down and work with me.”This  made  sense.  If  John  got  the  deal  to  do  the  forex  fund  work,  hecould meet Anderson—and then he would be right in line for a job on thetrading floor. I said this to Craig.
“Not really.”I was confused. “Why not? He would know Anderson; he could get to
know him better.”
“But then Anderson would lose an attorney he really likes, assuminghe gets to know John. And who knows what kind of trader John would be.
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He’s my good friend, but honestly he’s not passionate enough, too straightaround the collar, a bit too organized for trading as a career.”
“Too organized?”“Too organized, too methodical. Not enough feeling. Anderson won’tlike that. John has to plan out every move that he makes. He used to makefour-color calendars for our study groups in law school. He is a planningmaniac.  It  could  help  him  be  a  good  trader  in  some  ways,  but  Andersonwon’t go for it. In five minutes, Anderson knows if he wants to hire you ornot. All the things that he won’t like about John, Anderson will understandimmediately. He reads people instantly. While you’re still trying to think ofsomething  smart  to  say,  you’ve  already  been  hired  or  not.  That’s  why  Ihaven’t introduced John to Anderson yet.”
This was bringing up more and more questions. “But wouldn’t John al-
ready know this about himself? Haven’t you spoken to him about it?”
“Oh,  yes,”  he  replied,  finishing  off  his  sandwich,  at  which  point  hestarted looking around for something, as if this conversation had broughtto  mind  a  forgotten  task.  He  pushed  back  from  the  table  a  little  bit,  andbent down to grab what looked like a drink coaster from his briefcase. Heshoved it in his shirt pocket and forgot about it.
He continued: “I talked with John about it. I told him that he was goingto have to let it go a bit, become a bit more of a risk taker. He promises hecan do it, but I can tell he just wants to make the switch because of themoney. Like I said before, Anderson will be able to figure that out beforeJohn barely opens his mouth.”
I shook my head. How could a lawyer’s salary not be enough? “He’s got
to be making plenty of money at the firm.”
“How much do you think he makes?” Craig asked.“I don’t know. Over one hundred.”He nodded. “John made more than one hundred his first year with thefirm.  He’s  making  at  least  two  hundred  right  now,  and  he  is  doing  wellenough that he is clearly on the path to partner in a few more years—andthen he’ll make at least five hundred grand a year. That’s good New Yorkmoney.”
I had never thought about it. I had spent a lot of time thinking abouthow much I made, but never very much about how much the attorneys inthe  firm  were  pulling  down.  Of  course  I  knew  they  were  wealthy.  Morethan $100,000 per year meant wealthy to me. But I had no idea that the at-torneys back at the office considered themselves so poor.
“That seems plenty to live on to me.”“What? One hundred? two hundred? five hundred?”“Yeah. Easily enough.”Craig  looked  me  squarely  in  the  eye,  and  said,  “A  good  trader  could
make that in a month on the trading floor.”
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ADVENTURES OF A CURRENCY TRADER
A  month!  I  nearly  spit  up  the  sandwich  that  I  had  only  taken  a  bitefrom. A month of working on the trading floor for $100,000? Was that evenpossible? Was I dreaming? I reached under the table and held my right legdown, which was starting to bounce up and down from my nervousness. Ithought  that  I  might  pee  in  my  pants  right  there.  I  wanted  to  laugh  outloud, scream, and throw up all at the same time. I had thought that $300per day was good money. There was an entirely different league of tradersout there.
“I never knew,” I admitted.Craig nodded. “From the moment I met you, I had the feeling you weregoing to say that. You had no idea at all how much traders make. This is notabout the money for you, is it?”
I stopped at that moment. I could tell the truth, and he would think lessof me, or I could lie and he would continue to talk with me, and perhapseven help me. Lying seemed like such a good idea at the moment. I said:“No, it is about the money. Honestly.”
He laughed. “How could it be about the money if you never knew how
much we were talking about?”
