Brokers are scum.

Quote from flytiger:

Guess I'm a loser.
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Well, hope you did not lose too big from bad advice.

If I did not agree that most brokers were just salespeople then I would have opened an account back in 1980 when I was a cop and let the brokers advise me.

What I did was direct my own account.

Did so well the manager offered me a job.

Was even paid a ridiculous bonus to join a competing firm.

What would you do if you were making a ton of money and you found that the firm you were with was ripping people off?

There was a legendary broker who was the only one in history to sue a very large brokerage firm for malpractice on behalf of his client.

Now that broker sacrificed a very lucrative career testifying before the NYSE, etc.

I wonder if any Puretickers can uncover that guy's name.

People can fight back if they have the courage.

Most people just like to complain.

I actually invented a quote.

No you will not find it in a book of quotes.

"Most abhor wallowing with the weak, yet fear marching with the strong." ----- Me.

Again, not every broker is a crook.

And do you think maybe that some clients are too greedy?

And stupid?

Do you know how many people call the brokers with hot tips from cab drivers and instruct the broker to buy the crap; if the broker advises that its crap threaten to "take the business elsewhere?"

Don't judge all brokers by "Boiler Room" a great movie by the way.

Successfully,

Alex L. Wasilewski
Co-Founder & Head Trader
Trades That Work
www.puretick.com
1-877-GOLONG1 ( 1-877-465-6641 )
 
I was a broker with two different boiler rooms back in the early 90's. First was the Stuart James Company, from August of 1990 to October of 1990. My very first day on the job there was the day Iraq invaded Kuwait. Stuart James was a penny stock boiler room, selling penny stocks out of it's own inventory to it's clients via the brokers. Some of the stocks we had were Kushner Locke, symbol was KLOC. It's now on the pinks at about .0000002 a share the last time I looked. Another one we had was Command Security Corp, the symbol back then was CMMD, today it is a listed stock under the ticker MOC. One day Forbes Magazine did a report on Stuart James, (I think you can find the story archived somewhere on the internet), that exposed it as a boiler room fraud. Our CEO got on the squak box and told us all that Forbes Magazine was the Enquirer of the financial world and to not pay any attention to it. That article, plus the Saddam Sell Off that was going on really hit the brokers hard. It was hard to make any money, guys who normally made $10K a month were down to about $3K a month. None of us new brokers made much money at all.

As far as the cheating of the customers, it depends on how you define cheating. As a broker at a penny stock firm, you will not make any money selling stocks to clients that are not from the firms inventory. The reason for that is because we sold the stocks from the firms inventory at a 5% markup to CURRENT MARKET PRICE of the stock. So if KLOC has a current offer of 5 in the market, the broker sells it to the client at 5 1/4. (this was the 90's we used fractions back then, sonny!) As a broker, you keep half of the markup as your commission, which in this case is 0.12 a share. But, the firms actual price for owning the stock is much lower than 5, in fact, it probably has most of the stock for free that it got from the IPO deal. And that's part of how these boiler rooms got shut down. The NASD rules said that you could sell it at a 5% markup to your cost, not the current offer. The firms could have sold it at the current offer, then charged a commison and they would have been fine from a regulatory standpoint, but they made more money with the markup. So, did the broker cheat the client? No, not under these circumstances. He got on the phone and recommended a stock that was reccomended by the firm's research after he made sure it was suitable for the client. I don't consider a broker who is on the phone all day selling stock to his customers based on firm research to be cheating.

Now, on the other hand, I did see some downright scamming and cheating going on. A couple of brokers may get together and switch their clients around. Broker A has a client who isn't buying anything anymore because his last stock lost him money. Broker B has a client in the same boat, but it's a different stock that lost him money. So they give their clients to each other, talk shit about the other broker, and get the client to buy a different stock that is "sure" to work out this time.

And then there was another way brokers cheated clients, but it involved stabbing a fellow broker in the back. I was almost in on this one myself, but I didn't go through with it. We had a high producing broker in our office who had a bit of influence with the firm's upper management. He convinced them to be a market maker for a small Chinese company called MTC Electronics. Some brokers jokingly called it Mutual Trust for Communists. Anyway, this broker called in sick one day and while he was gone, the manager passed out some of his accounts that held MTC. He let the brokers call them to tell them to dump MTC and buy one of our regular stocks from inventory. And even if they didn't buy another stock, at least the poaching broker made a commission by selling MTC. I was given one of the accounts to contact, but I didn't go through with it, even though I know he would have done it to me if the situation was reversed. When he came back to work a couple of days later he was a little pissed that we contacted his clients and dumped his stock. But he had a wry smile on his face. he knows he would have done the same thing.

During my time there, despite being on the phone 12+ hours each day and making hundreds of contacts, I never sold a single share of stock to anyone. Not because I didn't want to rip anybody off, but because I was a terrible salesman. I couldn't close a door. I quit working there after just a few months.

