, I talked with himabout the fund and he did tell me that I should mention it to you.”
“What fund?” he asked. Now he was confused on top of angry. The idea
to use extended dialog to return Herbie to a happy state had failed.
He didn’t know that I hadn’t told him about the fund? Then what in the
world was this all about?
“Well, Banes,” he grunted. “What the hell are you talking about?”I  stated  in  the  most  confident  manner  possible,  with  my  right  kneejerking around like it was trying to send me flying to the floor: “The florexfund.  They’re  starting  an  in-house  florex  fund  and  they  need  the  firm’shelp.”
I said it wrong because many, many synapses in my brain had snappedand my communication skills were flushed down the toilet of neurologicalimplosion, along with physical control of my shaking body.
“Anderson told me that they’re going to need legal help to get the fundstarted.  He  doesn’t  know  that  I  am  telling  you  this,  but  it  sounds  like  itcould be a two-dollar job for the firm. And he offered me a job.”
Yes, I actually said two dollars, as in $2. And yes, I really did say thatAnderson offered me a job. I was living proof that your IQ can move up anddown depending on how afraid you were.
“Two dollars, Banes? What are you talking about?”“Uh, I mean two million.”“How would you know something like that? And what’s this about him
giving you a job?”
“Well, he did,” I said, protesting even further that I was telling the truth
when in fact I was serving up whoppers one after the other.
This was like having to go down the entire road of deception just toavoid one spanking. Why was I lying? When I did something like that, therewere disastrous and unintended consequences.
Mr. Johnson could tell I was lying. “We’ll get him on the phone rightaway about that, you can be sure of that, but first you and I have business tosettle. You’ve got me off track now and I’m putting us back on the subject.”
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53
Over the years I had seen at least 20 people fired from Wakeman, But-terman, and Bailey. Firings there fell into two categories, much like hurri-canes: amicable firings, like when someone had been incompetent but wasso  good-looking  or  otherwise  likable  that  human  nature  demanded  it  bedone  respectfully  (the  type  of  firing  that  Craig  Taylor  would  presumablyget); and angry firings, where someone always ended up with spittle on hisface and his life destroyed because he had put himself in the path of such adisaster.
Herb was giving me category number two. Now he would yell at meuntil I walked away, then he was going to accuse me of walking away whilehe  was  “talking”  to  me,  and  then  he  was  going  to  tell  me  to  gather  mythings together and leave. He might even throw something.
Suddenly  I  had  visions  of  credit  card  companies  coming  to  take  myfurniture, my car, my wife, my kids—then kicking me in the crotch—andthen it would, in fact, start hurting when I peed. And suddenly it was 20years ago again:
MOM: It hurts when you pee? And you were bleeding?ME: [nodding head sheepishly, unable to expand the lie with words]MOM: We’ll, let’s take a look then.
Uh oh.Certainly the forex fund was juicy news to Herbie, but he was so in-censed that he wasn’t giving me any points for scoring him inside informa-tion. Ten feet away from us, a fire hydrant hung from the wall. I thoughtthat he glanced over at it. He was going to grab it, swing it at me, and takemy head right off. He would murder me and then fire me! Twice as bad! SoI tried one last strategy. I would beg him to back it up. To start over. Thiswould unquestionably return us to calmer waters. So I said, “I have no ideawhat you’re yelling at me about.” I paused. Then my mouth opened to fin-ish the thought and extinguish all hope of continued employment at Wake-man, Butterman, and Bailey. “Herbie, I’m telling you the truth.”
Herbie. That was it. I had ended my life at the firm with that one word.Herbie. No one around there called him Herbert, let alone Herb. But Her-bie. That was a blunder of classic proportions, to be logged forever in theannals  of  verbal  mistakes.  Herbert  Walker  Johnson  III  might  have  beenshaped like a Volkswagen Love Bug, but he was outfitted with dirt-racingtires, a supercharged engine, and now was going to steamroll over me.
