Authors: Erin Duffy
“No. But I want to leave.”
“Okay. I'm sorry I left you down there, but I didn't really have a choice. Let's start making the rounds.”
After we had said good-bye to the Stepford wives, Chick, and T.C., Will and I collected our car from the valet. Will held my hand in the car on the way back and talked more to the driver than he did to me, but that was okay. I didn't know what to say anyway, so silence was fine by me. When we reached the Triboro Bridge, Will told the driver that we would only be making one stop, and then gave him his address. He squeezed my hand and I looked out the window, trying to remember if I had bothered to shave my legs that morning. The car pulled over on the corner of Seventy-Ninth Street and Columbus Avenue, and Will held my hand tightly as we strolled south. I still couldn't remember if I had shaved my legs, but I figured I'd take my chances.
I'm Responsible for the Destruction of Corporate Feminism
W
ill was making it very hard for me to focus. I found I spent all of my spare time and most of the time that wasn't spare thinking about him and, more important, wondering if he was thinking about me. September was busy, and I was expected to pull my weight. Today especially, wasn't a good time to be preoccupied since the Federal Open Market Committee was meeting. Every six to eight weeks the FOMC, a committee within the Federal Reserve made up of really smart people who serve as Federal Reserve governors and the presidents of the Federal Reserve banks (read: supergeeks), met to decide what to do with interest rates. The day they released their rate announcement to the public was one of the most important days on the Street. Most people didn't know this committee existed or think that it mattered. But whether or not people knew it, it did. Every time someone discovered they could refinance a mortgage and save themselves money in monthly payments, they could thank the FOMC. Every time they tried to get a loan for a car, a business, or a credit card, and discovered the interest rate had risen, they could blame the FOMC. There wasn't a person in America who wasn't affected by the decisions made in that meeting, except most Americans had no idea. If they did, they'd probably spend a little more time watching CNBC in lieu of the Home Shopping Network. Wall Street people cared about every single word of the one-page statement issued by the FOMC. We cared if they used a comma instead of the semicolon they used in the previous statement. We cared if they replaced the word
should
with the word
could,
or the word
growth
with the word
stability.
We cared. About everything.
“Alex,” Drew snapped one morning as he waved his hand in front of my face. “Earth to Girlie! Hello? What the hell is wrong with you lately? Daydreaming isn't allowed on this desk.”
“Sorry, Drew. I'm just a little distracted, that's all.”
“Distracted? Of all days to be distracted Alex, today is not it. The FOMC decision is in a half hour.”
“I know. I'm sorry.” I needed to get Will out of my head before he cost me my job.
“Don't be sorry, just focus. Charlie's out today so I need your help.”
“How could he not come in today? I was under the impression that missing the rate announcement was an offense punishable by death.”
“His wife's in labor with their fifth or sixth kid or something. She could be in labor for twenty-four hours for all he knows. And if he wants to afford to send his five or six kids to school in Manhattan, he really should get his priorities straight.”
“You know, if I was married, and in labor, and my husband wasn't there because he was worried that the Fed might change the funds rate, I think I'd divorce him.”
“Then don't marry a guy from the Street. Are you cool to help on his lights?”
“Of course,” I said, glancing down at the rows of phone extensions on Charlie's board. They were dormant now, but I knew that in half an hour or so they'd be flashing like Christmas lights. I had to rise to the occasion and keep calm, cool, and collected. I knew that today would be a day I could prove myself with the guys. I had to pass this test with flying colors or I was screwed. Even though I couldn't yet handle direct client calls, I could field the other non-trade-related phone calls, no problem. I was practically an expert at that by this point.
“Thanks.” Drew put his headset back on and hit a light on his phone board. Conversation over. I followed suit and put on my headset.
I still wasn't supposed to answer the direct client-to-desk lines. If you answered one of those lines, you usually ended up talking to some angry guy barking a buy or a sell order into your ear. There's an urban finance legend about an analyst who worked here a long time ago who picked up one of the direct lines and ended up talking to a portfolio manager who gave him an order to buy some futures contracts. Since he hadn't passed all of his exams, the SEC could've thrown his ass in jail for violating securities law. When the boss found out he executed the trade, he was fired, and the SEC fined the desk a
lot
of money for failing to properly supervise employees. Last anyone heard, that guy was working a hot dog cart on the corner of Seventh Avenue and Thirty-Eighth Street; whatever he was up to, he sure as hell wasn't working in the industry.