I  shrugged  and  decided  to  clarify  this  slight  misunderstanding.  “It’sabout the money in the sense that I need to do better at supporting my fam-ily. I am hungry for more. I didn’t know what ‘more’ was until I walked ontothe trading floor. I suppose you could tell me that those guys were makingthe same salary I am, now that I think about it. Yeah, you could tell me thatthose guys are all making forty-five grand a year, and I would be like, okay,where do I sign up? Because for the first time in my career, when I walkedonto that floor, it wasn’t about exact dollar amounts. It was about poten-tial. I could smell money there. It was being created by doing things that Idon’t  understand,  with  people  I  don’t  know,  with  computers  I  haven’tlearned to use. But I could sense that there was a huge amount of potentialfor me to build something for myself as a trader. Not on the trading floor,necessarily. But trading for myself at the least.”
Craig  was  just  staring  at  me  and  listening.  I  could  tell  that  he  likedwhat  he  was  hearing.  So  I  continued,  “And  I  think  that  I  imagined  thatthese  men  and  women  on  the  floor  were  way  too  unsophisticated  to  bemaking as much as lawyers. They were . . . wild . . . down there on the trad-ing floor.”
I laughed and so did Craig.“But  it  didn’t  matter  to  me—I  knew  they  were  making  more  moneythan I was, or at least I was pretty sure about it. And I knew that they wereon a roller coaster ride at their job. Some of them looked like they were ontop of the world. Others looked like they needed barf bags. But they werefeeling  something.  Anything!  The  last  time  I  felt  anything  at  work  waswhen I handed a set of files to Herb Johnson’s secretary and accidentallytouched her where her bathing suit covers.”
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We laughed. By now I knew that I was overstaying my welcome. I hadasked more questions than I can remember and write about here, and hehad happily answered all of them. He spent his time so willingly with methat day that it seemed like he was paying me back for something that I haddone for him, which obviously was impossible.
“I know you gotta go,” I told him.“Yes. I do. We’ve got some economic news coming out at two. Fomsee
interest rate decision.”
“Fomsee?”He  spelled  it  out:  “F-O-M-C.  Federal  Open  Market  Committee.  AlanGreenspan  and  Company  of  the  Federal  Reserve  make  a  decision  onwhether  to  raise  interest  rates.  This  decision—even  no  decision—canmove the dollar 100 points in sixty seconds.”
That  might  not  have  sounded  thrilling  to  any  of  the  people  sittingaround me. But now I considered trading my future, and I was determinedthat as soon as I got back to the office I was going to log on at my desk, andspend as much of my employer’s time as possible trying to find out whatthe FOMC said about interest rates and how it moved the U.S. Dollar.
I thanked him for meeting with me.He  nodded  and  said  that  a  few  years  before,  someone  had  done  thesame for him, and he owed it back. So that’s why I had the feeling that heowed me something. Well, it wasn’t me, but it was someone else. Maybe ithad been Anderson?
We shook hands, and he started to leave. But before he left, he reachedinto his coat pocket and reached for the drink coaster, but then hesitated.He was thinking deeply.
“What’s up?” I asked.“I  have  a  card  for  you.”  He  was  really  thinking  hard  about  this  one.
“But I don’t know if I can give it to you.”
Was  it  a  business  card  from  the  human  resources  people  at  ErnestWellington?  Another  contact?  Craig’s  mentor  or  friend?  He  was  hookingme up! Of course, I wanted to play it cool and not seem so anxious that Iscared him off.
“It’s okay if you can’t for right now,” I lied to him. I was probably will-ing to kill him right then and there for the card, but I knew that a homicidewas going to look bad on my employment record, and probably affect myability to get back to the office in time to trade again.
“Well,” he replied, “Technically, I shouldn’t give it to you right now. So Iwon’t. Just know that when the time is right, I have a friend that I want youto meet. He can help you. He helped me. I still have my job today becauseof him.”
“Anderson?” I guessed.He nearly choked on a laugh. “Oh, gosh, no. Not Anderson. Not anyone
at the firm. Someone else.”