He bellowed: “Banes, gather up your things.” No more words. No ex-planation. No “this is why I am firing you” speech. He stormed away and Icouldn’t blame anyone but myself, even though I still had no idea why hehad been angry in the first place.
When he left, I looked at Scott. He was a ghost. Totally emptied of allthought, feeling, and life. I struggled to remember important details like my
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ADVENTURES OF A CURRENCY TRADER
own name, where I was, and what I was doing. I looked around my cubicle.These were my things. The possessions that I would be taking back homewith me today.
“Are you going to check your trade?” Scott asked.I did. Maybe some happy news awaited me about the trade.The GBP/USD was trading at 1.8155. I had lost only 15 pips. Negative$300.  Not  a  big  deal  still.  It  should  be  moving  a  lot  more  than  this,  Ithought, but I had to give it time. For sure, I wasn’t going to eat a $300loss just to see it go up and move far enough to have given me $1,300. I re-membered well what Craig had said about letting my good trades run toprofitability.
Now that I thought about this trade in light of Craig’s advice, I realizedI didn’t need the stupid job anyway. I would hold on to this trade and makemore  money  in  a  day  than  I’d  ever  made  before.  Three  or  four  times  asmuch. Soon I would be making serious money from trading. Soon I wouldbe $1,300 richer; by the end of the hour for certain. I determined that thelast thing I would do before I left Wakeman, Butterman, and Bailey foreverwould be to bank my hard-earned profits on the trade.
“I’m going to wash up,” I told Scott. “Watch the trade if you don’t mind,
and then I’m coming back to gather up my stuff.”
When  I  returned,  Scott  had  vanished.  On  top  of  my  desk  was  a  box,just about the right size for all of my belongings, and inside the box, an en-velope.  The  envelope  contained  a  check  made  out  to  me  for  the  sum  of$3,386.75 (after taxes), and a release form for me to sign that gave me themoney in exchange for a promise not to sue the firm. Sue them for what?Boss abuse?
I  fell  into  my  chair  and  put  my  head  into  my  hands.  The  trade  was
going good, but what was I going to tell my wife? Why had I been fired?
For a moment I forgot all about the FOMC report, about Craig, abouttrading. I just thought of my wife and kids. How was I going to explainthis? My financial life flashed before my eyes: We had $40 in a savings ac-count, and negative who knew how much in our checking account. We hadsome savings in an IRA. We had some nice furniture that our parents hadbought for us when we were married. We had a big screen television. Wehad kids. We had pictures on our walls of faraway places my wife dreamedof visiting.
What if the trading didn’t work out? What if I couldn’t repeat the suc-cess I had? What if Craig was right, that success at the beginning of a trad-ing career was the worst thing that could happen to me?
I  started  to  list  everything  I  owned.  At  the  moment,  I  was  probablyhalf-insane, and probably just wanted to remember the possessions I had,the stuff that I could still call mine. It helped put my feet back down onearth and my mind back into the present.
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A Turn for the Worse
55
I then pulled from my pocket the napkin from lunch. It still read:
Rule Number One: Don’t Become Cocky
Right then I was anything but arrogant. Upset. Confused. Angry, cer-
tainly. I took a moment and added up three month’s rent in my mind.
And before I could think twice, I was walking back to Herbie’s office,where  I  found  him  already  doing  three  other  things,  not  thinking  at  allabout the fact that he was kicking me in the teeth professionally. When Ilooked inside his office, he stared right back at me.
HERBIE: What.
It wasn’t a question. It was a demand.
ME: I’ll sign the release for $6,400.HERBIE: Done. Sign it, bring it back to me.
He went back to his work. Not one bit of emotion. I should have askedhim for three times as much. Then I should have jumped on his desk andkicked him in the head.
Instead I returned to my cubicle and signed the form. By the time I wason my way back to his office, Bill from accounting met me in the hallway.He had an envelope in his hand, which he handed to me in exchange for thesigned release. Now I had a check that would cover three month’s rent. Thefirm had my promise not to sue for wrongful termination. I had also writtenin on the firm’s copy of the form that they were to buy me a Porsche 911and a private jet.