When I wasn't focusing on the markets or thinking about Will, I was worrying about Rick and his incessant text messages and phone calls. Over the last few weeks I'd been getting a lot more of them. Maybe eight or nine a day. And that didn't include weekends, when sometimes they started as early as 7:00
A.M.
Since Rick was a client, I couldn't exactly write back something like, “You're gross, old, and married, and those are the three very unattractive qualities,” or “Fuck off.” I had thought about it, though. The Will situation wasn't much better as he continued to confuse me by being attentive and fun one minute and then suddenly totally MIA the next. I didn't know what to do about either of them. Since I couldn't manage to come up with any solutions on my own, I decided to seek answers from a higher power: astrology. In retrospect, that was a mistake. A big one.
I probably should have waited until after the FOMC announcement to replace my trading systems with the astrology website. But I figured it would only take a minute or two to check out “Aries Lucky Love Days.” Hell, I figured, glancing down at the still-quiet phone board, it'll take three, five minutes,
tops.
Oops. You'd be surprised how much information you can get on your love life from astrology websites.
Fifteen minutes later, when the committee surprised the market by lowering the target interest rate, the market went crazy. Instantly, phones started ringing. All of them. Simultaneously.
Every salesperson was on the phone, shouting orders at the traders, scribbling in their notebooks and ordering me to book all the trades. When one of the outside lines started ringing, Chick gesticulated wildly at me to pick it up.
“Cromwell,” I said cheerfully.
“Is Charlie there?” some angry-sounding guy snapped.
“Umm, no, Charlie's wife is in labor so he's not . . .”
“Offer a hundred million five-year notes,” he ordered.
Uh-oh. This was not supposed to happen. I had answered a normal line. This was the line that the guys' wives call, and the line delivery people use when they're in the lobby with pizza. What the hell was this guy doing, asking me to offer a hundred million five-year notes? I didn't know how to do that. I knew who traded five-year notesâa really scary guy across the floor who always yelled and threw his phone at people. He was someone I planned on avoiding for as long as humanly possible.
“Excuse me?” I already knew this wasn't going well. The market could move a lot in a split second. Delaying the trade to ask someone to repeat something was bad. Very, very bad.
“Offer me a hundred million fucking five-year notes!”
Fine! You don't have to yell. Jeez.
I knew that I was supposed to have the trading platforms on my screens at all times, but I had taken that screen down when I pulled up my horoscope. When I glanced at my computer to try to see what price I should expect to hear back from the trading desk, I saw that Aries' lucky love days were the eighth and the twenty-third.
Shit.
“Offer a hundred million five-year notes!” I screamed frantically. Everything happened so fast I didn't have time to be scared, or to second-guess myself. My first trade! I felt every nerve ending on my body tingling with adrenaline.
I heard the scary trader scream, “Four!” At least, that's what I thought he said.
“Four!” I relayed curtly to the client. The client who would have been talking to Charlie had Charlie not knocked up his wife for the fifthâor sixthâtime.
“Done.”
“Done at four!” I screamed back to the trader. I'm a rock star. I not only just did my first trade, I did my first trade with a really scary trader, and a big trade. If Adam, the smug analyst from the boat cruise, were here I would have turned to him and said, now THAT is trading size! How do you like me now Princeton, huh?
It was a good thing that Adam wasn't there.
“What the hell are you talking about done at four? The market's at ten! I said
who's
it
for
!” the trader screamed. “You don't tell me when I'm done, I tell YOU when YOU'RE done!”
Oh shit. I had just sold bonds at a ridiculously low price; if the trade went through, quick math told me I had just cost the desk roughly $200,000. Fuck me.
