The Buy Side
Page 4
Andy starts reeling off numbers to me: “ITG, I bought fifty at a half, twenty-five at five-eighths, and twenty-five at three-quarters. I need my average,” he says. I don’t even have a pen in my hand. What? He can tell I’m struggling, so he says it again but only faster. Michelle, who watches the scene unfold out of the corner of her eye, starts jotting something down on a piece of paper. I’m still trying to remember what Andy said when Michelle hands me the note. It reads: “50k at a half, 25k at 5/8 and 25k at 3/4” in perfect penmanship. I’m still not sure what to do with it. I start to multiply 50k times .50 and then I multiply 25k times .75, but I’m not sure what five-eighths is. I start to divide eight by five to figure out what the decimal is. Andy yells over, “I need my average now.” Michelle hands me another note with the answer on it while I’m still doing long division.
That night at home I wonder what it would be like to go back to Kennebunk and put my application in for a job as the high school football coach. It’s not a pretty thought, but it’s safe. I’m not about to quit, though. I’ve never quit anything in my life. Or at least at anything I wanted to do. Maybe it’s the thought of going back to Kennebunk High that gives me the idea. I make a cheat sheet of the fractions and decimal points, which I plan to tape into my desk drawer at work in the morning. It’s funny. In school, I thought fractions were meaningless, and here they’re the most important thing in my life. If I’d known I was going to be in this position I’d have paid more attention in math.
It takes time, but each day I get a little better, and in six months I’m able to spit an average out to Josh and Andy without looking at my cheat sheet. I’m as fast at my job as any of the assistants—well, maybe not Michelle.
By 1995, in my second year at Morgan Stanley, the biggest change in doing business has occurred. The Internet is now on everyone’s computer, and it brings with it both opportunity and fear. The world around us begins to speed up; trades that used to take five days are settled in three. The upside is that the advent of technology and email levels the playing field for someone like me, and maybe even gives me an advantage.
Now I type emails to fix problems. Maybe having my fingers on the keyboard awakens my dormant writer’s imagination, but having a way with words can come in handy. For example, there’s something called a “cancel and correct” form, which we use when we have to fix an error on a trade. If you have to rebook more than three trades a month, the back office, the operations guys, will charge fifty bucks for each subsequent ticket. Andy and Josh get upset with me every month we get charged, because it’s my fault. One day, when I’m emailing a fourth cancel and correct form, I put “Personal Ads” in the subject line. Then I type, “Single White Male sales assistant with an athletic build looking for an operations guy who can help me with my cancel and correct. Must also enjoy gourmet cooking, movies, and long walks on the beach.” The response from the back office comes immediately. They don’t charge us for the cancel and correct. Right then, I begin to realize that social skills might be as important on Wall Street as an Ivy League MBA.
Though things get better in PCS, three years somehow pass and still there’s no sign of a job on the trading floor. I go over to the floor once or twice a month, just to say hello and hang around a bit. I want them to know who I am. That way, if a job opens up maybe they’ll think of me. I want to be around the Uncle Tuckers of the Wall Street world; I don’t want to become like Andy. The trading floor isn’t stiff like PCS. It’s glamorous, flashy, filled with young guys my age. Though I do some trading, most of the work I do is administrative. I decide to ask Stephanie for help.
When I lightly rap on her office door, the door I’m already standing inside of, she greets me with a terse “What?” Stephanie is, as usual, wearing a black suit. If she ever had to go to a last-minute funeral, she’d be all set. She tries to smile but seems annoyed that I’m in her office.
“I just wanted to check in with you. I’m into my third year and I always thought the plan was for me to get a job on the trading floor.” She stands up and moves by me to close her door.
“It’s not my job to find you a new job,” she says. I feel a rush of blood to my face. “If you don’t want to be here I have hundreds of résumés to choose from to hire someone else.”
“I’m grateful for my job,” I say. “I’m sorry. Just …”
“Just what?” she asks. “Just wave my magic wand and create a million-dollar trading job for you? Do it on your own.” I need to do damage control. I tell her I understand. “You have to make a difference,” she says, calming down just a little bit. “Opportunities aren’t given, they’re made.” Though her statement sounds like something stitched on a pillow, she seems very proud of it. I sense an opportunity for a semi-dignified exit. I have to show her I’m a team player—she likes toughness.
“You’re right,” I say. “Thank you for the words of encouragement.”
I get up to leave her office and open the door. “Would you like me to leave this open or close it?” I ask.
“Leave it open,” she says.
I’m a few steps outside her office when she says, “Go make friends with Matt DeSalvo or David Slaine. Buy them a drink.” She follows this with a cackle. “That’ll show ’em.”
The idea of chumming around with DeSalvo or Slaine hadn’t entered my mind. As managing directors on the trading desk, they exist at a level far above the social circles with which I’m familiar.
JULY 1996
I’M SURROUNDED by women. The bar Cite is across the street from our office and is a favorite. I’ve only recently begun going out after work with my peers. I’m not really all that comfortable with the suit-and-tie Wall Street hangouts. Give me a pair of jeans and a sawdust floor any day. Cite is primarily a restaurant, and, I must admit, with the curved bar and intimate space, the place has its merits. The wineglasses are gigantic and bartenders pour heavy. On a typical night at Cite, pronounced “sit-tay,” as in “par-tay,” there are ten to fifteen women from our floor at the bar and five to ten men from the trading floor. The spot isn’t a secret. Many a six-hour love story has started here.