This is the part in a book where the protagonist usually tells you thathe left the office, head hung low, fearful of his wife’s reaction to the news,fated to never work again as a mail carrier or whatever. Not me! I had agood trade going and three month’s rent. And now I was going into the fileroom and make a list of every Wall Street firm we had ever represented andthe name of the head trader if I could find it.
I called Scott on his cell phone. He rushed over to my desk within sec-
onds. He had been hiding out. He looked at the box on my desk.“I’m sorry,” he said. He didn’t ask why I had been fired.“I need you to cover for me for a few minutes.”He looked reluctant. “I don’t know, man. I don’t want Herbie to find out
I’m helping you. I can’t afford to lose my job.”
“In twenty four hours you’re going to have my job. There are only twoof us here. They are not going to fire you. So congratulations. Now help mefor five minutes.”
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ADVENTURES OF A CURRENCY TRADER
“Five minutes. Okay.”I told him to call me on my cell phone if anyone approached the filing
room.
In 20 minutes I had the names and numbers of nine Wall Street traders.I then left as fast as I could. When I got home, my wife was in such a goodmood that I decided not to tell her that I had been fired. I took her and thekids to the park until the sun went down, then put the kids to bed, and thenwe both fell asleep early. I had forgotten entirely about my trade.
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CHAPTER  7
Trying toAwake fromthe Nightmare
That night I had a dream. I was running on top of a cloud bank, toward
the setting sun, up as high as you would be if you were in a 747. I wasrunning really fast, and I was skipping across those clouds toward the
setting sun.
The clouds were dark behind me—storm clouds. I kept my eyes fo-cused on the setting sun—the pink clouds, the last light of the day. Butevery couple of seconds, I could see a flash of light from the corner of myeye, and the thunderclap was so loud that it shook my entire body. Andafter each clap, the booming sound stayed in the air, echoing out and thenback, out and back, out and back. Each time it hit me, it punched me in thechest. I thought my chest would cave in with each pulse. But I kept running.I couldn’t make any forward progress, in the same way that earlier thatweek on the trading floor, I felt I was standing still while time and spacepassed me by. Only on the trading floor, I was filled with optimism andpossibility.
This time it was only fear.Far  in  the  distance  to  my  left,  I  saw  my  wife.  I  saw  my  children:Nathan, and Judy, and Jonathan. I passed them by so slowly that it seemedas if they were moving and I was not. And I saw Caroline—she hadn’t beenborn yet, but I could see her, as if she had been born and had grown to atleast five years old. She was standing in a white dress, and she was the onlyfigure that I could not run past. She was smiling at me. She had my wife’spretty smile and curly hair. I could tell she was calling out to me to come toher—but I couldn’t make any progress.
57
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ADVENTURES OF A CURRENCY TRADER
So I ran harder. It didn’t help. I stretched out my hands, and that didn’thelp. I considered crawling on all fours and scraping for more traction. Itdidn’t make a difference either. I was losing ground fast. The thunder waslouder, the pulses more powerful, the pain in my chest greater, the light-ning was brighter, and Caroline’s voice was softer.
And softer.Until I could no longer hear her.Until I could barely see her waving to me.Until she was no longer smiling.And  then  the  darkness  wrapped  around  me,  I  lost  sight  of  Caroline,
and I woke up screaming.
YOU NEVER FORGET YOUR FIRST MARGIN CALL
When I woke up from the nightmare, my first thought was the open trade.Covered  in  sweat,  with  Franklin  standing  at  attention  by  my  side  of  thebed, and my wife sitting next to me, combing my hair back with her hand—I was thinking about my trade.
I  knew  it  was  bad.  I  hadn’t  seen  it  yet,  but  I  knew  it  was  really  bad.Now I wanted to check on it. We had a computer in the next room. It didn’thave any of the software on it, but I could load it on there and check on thetrade. Just imagining the Amazing Forex software put a pit in my stomach.
