I only know of two stories like this, one I was privy to, the other became folklore.
When I was 21 years old or so, circa 1984, I got a job as a runner at the MERC. This was when it was still "by the river" on Union Station. In those days, THE action was in the Treasury Bill pit. I was later promoted to beig an arb clerk.
One particularly incredidble day, the TB were in a fast market from open to close. I remember this day so clearly because my job was to give hand signals to the arb clerks on the phone, and as I am not that tall and as per regulation I was forced to stand on the second to the top step, and I had to constantly peak my head into the pit and yell the information back the best I could along with the hand signals (hehe, the Salomon Brothers pitbulls were always on my case, but that is another story) - I had no voice for two days. If you have never seen a fast market in a super-crowded Futures pit, this is something to behold. One guy had a heart attack, another was thrown out of the pit from the wave of undulations from the HUGE crowd trying to get in the action. At the end of it, on the elevator ride "upstairs," I ran into a trader. He told me that he had made $2M in 30 seconds, had gone on to lose the $2M in the next 30 seconds, then lost another $4M in the next two minutes. He was almost in tears and said he did not know how he was going to confront his wife.
The other story was of a grannie who apparently had invested in Gold, let it ride ALL the way to $800/ounce, and THEN decided that $10M profit was enough. The old bag had "balls."
nitro
When I was 21 years old or so, circa 1984, I got a job as a runner at the MERC. This was when it was still "by the river" on Union Station. In those days, THE action was in the Treasury Bill pit. I was later promoted to beig an arb clerk.
One particularly incredidble day, the TB were in a fast market from open to close. I remember this day so clearly because my job was to give hand signals to the arb clerks on the phone, and as I am not that tall and as per regulation I was forced to stand on the second to the top step, and I had to constantly peak my head into the pit and yell the information back the best I could along with the hand signals (hehe, the Salomon Brothers pitbulls were always on my case, but that is another story) - I had no voice for two days. If you have never seen a fast market in a super-crowded Futures pit, this is something to behold. One guy had a heart attack, another was thrown out of the pit from the wave of undulations from the HUGE crowd trying to get in the action. At the end of it, on the elevator ride "upstairs," I ran into a trader. He told me that he had made $2M in 30 seconds, had gone on to lose the $2M in the next 30 seconds, then lost another $4M in the next two minutes. He was almost in tears and said he did not know how he was going to confront his wife.
The other story was of a grannie who apparently had invested in Gold, let it ride ALL the way to $800/ounce, and THEN decided that $10M profit was enough. The old bag had "balls."
nitro
