Finance Dork

File under: things that only Boondock ever found interesting or entertaining about me. In reality, my life changed the first time I ever set foot on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade. All those childhood dreams of being the next Ryne Sandburg sank pretty quickly in the rushing river of tickers and bids and offers. Those aren't bids and asks, that equity-only stuff. It's bid or offered. I don't ask you a price, I offer you a price and I don't take your ask, I take your offer. Sorry E*Trade baby, I'm a stickler for such parlance accuracy.

It's like the first time you ever got to count P&L in millions. That's when the director of our non-taxable desk told me to always remember that it's "just a job... and not your money", though I think he really meant those in inverse order of importance. Leave it to the guy in muni-land (the most retail focused of all market segments) to hold that view. At least the Harvard MBAs at Goldman Sachs really only mess with other lesser Harvard MBAs running large multi-national organizations. That whole Wall Street vs. Mainstreet sham only really exists in the land of punditry. It's much more Wall Street vs. Wall Street. The guys that hurt individual investors don't work in midtown, they're wealth managers and mid-tier brokers in CT or NJ that invest retail money in things they barely understand, not to mention their client's. Investment bankers are immoral and have agency issues, the latter group of guys are criminals and have competency issues. There is a difference between those two predicaments.

As for me, I've been lucky to always be on the buy side where I had no conflicts. I wanted to make money on every investment idea just as much for myself as for the clients whose money was being pushed around by some 20-something who spent his weekends with his head in CFA books instead of playing beer-pong in Alphabet-City. It worked out reasonably well. I covered financials in 2006-2009. Heck of a time to cut your teeth. Dinosaur quality by SPX: 666.

I'm told that I'm young yet, which is true by most measures. I've packed a lot into the last six years though. Figuring out what it all adds up to may be more a shell game at the moment. I have a lot left to do and a new appreciation for time. In any event, I'm at least in the right field and finding my way back to the exact right position in that field. It's like the first time you ever put a full-sized position on based on your work alone. Suddenly you dream in tick-values and it takes you a good week before you can do anything other than stare at the jacked excel spreadsheet you built in an effort to track your overall P&L for the fund. Eventually you calm down and just try to work harder and smarter than the other average looking white dudes who also know anyone who speaks on CNBC is either talking their book (the smart ones) or a self-aggrandizing laughing stock (the Jim Cramer syndrome).

I like it here. I'm better at this than most other things. I'm good with that. It isn't enough to sustain me in isolation but that is hard fought lesson I'm keeping with me.

-I Heart Palindromes