“What can I get for you?” Gini asked.“I need to take a walk.”“In the middle of the night?”I nodded. “I need to cool off.”It was 2:00 A.M. I got up out of bed, put on a robe, and walked into theliving  room.  I  flipped  on  the  television,  looking  for  SportsCenter.  On  theway there, I passed by the Bloomberg Channel. I stopped. They were talk-ing about the FOMC interest rate decision.
FANCY HOST: So the Federal Reserve kept interest rates low today.FANCIER EXPERT: Yes, they did, and thank goodness. The easy money pol-icy is really keeping the stock market on track for a good year. No needto ruin that.
FANCY HOST: Currencies didn’t move much on the news yesterday. Why is
that?
FANCIER EXPERT: They were looking for another 25 basis point rate cut,and didn’t get it. Or at least a substantial change in the FOMC’s state-ment.
FANCY HOST: What’s next for the Fed?
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Trying to Awake from the Nightmare
59
I lost track of what they were saying and pulled a chair up to the com-puter desk. In the next 20 minutes, I tried to load the software, but I couldnot get it to download correctly and discovered that I needed a “pass key”to install the Amazing Forex Profits software on more than one computer.All the while, I missed any further discussion of foreign exchange rates onBloomberg.
So I Googled “forex prices” and got a zillion results. One of the resultswas for “Professional Currency Charting Software,” and I clicked on it. Idownloaded a free trial of the program and started it up. The software wasthankfully easy to use. I chose GBP/USD from the menu of available cur-rencies, and here is what I saw. I have added some notes to the chart (seeFigure 7.1).
The trade had completely blown up. For sure, I had lost everything.It had fallen over 100 pips from where I had bought the GBP/USD. Allthat had happened as I was riding the subway home, just probably 20 min-utes  after  I’d  left  the  office.  I  had  traded  for  $20  per  pip.  That  was  over$2,000 in losses. Did I owe money to my forex dealer now?
I scrambled over to my briefcase, knocking over a plant in the process.I didn’t bother to pick it up. Soon I found the phone number for my forexbroker. A pleasant-sounding customer service representative answered onthe first ring.
“Thank  you  for  calling  Universal  Currency  Brokers!  How  may  I  help
you?”
“I want to check on a trade.”
FIGURE 7.1 Harry’s trade dies.
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ADVENTURES OF A CURRENCY TRADER
I quickly read her my account number. Maybe she would give me abreak? Perhaps they had a one-time policy of offering mercy to hopelesstraders who had been fired earlier in the day? Surely they had the powerto reverse the trade. I could claim that I hadn’t made the trade, and arguethat I should not stand to lose money on what I didn’t mean to do in thefirst  place.  None  of  this  made  any  sense,  but  it  was  two  o’clock  in  themorning.
“Your account has no open trades at this time, sir.”Oh, no. “Do I owe you money?” I asked. “I had a terrible trade today, I
think.”
“You did have a losing trade,” she answered quickly. “You bought theGBP/USD at 1.8170 this afternoon. The trade was closed just a little whilelater. You got a margin call.”
“A margin call?”“Well, you put up $500 in margin to trade two standard lots. This re-duced your available margin to $1,200. When your losses reached $1,200,you had used up all the available margin. So we closed your trade automat-ically as a service to you. This leaves you with the $500 in margin in youraccount.”
“As a service to me?” I noticed on my charts that the price had risen
back up afterward. I told her so. “Why not keep it open for me?”
“We did that up until a few years ago. But traders were leaving losing
trades open so long that they owed us money. That was worse.”
I immediately agreed. That left me with this fact: I had lost $1,200. One
thousand two hundred dollars. In one day. One trade.
I then hung up the phone.When  I  looked  up,  my  wife  was  standing  beside  me,  looking  at  the
computer screen over my shoulder.
“Did you make a trade?” she asked. “This late at night?”What was I going to tell her?
