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 But it didn’t occur tome that his usual laissez-faire attitude had been replaced by an expressionof serious concern.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 Ihad a secret weapon: A real Wall Streettrader, who was probably a millionaire, had given me a heads-up. My fin-
 
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 thisweek.”
It was 2:14 pM. 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, whichequaled $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.
 
  
 
48 ADVENTURES OF A CURRENCY TRADER
 
GBPUSD - 15 min
uly
    
Here is where | bought
leha
}iasz0
brace
 
} 1.2060
}18060
 
eT ae eT ee ee ee ee eS er Me
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.Thad 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
 
A Turn for the Worse 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.
“J will, I will,” I replied testily. “I don’t want to leave the trade. If hewants to see me so badly, he can walk over here.”
Then I heard a terrible, familiar, angry growl from the entrance to mycubicle.
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. Hadhe bought the GBP/USD? Had he sold? Did he have an Amazing Forexsoftware tool, something the company had built for him? I wonderedif 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.”
 
  
 
50 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 Icould 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?”
Ilooked 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.
 
A Turn for the Worse 51
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 withanew 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 mytrade?
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: [had to go real bad!Mom: Do you think that is an excuse?Me: It really hurt!
 
  
 
52 ADVENTURES OF A CURRENCY TRADER
Wait a minute. I couldn’t tell him that it hurt when I peed.
HeErsBiE: Well, do you have anything to say for yourself? I want to knowwhere 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.
“T 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, 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 ideato 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 theworld 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.”
Isaid 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 himgiving you a job?”
“Well, he did,” I said, protesting even further that I was telling the truthwhen 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.”
 
A Turn for the Worse 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. Ihad 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
 
  
 
54 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. Ihad 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 wasgoing 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.
 
A Turn for the Worse 55
Ithen 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.
Hersie: What.It wasn’t a question. It was a demand.
Me: I'll sign the release for $6,400.HeErBiE: 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 Ihad 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.
“Tm 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 outTm 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.”
 
  
 
56 ADVENTURES OF A CURRENCY TRADER
“Five minutes. Okay.”
I told him to call me on my cell phone if anyone approached the filingroom.
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.
 
 
Trying toAwake fromthe Nightmare
 
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 thesetting 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.
Icouldn’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.
Te night I had a dream. I was running on top of a cloud bank, toward
57
 
  
 
58 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—Iwas 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.
“Tneed to take a walk.”
“In the middle of the night?”
Inodded. “I need to cool off.”
It was 2:00 a. 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 isthat?
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?
 
Trying to Awake from the Nightmare 59
Tlost 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?
Iscrambled 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 helpyou?”
“IT want to check on a trade.”
    
 
GBPUSD - 15 mi s™" Here is where | bought
fa
   
i My forexaccount ‘“in flames |:»<
 
[Cine amo at eso ete tone thas ase eas tems Yeas eae aate nT
FIGURE 7.1 Harry's trade dies.
 
  
 
60 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