N Rothschild
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from a floor trader in the sp pit.
"For many who read this email remembering the 87 CRASH only seems like a few years ago. The S&P pit was full, 250 + locals fighting for a spot. Back then you had a spot and no one and I mean one was allowed to stand in the other guys spot. If you were a new comer it wasn’t like someone said “hey new guy? You can’t stand there” it was like “what the F do you think you’re doing?” Fights were a daily occurrence. You quote something up, you go to whack it out and after a few seconds of negotiation the clerk in the pit says … nothing done! (90% of the time when you got that they were already a handle lower so explaining it to the customer was impossible.Many years ago when the desk was all cranked up we had a few spats or Danny did. Look you give the desk an order it’s up to the guy working the phone to make sure the customer doesn’t get screwed. Well that sounds easy but it wasn’t. Everyone will have a story or two about but few desks sat so close to epicenter as we did. At the height of our desk operation we had 10 clerks all lined up in one row and our desk volumes according the CME was many times the no.1 volume desk on the S&Ps. Some of the locals in the pit that are still around and many that read this email know that when you left for work you were preparing for battle. After a night out of drinking and no food it was right back to the floor pit or phones it didn’t matter there was nothing like it ever. I don’t care what they say about the bond pit. Been there done that. When the spoo pit was full and the **** was hitting the fan there was no place on earth where the cash flowed so quickly. Heading into the 87 CRASH the markets did exactly what they are doing today. They went up almost every day for weeks until one day the bubble burst. Some may disagree but the few days in 87 was 100 times more scary than the sell of down to 666. Some will say BS to that but you know what you had to be there. There was nothing to stop it. It wasn’t a sell off it was an event that shook the foundation of every trading firm in the world. When the margin calls stated hitting it set off a cascade of margin calls. Fortunes were made and lost every minute that day. Making and loosing 250k to 500k every few minutes was not uncommon. The locals had firing power and when the bid / offer was 2 handles wide and the order filler would sell 2-300 big S&Ps ($50k per handle , per 100 lot) and if the S&P up ticked a few points the locals on the other side made 450k, sometimes that didn’t take but 10 seconds. Yea this is real and it went on in much larger size over the several days of the initial sell off. The wide bid offer invited in the program bid from Morgan Stanly and UBS and others. As the markets fell the ONLY bid was for a sell programs and our desk had 4k BIGs to sell as the markets tumbled. The Pit Bull reminded me of how the market went up everyday just before the 87 CRASH yesterday. He didn’t say he thought we were going to CRASH but he didn’t need to. He and I were on the phone back than and when the markets started moving lower he knew the time had come. Paul Jones knew too, he made his name in the business back then. He had been selling for weeks and when the markets started to CRASH he sat back and made a millions over a 2-3 day period. We have many stories about 87 but the one that hurt the most was what happened after the sell off. It took several years to rebuild. While we maybe older now that does mean we can’t still FIGHT it’s just hard to punch a computer. "
"For many who read this email remembering the 87 CRASH only seems like a few years ago. The S&P pit was full, 250 + locals fighting for a spot. Back then you had a spot and no one and I mean one was allowed to stand in the other guys spot. If you were a new comer it wasn’t like someone said “hey new guy? You can’t stand there” it was like “what the F do you think you’re doing?” Fights were a daily occurrence. You quote something up, you go to whack it out and after a few seconds of negotiation the clerk in the pit says … nothing done! (90% of the time when you got that they were already a handle lower so explaining it to the customer was impossible.Many years ago when the desk was all cranked up we had a few spats or Danny did. Look you give the desk an order it’s up to the guy working the phone to make sure the customer doesn’t get screwed. Well that sounds easy but it wasn’t. Everyone will have a story or two about but few desks sat so close to epicenter as we did. At the height of our desk operation we had 10 clerks all lined up in one row and our desk volumes according the CME was many times the no.1 volume desk on the S&Ps. Some of the locals in the pit that are still around and many that read this email know that when you left for work you were preparing for battle. After a night out of drinking and no food it was right back to the floor pit or phones it didn’t matter there was nothing like it ever. I don’t care what they say about the bond pit. Been there done that. When the spoo pit was full and the **** was hitting the fan there was no place on earth where the cash flowed so quickly. Heading into the 87 CRASH the markets did exactly what they are doing today. They went up almost every day for weeks until one day the bubble burst. Some may disagree but the few days in 87 was 100 times more scary than the sell of down to 666. Some will say BS to that but you know what you had to be there. There was nothing to stop it. It wasn’t a sell off it was an event that shook the foundation of every trading firm in the world. When the margin calls stated hitting it set off a cascade of margin calls. Fortunes were made and lost every minute that day. Making and loosing 250k to 500k every few minutes was not uncommon. The locals had firing power and when the bid / offer was 2 handles wide and the order filler would sell 2-300 big S&Ps ($50k per handle , per 100 lot) and if the S&P up ticked a few points the locals on the other side made 450k, sometimes that didn’t take but 10 seconds. Yea this is real and it went on in much larger size over the several days of the initial sell off. The wide bid offer invited in the program bid from Morgan Stanly and UBS and others. As the markets fell the ONLY bid was for a sell programs and our desk had 4k BIGs to sell as the markets tumbled. The Pit Bull reminded me of how the market went up everyday just before the 87 CRASH yesterday. He didn’t say he thought we were going to CRASH but he didn’t need to. He and I were on the phone back than and when the markets started moving lower he knew the time had come. Paul Jones knew too, he made his name in the business back then. He had been selling for weeks and when the markets started to CRASH he sat back and made a millions over a 2-3 day period. We have many stories about 87 but the one that hurt the most was what happened after the sell off. It took several years to rebuild. While we maybe older now that does mean we can’t still FIGHT it’s just hard to punch a computer. "
