it suddenly traded up a cent (a minute before, I had flashed my clerk and bought a large amount of WH [March Wheat] to cover a position there, and that uptick was my trade), and I offered more March wheat at 6.80. The kid hit my offer, saying âTake it.â I asked him how much he wanted, and he said, âAll you got!â I said, âSold 3,000,000 bushels (600 contracts).â He sputtered, and said he couldnât take that much, but I told him that he owned it already, and wrote the trade on my card. He started to protest, but the pit committee guy, and time and sales ruled that it was a good trade. You never saw the color drain out of someoneâs face as quickly as it did from his. The rest of the pit smelled blood and the other locals started offering the market down, then a couple of hedging companies started selling. The kid stood paralyzed, realizing that he had screwed up his short career in one stroke of ego. He couldnât get out of the market, didnât have the talent to trade his way out of his predicament, and had no friends to help him out. Later, I found out that his clearing firm had to cover his trade and they ended up giving me the cold shoulder for a couple of days. That day, at the close, I covered my whole 3,000,000 bushels about 2.4-4 cents lower, which was a great day for me. As for the kid, he never traded again in the pit. We used to see him sitting in the balcony for a few weeks, watching the action, haunting us for a while, then he disappeared completely. I wonder whatever happened to him.
Great story Jeff! It shows how life is in there. You are an excellent story teller. Did you write or plan to write a book about your experience in that pit? I think people who read it. Very captivating. I read it 4 times already! This post should be nominated the post of the Year!
LOL! I assume you would not have mind it at all if the kid were to have shown up to have a drink. One of the interesting things in the story is that he chose the size. He hanged himself. It was a fair trade.
Haha...I also bought PUMA...was the first stock I ever bought. I bought in 96 or 97 though at 16 7/8 I believe it was. I sold in '98 I believe for around $8 for a 50% loss. Saw it go to the $3-$5 range and thought about buying it back. Later I saw it go to $8 and thought, I'll definitely buy if it goes back to $5. Next time I checked it was at $15. "Bah, I'm not buying it now" Next time I checked it went to $32. DOH! I saw it go to $160 before the trend reversed a little bit(I think to $140), but then shot up to $200 then split and went straight down after that. Funny how I always remember PUMA from 15 years ago. I cant even tell you what stocks I owned last week(or even what I own now!), but I always remembered PUMA Technologies.