Then in September of 1991 I tried it again with another penny stock boiler room. It was the same thing and I didn't open a single account. I quit within two months. The name of this firm was Thomas James Associates and the person who hired me was none other that Tony Elgindy, AKA Anthony Pacific the internet stock swindler. Back then he was a high producing broker and he was assigned as my mentor. he was so busy handling compliance problems that he had very little time to mentor me. Lucky me.

EDIT TO ADD: In the above example of selling stock at a 5% markup, the broker made twelve cent per share. However, the firm owns the stock at a much lower price than the current offer in the market. So oftentimes the firm would have a special for us brokers by boosting the commision to, lets say 20 cents a share. They would announce it over the squak box and the brokers would try to sell as much of it as they could with the higher commission.
 
"That cartoon and article appeared in registered rep magazine in 1987 the year I left Merrill Lynch.

Looks like your sensei didn't teach you much about coming up with new material.

What are you jealous of anyway?

Someone else's success?

To me the above lesson is the lesson that losers never learn. They see success and feel that it is beyond them so they never strive for better.

Instead of being angry, if I wanted to own a yacht, I would find out how all the brokers earned their yachts (of course a loser would say "they all cheated their clients"
I will help out those who need to criticize others here as well:"

I hate to pop your bubble here Alex, but all the post in this thread aren't about you. You really aren't that important.

I thought that the cartoon was interesting in that the broker was showing the client how successfull he and his colleagues were at earning commissions, not showing how successfull his clients had become because of him.

I gotta admit you are right about the new material. In China the old men I trained with definitely thought martial arts were deteriorating because of all the new boys with their 5-10 years experience who thought they could improve on the traditional methods that people used to spend their lives studying. I wasn't there to invent new material.
 
Quote from chrismontez:

I hate to pop your bubble here Alex, but all the post in this thread aren't about you. You really aren't that important.
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Never said all posts on ET are about me, only all of your posts are about me.

I am here to make money, not friends. The only people I need saying good things about me are my clients, not ET idiots.

I use ET to market.

I am not that important.

Now let's turn the tables and talk about you. Since there are far less postings about you than me, I only count one (me speaking about you) that makes you a little less important than me.

Can you handle that or do you need to be more important.

And let's go back to talking about oneself OK.

Who started with the "You should not tallk about your airplane advice?"

Who started the "you should not mention your trading successes" advice?

All this advice was not requested by anyone.

Hmmm.

Maybe you need some advice.

No one gives a crap about you studying martial arts or fortune cookie baking in China. You love China, go live there. I like Brooklyn, NY better.

And while you are playing Master Po to "Grasshopper" with your bubble boy advice---this is what Master Al says.

In Brooklyn when some wise guy pipes up with uncalled for advice about not giving advice then rattles on about all the Alaskans flying airplanes so no one else can talk about flying airplanes and you studying a kata for 40 years "We call that being a hypocrite."

And we say "I got your advice right here."

And another Brooklyn tip. Never, ever tell someone about all your flying drop kicks. From my brother's bar a long time ago, this little punk pulls a pool stick on some guy. The guy goes into this stance and tells the punk he is a black belt and is going to stick the cue stick up the punk's ass.

The punk drew a nine and put a few rounds in Joe Jitsu's right temple.

AW motto. First break the punk's knee and quickly search for that ankle holster. Don't discuss your life resume.

See, now that is advice that may save your life one day.

And ya don't need $29.00.

But if you have $29.00 maybe you can pick up a few trading techniques. It will not take you 40 years.

But you may need to devote 3 years. Can you handle that?

Successfully,

Alex L. Wasilewski
Co-Founder & Head Trader
Trades That Work
www.puretick.com
1-877-GOLONG1 ( 1-877-465-6641 )
 
<blockquote>
From a practical standpoint, this bothers me greatly.

I have yet to sit down with a 'financial advisor' who can have an intelligent discussion about an option with 24 hours until expiration. What's my delta? Gamma? Theta? What can I do if I am long the option? Perhaps a set of unfair questions, but shouldn't an advisor be able to advise you? Shows them up for being the salesmen that they are. For 3% a year I expect something better than telling me to dollar cost average into their 'proprietary' (read: curve-fitted) MPT allocation mix and 'stay the course'.

And there's the problem - if something happens to me, who will advise my family financially? Perhaps better to just put the nut into a mixture of different maturity Treasuries and TIPS with a moderate exposure to SPY and VGTSX and hope for the best. I have no confidence that some of these folks wouldn't allocate my portfolio into Class A 5% load funds and change them annually for fresh commission.

What I would pay 1% of assets p.a. for is free execution (like UBS did) and someone I could call up on the phone and have the following conversation with:

"Hey there. Pull up my portfolio. I just put on size in GC strads in June and am a little concerned."