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I felt stupid for suggesting that Anderson was his secret mentor but re-alized that it didn’t matter. Now I had a plan and at least a view of the pathahead.  I  couldn’t  have  the  job  interview  today,  or  maybe  tomorrow.  Butmaybe in a week or two. And the name on the card? I would know it soonenough. Maybe I didn’t need it anyway. I was doing all right with my tradingalready.
“I  understand  that  now  isn’t  the  right  time.  Hopefully,  we  can  talk
again,” I suggested.
He agreed that we could meet again soon. Then he scribbled words on
a napkin, handed me the napkin, and it said:
Rule Number One: Don’t Become Cocky
While I stood staring at the words, Craig raced off to trade. Before heleft, he put cash on the table for the bill and said, “I’d stay longer, but I’mone of the only guys on the floor up there that knows how to read that re-port in sixty seconds. Last month I banked over 200 points on this report.”
“200 points?”“It’s not about the money. But it meant over a million in profits in the
first two hours after the minutes were released.”
Craig then rushed away. And I also wanted to get back to the office.The FOMC interest rate decision was going to be out in 40 minutes, and Ineeded to be ready.
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CHAPTER  6
A Turn forthe Worse
me when I returned to the office and explained it all.
Ididn’t know it at the time, but Craig wasn’t just a good trader. John met
“Craig is a Supertrader, with a capital S. He might be the best traderunder 40 years old down there. He personally makes more than $100,000every month. For himself. That’s his cut. He could probably make a milliondollars  for  himself  this  week  on  this  FOMC  trading  stuff.  They  love  himdown there.”
“I’m surprised that he took the time to meet with me,” I said.John shook his head. “I’m not. That’s the kind of guy he is. He helpedpeople put resumes together in law school and left his for last. He probablywalked away from some great trades today by talking to you. He eats lunchat his desk every day.”
I looked at the napkin and showed it to John:
Rule Number One: Don’t Become Cocky
John  laughed.  “I’ve  got  one  of  those,  too.  And  he’s  right.  I’ve  made
some bad mistakes in my trading by being too cocky.”
Yeah, right, I thought. Whatever. If I was making $100,000 per month,I’d have my shoes shined at my desk and my wife would have a hundrediPods. I’d work for a month and take the rest of the year off.
I wondered if John had met Craig’s secret mentor. From the way thatJohn was looking at me, I got the feeling that he was wondering if Craighad mentioned this same friend. I wanted to talk about it with John, but we
45
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ADVENTURES OF A CURRENCY TRADER
had the FOMC report in just a little while, and I decided that I needed to getmy trading account up and ready.
“So are you trading still?” I asked, hoping to get a bit more information
about John’s plans.
“Yes. I’m having some trouble pulling the trigger on my trades. Some ofthe best ones in fact. But it will pass. I am down for the year still, but I amconfident that will change. And you?”
“I only have a small account. But it’s positive right now.”“How much?”“I don’t know,” I answered. And then I calculated the percentage gain
in my head. “Seventy percent so far.”
He nearly choked. “Seventy percent? Your account is up 70 percent for
the year?”
What was the big deal? At the rate I was going, it would be up 100 per-cent by today. I told him, yes, it was up that far but I really still had a lotto learn. I felt badly that I was doing so much better than he was doing.Now I felt my leg start to shake a bit. I wanted to start trading again assoon  as  possible.  I  had  profits  to  make,  and  all  this  talk  was  drivingme crazy.
I raced back toward my desk, thinking about how great the day hadbeen. A great day in a great week in what was going to be the most Amaz-ing great year of my life so far.
And now I was going to trade.Or at least that is what I thought I was going to do. Scott Needlewaywas standing at my cubicle when I got back from lunch. He did not lookhappy.
“Herbie is pissed and wants to see you now.”I didn’t care if Herbie was experiencing chest pains and shortness ofbreath. I was going to be trading for the next half hour and there was noth-ing that could be done to stop me. Scott did not share my enthusiasm.
