jhonnyytrade imagine how much that Global Crossing stock would be if he held it. lol lol. I got a feeling GW UNLOADED before global went bankrupt.:
qwik iam pretty shure it was George Bush senior when he was president. Iam wondering if he held those or dumped them. you know what happened to global crossing after that. he probably sold along with insiders.
not a legendary story, but I like it: young guy straight out of college was working this $16k a year mental health job. he liked helping people, but hated the way the management were always helping and protecting each other...anyway, he got fired for telling his boss off, got into the brokerage industry by accident. was making good money but blew it all on parties/going out/car/clothes etc (lots of drinking)....one day decides to buy some shares in BRCM...and soon after adding into it, had made more $ on that than he did in his whole year salary......needless to say this enabled and inspired him to start working for himself trading $. And I love it
In 1985 I was hired on as the youngest stockbroker of a Canadian Brokerage firm, two weeks later they hired a guy that was 2 months younger then me. We became close friends and shared the same office and we did exceptionally well as retail brokers, making huge commission checks every month. We shared dreams of ruling the street one day ... then the crash of 87 hit and I decided to leave the industry and pursue other interests. 15 years later he was one of the richest men in Canada and ran the top brokerage firm in the country averaging a 20 million / year salary. I guess I should have stuck out the crash eh !!!
This happened to me not long after I started trading. I had been jumping in and out of Call options on UAL for weeks as it trended higher and I was making some $$. One Monday morning I decided to go for broke and went long 30 OTM Calls for about $12K with 2 weeks to expiration. The stock went down every day that week. By Friday afternoon my position was only worth $2K. I was sick. I capitulated, threw in the towel, I dumped em'. Well, I just thought I was sick. Before the open the following Monday a guy named Marvin Davis announced his offer to buy out UAL. The stock opened up roughly $90 a share above that Friday's close and by OEX later that week had nearly doubled in price from where I bought the calls the week before. My position (had I held over the weekend) would have been worth about $225K - a 1775% gain, instead of the 85% loss I actually choked down.
Here's one. I have an acquaintance who had owned a small specialist firm at NYSE. He invited me to have lunch at the members lunchroom around 1988. His father began in the business decades earlier as a broker, and in the mid 1920s had his own small firm. My memory of the story is sketchy, but one day, his father got a call from a client with a buy order. He bought the stock and reported the transaction to the client, but in that time, the stock dropped several points and the client had known this and said, it was a short sell order not a buy order. To make a long story short, it was a large order and his father had to cover it so he cashed out all his personal holdings to cover the buy, the stock recovered some in the next few days, and he sold for a small loss and went to cash. One week later the Great Crash of 1929 came. That sleazy client inadvertantly saved this man.