"Well, let me run this through my supercomputer. Ok. Model predicts likely rise in volatility in GC so suggest we delta hedge aggressively - here are my suggested pivots: ....... Now, by the way, I note that you have a profitable position in palladium that isn't going anywhere right now - in a sideways channel. However, model shows if your GC position profits, correlation coefficient to your overall portfolio doubles to 1.2 and you may give back some of those gains. Want to take some profits and scale back the position to reduce the net effect on your portfolio? My buddy over at goldy told me he had closed out that trade recently. Negligible effects on the rest of the portfolio, by the way."

"OK. Sounds like a good idea. Where is it? Sell half."

That's what I want in a financial advisor - advice, and someone who has access to tools, computing power, and breadth of market information THAT I DON'T HAVE. If you can't give me value added, then the only added value is to YOU!

Of course, the reality is that such an individual probably can't be found in the under $100 mio USD range, and I freely admit I don't qualify, so what I want and what I get are two different things. That's why I rely upon myself.</blockquote>

Actually everything you're talking about should be pretty easy, even though you're making it sound hard. The buddy at Goldman, well, who knows. And the "supercomputer?" And the models the guy checks really fast to prophesy rising volatility in gold options? Hmm. Not my strength. And here's a point: ask George Soros or Jim Rogers or Barton Biggs to help you with this stuff and it's not gonna happen even if they're your uncles. Marc Faber could help you have an outlook on gold or platinum but not on long straddles in them. You're not only looking for someone with talent, but also with the same hobbies as you, like trading vols in metals options. But those guys would be in a completely different frame of mind, even if they had in some parallel universe deigned to act as your broker. This makes your demand doubly difficult. The game is too wide and deep... And of course talent doesn't want to trouble itself with your little speculations, but would rather build up some edifice of its own design, right?
 
Quote from hughb:

During my time there, despite being on the phone 12+ hours each day and making hundreds of contacts, I never sold a single share of stock to anyone. Not because I didn't want to rip anybody off, but because I was a terrible salesman.
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Thanks for the post. Interesting experiences.

One question. If you were like "Vin Diesel" character in Boiler Room, would you have stayed?

Not to wish you a lack of income, but I am kind of glad you did not become one of those high powered crooks. Hopefully you sleep better at night.

What line of work are you in today?

Successfully,

Alex L. Wasilewski
Co-Founder & Head Trader
Trades That Work
www.puretick.com
1-877-GOLONG1 ( 1-877-465-6641 )
 
"Never said all posts on ET are about me, only all of your posts are about me. "

Once again Alex, the cartoon ( at least to the best of my knowledge) had nothing to do with you and my reference to it had nothing to do with you. Although I did come across a reference to you in a thread about trading stategies I was reading today so maybe you are a famous person

Here is the post:

"Alex of PureTick wins when he calls out trades after they move in his favor but loses REAL money trading a managed account for Profit Navigation."

So I guess someone on ET knows something about you.
 
Quote from Spectra:

Thanks for the post. Interesting experiences.

One question. If you were like "Vin Diesel" character in Boiler Room, would you have stayed?

Not to wish you a lack of income, but I am kind of glad you did not become one of those high powered crooks. Hopefully you sleep better at night.

What line of work are you in today?

Successfully,

Alex L. Wasilewski
Co-Founder & Head Trader
Trades That Work
www.puretick.com
1-877-GOLONG1 ( 1-877-465-6641 )
More...

If I were a high powered broker would I have stayed? Good question, I don't know. I would have tried to write good business. But would I have slipped into the abyss and become a scammer? I like to think I'm stronger than that. If I could have written clean business, I would have stayed in long term, probably have gotten a desk at a legit firm once I had built up a book.

Now I work a low level job with a Fortune 500 company in food distribution that pays decent wages and allows me to focus on stock speculation without distraction.
 
"Your mother is stupid and what she did at the dinner table with strangers is not something I care about either.

If you would like I can talk about my beemer you asshole. And that too was paid for in cash you jagoff.

You seem pretty angry about my success you punk mouthed scumbag. If you think you can out toilet mouth me----wrong.

I can out anything in your little puny life scumbag."

So here I am Alex, a potential customer looking for an intelligent advisor who I would trust to help me navigate the mysteries of the financial markets and the 1st I hear of you is the above quote I read from one of your earlier posts on this thread. This is how you market on ET?

As for your other ramblings about China, martial arts etc..., it is 11:00 here PST so it must be 2:00 am in NY. You might want to limit your writings to the daytime when they might make sense.
 
Btw all this shit about planes and bigness and so on is so fu**ing petty -- don't you guys know we're all deadmen anyway? What have you missed? Merrill LYNCH is the pride of a puny existence, as all our existences are puny. What are you missing, the death part? Really you should focus on something bigger.
 
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