“You should see him now. He’s not happy.”I  shrugged  it  off.  “We  both  know  it’s  just  another  missing  documentand that he’s doing twenty-five things at the same time right now. He won’teven care that I take my time getting over there.”
Scott did not share my confidence in the matter. But it didn’t occur tome that his usual laissez-faire attitude had been replaced by an expressionof serious concern.
From all the running around that day and the day before, it seemed likean eternity since I had last traded. All that profit lost! I could have taken an-other two or three trades at least. It felt good that now I was going to havethe chance to make up for all that by trading when the FOMC minutes werereleased. From what Craig said, this could really shake up the market, andI was going to be ready. I felt like I had a secret weapon: A real Wall Streettrader, who was probably a millionaire, had given me a heads-up. My fin-
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A Turn for the Worse
47
gers twitched with anticipation for the trading they would do. My right legstarted hopping on the floor. This was a good feeling. This was the rush ofadrenaline that the traders on the 31st floor felt every day. Trading for a liv-ing was never going to be boring.
Scott was feeling it, too. The look of concern disappeared, replaced bywhat could only be described as bliss: He knew that we were going to wit-ness something amazing.
“You going to turn on the Amazing Forex software?” he asked.“Oh, yeah,” I told him. “I almost forgot. I have a feeling that all we needto do is follow the direction of the market right after the minutes are re-leased. From what Craig said, this economic report can move the market100 pips in just seconds.”
“Gotta have a quick trigger finger, then.”“You bet. I might make up for all the lost opportunities that I had this
week.”
It was 2:14 P.M. Eastern Time when the Amazing software triggered asell order on the GBP/USD. The current price was 1.8135. I had my fingeron the trigger to take the trade, and then boom! All of the sudden, the priceon my trading platform started to skyrocket upward. Scott gasped, and Itook my hands off the keyboard. Whoa! It was flying up 10, 20, 30 pips in-stantly! I wanted to be a part of that. Once before, the software had beenwrong, and we had profited from inadvertently trading in the opposite di-rection  of  the  signal.  So  that’s  what  I  did  this  time.  With  absolute  confi-dence, I bought the GBP/USD at 1.8170.
I  traded  two  standard  lots,  or  $200,000  worth  of  currency,  which
equaled $20 for every pip the market moved (see Figure 6.1).
“Doubling up!” Scott exclaimed. “Sweetness!”I was automatically in the red on the trade, because of the spread. So Iwas losing $100 right now, or 5 pips (the spread) times $20. I had seen thison the other trades we had taken, so I was mentally prepared. No freakingout just because I started off at a small loss.
We checked back with Amazing Forex Profits. It had a boatload of or-
ders popping up on the screen. Here they were:
Buy USD/JPY,
Buy USD/CHF,
Sell EUR/USD,
Sell GBP/USD,
Buy USD/CAD,
Buy USD/SEK,
Sell NZD/USD,
Sell AUD/USD.
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ADVENTURES OF A CURRENCY TRADER
FIGURE 6.1 Harry trades two standard lots.
And many more. I had never seen that many orders popping up at thesame time. And they were all going in one direction: buying U.S. Dollarsand selling other currencies. Not one order went the other way.
Now I felt conflicted. Craig had told me the market could jump reallyfast, even 100 pips in 60 seconds. That meant I still had plenty of profit po-tential on the trade—it had only moved up 35 pips when I bought. So thatleft at least 65 more pips to come. At $20 per pip, I was looking at a profitof $1,300. That was easily enough to cover the extra money we needed tomake our rent payment. With enough left over to give my wife a gift certifi-cate for some online music. While I felt more nervous about this trade thanthe others, it was just because of the amount of money that I stood to gain.I had never made this much money this fast before.
Then I glanced at the Amazing software. What was I to do when it wastelling me to go the other way? And with so many orders? I wondered if Icould call Craig. I didn’t have his number, but I am sure that John Murphyhad it. I half sat up in my chair to leave. Scott backed away a bit. He sud-denly remembered that Mr. Johnson wanted to see me. I saw the trade dipdown to negative 10 pips—$200 in the red. That was more money than Ihad lost on a trade before. My right leg was bouncing, and I held onto itwith my hand.