MY WIFE’S ANGRY EYES
I told Gini everything, starting with the lunch with Craig all the way up tothe time when I called the dealer and found out that my trading accounthad burst into flames.
She was angry. Not about the trade—which surprised me—but about
my job.
MY WIFE: How could you let this happen?ME: [silence]
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Trying to Awake from the Nightmare
61
There wasn’t anything smart for me to say. My wife needed to hear thetruth, but the problem was that the truth didn’t make any sense, and shewas only going to think it was a lie.
I told her: “I am not sure I had any choice in the matter at all. I mean, itwas over before it began. I got back from lunch with Craig and wham! Her-bie fired me.”
“But how? On what grounds? You’ve been there 11 years!” Calling myboss Herbie didn’t help; it only increased the notion that I wasn’t serious orworried about any of this.
“I  don’t  know.”  I’d  been  right.  The  truth  came  off  worse  than  a  liewould have. I could have just told her a lie and it would have been muchbetter. Something like this:
MY WIFE: But why? Why did they fire you?ME: I told you that I don’t know. It might have something to do with the
handicapped person.
MY WIFE: What handicapped person?ME: The  firm  is  suing  a  handicapped  person—a  quintiplegic  Rwandanrefugee—and I sneaked a peek at the files while I was scanning theminto the system. We are suing this poor man for $20,000 because he hitHerbie  Johnson  right  in  the  crotch  with  his  wheelchair.  The  firm  hasseven attorneys working on it [I wipe a single tear from my eye].
MY WIFE: How terrible! How could you stand for that?ME: Well, I didn’t. I copied the entire case file, with some very damagingevidence that proves that Herbie was not in fact fitted with a prostheticyou-know-what.  That  medical  report  is  the  smoking  gun  document  inthe case. And I gave the entire file to the poor handicapped man’s attor-ney today. And my forex dealer promised to donate my losses from thisone trade to this poor man from Rwanda.
MY WIFE: You did the right thing! You are my hero!
“Hello? Hello, Harry! Are you listening to me?”I fell back to earth and my wife’s angry eyes were staring at me. I nevergot the chance to explain to Gini all about the Rwandan refugee. She juststarted crying.
“So you really have no clue as to why he fired you?” She was drying hereyes with her robe and sobbing quietly on purpose so that she did not wakethe children.
All  this  was  very  distressing.  Especially  because  we  hadn’t  evenstarted to talk about the bad trade, which was going to make matters evenworse. And we couldn’t even get to that horrible subject until I could tellher why I lost my job. Maybe I would get the chance to tell her about thequintiplegic and the wheelchair.
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“And we’re going to lose our benefits,” she noted. “How are we going
to pay for the pregnancy?”
I  shook  my  head.  Her  worry  was  starting  to  transfer  itself  head  on,right to me. My leg was going to start shaking any moment, because I real-ized that the delivery of a healthy baby would cost over $10,000. We wereonly a few months away. How was I going to raise that kind of money? Ishould have demanded an extra 10 grand from Herbie.
Instead, I said: “I don’t know! Really! I don’t know. This was my worstday in forever. It was terrible. Herbie came after me like he was hunting medown.  Angrier  than  I  have  ever  seen  him.  Something  was  very  wrong,something that he thinks that I did. Something so bad that he wanted toblame someone for it. He needed a scapegoat, and I was going to be theone.  I  think  that’s  why  they  offered  me  so  much  money  to  leave.  They’dneeded to place the blame on someone and I fit the description.”
She sniffled. “That would explain why he didn’t tell you why he was fir-ing you. Because he knew you didn’t do anything wrong, and he didn’t wantto give you a chance to defend yourself.”
“And now they can place the blame on me and say they’ve taken care
of the problem.”
I  wondered  if  it  was  Herbie  who  had  done  something  wrong.  “Youknow,” I told her, “I could probably still talk to an attorney. There is no wayI could have done something so wrong to deserve being fired.”