Immediately, Chick came running, screaming and waving his hands the way an umpire does when he calls an out at the plate. “Say nothing done! Say nothing done, no trade! No trade!” Chick dove across the desk like he was on a slip and slide, knocking papers, pens, notebooks, and one BlackBerry onto the floor as he ripped the phone out of my hand. “Who the fuck is this?” he screamed, demanding a response. “Pete, what the hell are you doing trying to get something done at four? You know the market isn't there. You're trying to fuck us over and take advantage of a junior person? Come on, man, what are you doing?”
Drew sprinted past me toward the trading desk to try to calm the trader and assure him that we were taking care of the mistake, that he wouldn't lose money as a result of my stupidity. I sat frozen in the chair, afraid to breathe. I was pretty sure I was going to be fired, provided that Chick didn't have a massive coronary or a stroke and drop dead first. He called down to the trader and told him to get on the line and help with damage control. They were on the phone for another five minutes and when they hung up, Chick threw his pen down on my desk.
“Do you want to know how much you just cost us? And you were lucky, Alex. You were really lucky that the client was willing to meet us halfway because he knew I caught him being a slimy bastard by taking advantage of your inexperience.” He paused for effect as I stared at him, fighting back my tears.
“Ninety-three thousand dollars.” He snapped his fingers. “Gone. Just like that. Why the hell didn't you know where the market was? Where were your screens? If you knew the market was trading at ten or eleven, you would have known he didn't say four. What the hell were you looking at? I taught you better than that!”
“Ninety-three thousand?” That was more than what most people made in a year. I just lost someone's annual income because I was reading my horoscope. I am too stupid to live.
“I'm so sorry, Chick. I panicked. I wasn't expecting anyone to trade on that line. He caught me off guard and I didn't know what to do. I'm sorry.”
“Sorry isn't going to begin to fix this mess. The trader wants you fired for being an idiot, and now I look like I haven't taught you a damn thing since you started.”
Fired? I can't get fired. Not when I've already dealt with so much shit in an effort to reach this point! I just did my first trade! Granted, I fucked it up. Royally. But this was the moment I had been working toward since the day I started.
“Chick, I . . . I don't know what to say.” I could feel the rest of the group staring at me. He should have just dragged me to Times Square and flogged me like they did in the old days.
“There's nothing you
can
say. Get your head out of your ass, and start paying attention. You don't want the reputation of being an idiot, and right now that's what the trading desk thinks you are. We'll talk about this later when things slow down. Get back to your desk and book some trades. No more phones for you today.”
I slithered back to my chair, wishing I could will myself to become invisible.
Scary trader stood when he saw Chick approach and threw his hands up in the air. “What the fuck was that, Chick? Is she kidding me?” The rest of the trading desk kept their eyes on their own screens, but the trader was screaming so loud I was pretty sure Jashim could hear him out in the hallway.
“I know, man. She fucked up. I'll take care of it.”
“How? Are you going to eat my loss? Fuck!” The trader banged his fist on his desk as he fell back in his chair.
An hour later, when things had quieted down, Reese strolled over.
“Rough one, sugar, huh? How are you holding up?” he asked, as he set a cookie on my desk.
“I'm screwed, Reese. I made myself look like an imbecile, and I made Chick look like he hasn't taught me a single thing since I started. Why the hell didn't Charlie come in today? I really think his wife can manage without him. That's why God invented nurses and epidurals.” I was so embarrassed, I just wanted to go home. Which was a problem, since it was only 3:30.
“Nah, don't worry. Back in the day when we had to wear ties, whenever a young guy fucked up his first trade, we would cut his tie off and tack it to the wall. The wall of fameâor shame, depending on how you looked at it. Every guy here had his tie up on that wall. Now, I'm not sure what the hell we would cut off you to put on the wall that wouldn't get us fired. But, the point is, everyone makes mistakes. Learn from them and move on. You don't know it now, but today is the greatest day of your career.”
“Are you insane?”
“I mean it! How the hell do you think you learn? No one remembers their really good days. Everyone remembers the ones that made them want to off themselves. Today's yours. Congratulations. You'll be a much better salesperson going forward after having fucked up so badly today.”
I was starting to feel marginally better. He was right. I guess everyone was going to screw up at some point, and unfortunately, when you screwed up in this business, you lost money. It was simply an occupational hazard. “You think Chick will be okay with it then?”