“You gotta go see Herbie,” Scott told me.He was right. Damn! This was happening again—a forced choice be-tween  watching  the  trade  and  doing  my  job.  I  couldn’t  wait  for  the  daywhen I could walk away from the office and never come back. Just tradefull time. Especially now that I had an open trade that had the potential to
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49
bank at least $1,300. It was unprofitable now. Maybe I could trade the otherdirection  on  another  currency  pair,  and  that  would  mean  that  no  matterwhat, I would stand to profit from one trade immediately, while I waitedfor my first trade to make money.
“Harry, you really gotta go,” he said.“I  will,  I  will,”  I  replied  testily.  “I  don’t  want  to  leave  the  trade.  If  he
wants to see me so badly, he can walk over here.”
Then I heard a terrible, familiar, angry growl from the entrance to my
cubicle.
It was Mr. Johnson.
A GOOD DAY GOES BAD
Herb was not happy. Every vein in his forehead was visible and pulsating,supplying  needed  oxygen  to  the  brain  that  would  form  the  words  thatwould come flying out of his mouth any second: “You got something youwanna talk with me about?”
Did he find out I was trading on company time? Had Scott said some-thing? John? Or maybe this was another case of a missing letter. Lost files,misplaced  papers,  disappearing  disks,  it  didn’t  matter,  perhaps  he  wascalling on me (with an angry booming voice) to find something he needed10 minutes ago. This tirade would pass like all the others and in 15 min-utes he would have his file, I’d have my peace and quiet, and we’d both behappy.  I  would  be  able  to  go  back  to  my  trade,  which  by  the  time  I’dhelped him would probably be profitable and closed.
Maybe the interruption was a good thing. Now I would focus on some-
thing else for few moments.
I  could  imagine  Craig  downstairs,  pushing  buttons,  making  trades,earning  more  money  in  a  few  minutes  than  I  could  all  year  long.  Had he bought the GBP/USD? Had he sold? Did he have an Amazing Forexsoftware  tool,  something  the  company  had  built  for  him?  I  wondered if  his  charts  were  showing  big  support  or  resistance  levels  or  yearlyhighs or lows.
All these thoughts about Craig convinced me that the reward for pass-ing through this predictable storm of tempers over lost files would be tofind Craig’s number and call him. Surely an hour from now he’d be out ofhis trades and we could talk about what he did, and what I did, and com-pare notes. Two traders just hamming it up after a day of hard-won profitsin the currency trenches.
“Mr. Johnson,” I started, “I did ask Scott to completely go over all theAnderson files to make sure that nothing was out of place. I’ll make surewe get whatever you need right away.”
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ADVENTURES OF A CURRENCY TRADER
Scott nodded quickly and heartily, eyes wide open. I thought he mightsuddenly jump out of my cubicle and go running down the hall screaming.Mr. Johnson huffed. He did this in the way the boss does when you’retalking about something so remote from whatever had caused him to beangry in the first place, that he cannot possibly believe how stupid you are.After a furious mental inventory of every file I had stored away in the lastweek, I began to realize that I might not be able to cut this conflict short. Nota good sign. Not with my trade doing who knew what (there was no way Iwas going to glance behind me at the computer screen at this moment).
With  every  pulse  of  the  veins  in  Mr.  Johnson’s  forehead,  I  thought  I
could hear his heart pounding. Or maybe it was mine.
My right leg was now shaking.“Anything  else  about  the  Anderson  case  you  wanna  talk  about?”  Thegrunting,  growling,  and  huffing  had  ended,  replaced  with  words  that  justcame  out  as  a  bark.  I  had  never  seen  him  this  angry.  Certainly  not  at  me.Both his tiny hands formed fists at his side, and I guessed from the way hestood that his butt cheeks were clenched hard enough to crack a walnut. Idon’t know why I thought about that at the time, but I did. My emotions wereall over the place. The pulsing in my chest increased. My leg would not stopshaking. I could have set it underneath a car and it would have not stopped.At that moment I realized that Herb Johnson was going to kill me. Hebarked again: “I said, is there anything else you wanna tell me about theAnderson files?”