“You were a good employee.”I shrugged. We were both calming down by talking about it. “I wasn’t agood employee. I was a great filing manager, but I took advantage of thema lot. I had even started to do my trading on the job.”
She  didn’t  argue.  She  knew  how  much  I  disliked  the  job  and  wasn’t
going to blame me for not being thrilled about going to work every day.
“Do you think you can still trade?”This was unexpected. I deserved a beating for the way I had acted withforex trading. In fact, I had half decided never to take another trade. Betterto get out with a five-hundred-dollar overall loss, than trade the rest of theaccount into the toilet. On the other hand, what were my job prospects?Wakeman, Butterman, and Bailey would give a rotten reference for me ifthey agreed to offer one at all. And I had no other marketable skills. And Iliked trading. And I had Craig, and perhaps Craig’s mentor.
And  as  simply  as  that,  I  decided  that  from  that  time  onward,  I  was
going to be a full-time trader.
“I think I can still trade,” I told Gini.She smiled. My heart jumped. A smile popped onto my face. My skin
tingled, and a shot of happy adrenaline shot up my spine.
I could do this!
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CHAPTER  8
Charlie FlankGoes to U.S.National Bank
I called Craig the next day.
CRAIG: Don’t  think  of  this  as  a  wrench  in  the  gearbox.  Think  of  this  asa  chance  for  you  to  pay  some  rent  with  the  severance;  sit  down  and-make a trading plan; and think about how you want your family’s futureto  look.  I  was  forced  to  do  this  after  my  big  trading  loss—most  tradetraders put themselves in some kind of disaster scenario at the begin-ning. But you can choose what you want to do about it.ME: Did you trade after the FOMC interest rate decision?CRAIG: Yes,  I  sure  did.  I  bought  the  British  Pound  for  a  quick  profit.  I
might have been getting out just as you were getting in.
ME: How did you know to do that?CRAIG: I followed the immediate movement. I was ready to buy Poundsright away, as soon as I saw price move up quickly. Price jumped up in the first minute and then fell back down, but as soon as it continuedhigher  than  the  first  move,  I  bought.  I  got  in  at  1.8130,  and  a  few moments  later,  I  was  positive  by  40  pips.  I  was  tempted  to  take  themoney  and  get  out.  But  I  have  a  profit  target  at  a  previous  level  of support  and  resistance,  where  price  stopped  cold  several  times  thisyear,  and  as  recently  as  just  a  week  ago.  People  were  yelling  andscreaming  around  me  to  get  out  of  the  trade  as  it  went  into  the red,  but  I  am  holding  out  for  1.8600.  That’s  470  pips  away,  but  it can get there. I made up my mind before I took the trade today (seeFigure 8.1).
63
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ADVENTURES OF A CURRENCY TRADER
FIGURE 8.1 Craig makes up his mind.
ME: Did you learn how to do this kind of stuff on your own?CRAIG: Mostly, yes. And with the help of a mentor and friend.ME: How soon do you think that I can talk to your trading mentor?CRAIG: Soon, yes.ME: Where do I find him?CRAIG: He’ll find you.ME: I’ll  just  start  studying  some  things  about  trading,  maybe  fix  up  thehouse a bit, things my wife has been wanting me to do anyway. And Ican start trading when I get over this bad experience.
CRAIG: No. Don’t take any more trades right now.ME: Why not?CRAIG: Because you’re a horrible trader.ME: Thanks a lot.CRAIG: You bet. Happy to boost your spirits anytime. Listen, I gotta run.Market’s gonna blast off here in a few minutes. Get some books. Dig in.See if you can sneak your way onto a Wall Street trading desk. You’ll besurprised what you can learn by sitting there for a morning. Then callme back.ME: Okay.
SNEAKING INTO U.S. NATIONAL BANK
I  put  on  my  only  suit.  I  borrowed  my  neighbor’s  briefcase.  I  shined  myshoes. I hadn’t looked this good for work in at least 10 years. And I was
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Charlie Flank Goes to U.S. National Bank
65
going to need