I looked at Scott. His face was white.Turning back to Mr. Johnson, I shook my head like I had years beforewhen my mother asked me if I had been peeing in the neighbor’s backyard.I could remember standing on the black and white checked linoleum floorin the kitchen of our small home in Queens, right leg shaking, mind search-ing for exactly the right half-truth to get me out of this mess:
MOM: Were you back there in the Gonzales yard going pee?ME: [silence]MOM: Well, were you?ME: [silence]
Now, in the office, I could pretty much replace “Mom” with “Herb.” Youcan understand why I was preparing my behind for a spanking. I wanted toreply: Do I know anything about the files? Hell no. I’m just the filing man-ager! Talk to Scott! I make him do all my work!
Now  I  was  flat-out  petrified.  I  couldn’t  talk.  His  evil  barking,  hisclenched  butt  cheeks,  the  near-bursting  veins,  his  ability  to  summon  mymother from the dark recess of my childhood—it was all too much for meto handle.
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I couldn’t believe this was about the Anderson files. I had made surethat the files were in order just that morning, and then I had gone to lunch,and  now  Herbie  was  barking  at  me.  Maybe  this  was  about  my  extendedstay on the trading floor? About my lunch with Craig? Maybe he didn’t likeme fraternizing with members of Ernest Wellington while we were repre-senting them?
Pretty much all day I had been scheming not only to enrich myself witha new job as a trader, and also to benefit the firm with a $2 million fee. Andthe thanks I got!
Then I realized why he was so angry.He knew. He knew about the deal with John and Craig, about me tryingto get a job at Ernest Wellington & Company, about me brokering a client-for-job-interview deal. He was like my mother! He could see what I did atall times, he was Momnipresent. No wonder this man had frightened mefor 10 years.
A  job-spanking  for  John  Murphy,  and  possibly  the  loss  of  his  cushynew  corner-office  location.  For  me?  Maybe  fired.  Maybe  worse.  Gosh,  Ithought, I had even put Craig Taylor’s job in jeopardy. Maybe he was downthere on Floor 31 getting beat down, and totally missing out on tasty pipsfrom the FOMC interest rate decision.What had the FOMC decided?Maybe I should have checked that before I traded.Craig said it could move 100 pips in one minute. What about after that?Would Anderson interview me for a job now?How  could  I  get  myself  out  of  this  mess  and  back  to  looking  at  my
trade?
My  mind  raced  onward,  toward  nothing  in  particular.  My  brain  hadbeen  melted  by  the  white-hot  rage  coming  from  Herbie  (Herbie?  I  wasgoing to kill Scott) and my body had given absolute control of itself over tomy  heart,  which  seemed  to  have  grown  to  the  size  of  a  watermelon  andwith every beat, was causing my body to shake.
MOM: I saw you, so don’t you try to tell me you didn’t do it.ME: [silence]MOM: Do you have anything to say for yourself?ME: [silence]MOM: Well, do you?
Only the truth could save me now!
ME: I had to go real bad!MOM: Do you think that is an excuse?ME: It really hurt!
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Wait a minute. I couldn’t tell him that it hurt when I peed.
HERBIE: Well, do you have anything to say for yourself? I want to know
where you get off with behavior like this.
ME: [silence]ME: I promise I delivered the letter like you asked me to do.
My only answer: the truth. Oh, I would have given up all the profit inmy trading account just for a good lie. The only thing that I could do wastalk.  Talking  could  save  me.  Continued  conversation  would  soothe  thebeast.
“I did talk to Anderson about the forex fund, sir.” I was not in the habitof calling anyone sir, but I did it this time. Sir Herbie. “Sir