I’m standing at the bar next to Drea and Keryn. They both run the syndicate desk on our floor. Drea is short for Andrea. She has piercing blue eyes and a tiny gap between her front teeth, which on her is very sexy. She’s almost as naïve as I am. She sees the good in everyone. I love hanging out with her. We giggle all the time. Her assistant is Keryn, whose eyes are even bluer than Drea’s. She has a deep tan and jet black hair. Guys are drawn to her like mosquitoes to a bug zapper. And on this night her voltage is on high.
Just down the crowded bar a few stools sits Dave Slaine. Everyone on Wall Street knows him. Six feet tall and muscle-bound, Slaine has the body of a professional football player. But his wispy brown hair gives him an almost boyish appearance. Don’t be fooled. His hair-trigger temper is legendary on the floor. He’s the head of the over-the-counter desk; he runs the entire trading operation. When he’s angry, which seems like most of the time, he talks to people in grunts. If a trade doesn’t go his way, you can practically see the steam come out of his ears. There’s a story often told about Slaine that has several versions. Whether it was that he was eating french fries and someone kept bothering him for them, or that someone wouldn’t give him any of the fries they were eating, or that he just got mad at the computer terminal really doesn’t matter. All of the versions end in the same way, with him ripping the keyboard out of the computer and flinging it across the room. Dave scares me. He scares just about everybody. But when Keryn calls him over, I remember Stephanie’s stitched-pillow suggestion.
Slaine buzzes over to Keryn. When she introduces me, he does a kind of a sideways nod in my direction without taking his eyes off her. I’ve met him before, not that he’d remember. I sit on my stool waiting for my chance to make a comment or add to the conversation. I know I have to do something, or say something. I chug my drink.
Down the bar, I see my coworkers Heathe
r and Nora, both of whom are just as attractive as Drea and Keryn. Heather is the blond rebel cheerleader type—anything goes. Nora has the Latin-infused exotic look. I wave them over. One of the advantages of growing up with older sisters is that I know how to connect with females. It just comes naturally. I know just about every woman who works in PCS. I know where they grew up, their boyfriend’s name (if they have one), and how to make them smile. That they all happen to be beautiful says more about Wall Street’s hiring practices than any selectiveness on my part.
“This is Dave,” I say to Heather and Nora. And just like that, Dave and I are surrounded by some of the most beautiful women in the bar.
“You guys need a drink?” I ask. I can feel the group’s attention on me. Even Dave has begun to realize I’m standing next to him. “Heather wants a boob job,” I say. “Dave, what do ya think?” Heather playfully slaps me on the shoulder, then sticks out her friendly B-cups with a smile. Dave has one of those slack-jaw, I-can’t-believe-this-guy-just-said-that expressions. But his eyes are wide and twinkling. I can feel my stock rise. I chug more.
“They look great to me,” he says.
Heather chimes right in. “I’m thinking D-cups,” she says, holding out what they might look like with her two hands. Everyone laughs. I try to get Drea and Nora to stick out their chests, but they’re not having it. I order a round of drinks and call over a couple of other girls from our floor, Angelia, Liz, and then Lauren, an almost six-foot-tall beautiful girl from Texas. I’ve worked with them for almost three years. It’s somewhere around this point that I realize I’m in my element. I feel in total control and at ease. Only in looking back can I see how seminal this moment is. I would never be able to stand out at my job. There I’m out-experienced, out-connected, and out-degreed. But here, with a glass in hand, I have as good a chance as any to move and shake. Maybe even a better chance than most. When someone suggests we hit another bar, I pipe right up.
“Then grab your coats,” I say.
Seven of us, Dave and I and five of the seven women with us at the bar, hop in two cabs. I tell the driver the address: Tenth Avenue and Seventeenth Street. I’m sure Dave and Keryn can handle the place I have in mind, but the other girls might be a little horrified. It’s one of my favorite bars; I go there almost every weekend. Our cab drops us off first. Along with Drea, Lauren, and Keryn, I stand outside a wooden door covered with stickers for bike shops, booze, and gangs. There are no lights on the street corner; the only illumination comes from the neon bar sign. We’re on the outskirts of the Meatpacking District. Seventeenth Street is as dark as an alley. We can hear the rumblings of a good time coming from inside the bar. The black banner emblazoned in red with RED ROCK WEST above the windows looks like it may fall down any minute. The girls want to know where I’m taking them.
“You’ll see,” I say.
A few minutes later, Heather, Nora, and Dave hop out of their cab. As I open the door to the bar, lyrics from a Def Leppard song slam us in the face: “Do you like sugar?” the song asks. “One lump or two!” the crowd of bikers, party girls, and cowboys bellows in response.
The place is packed. The medium-size bar is dark, but glows blues and reds from the neon beer signs. Behind the bar are more stickers, license plates, Harley signs, hula hoops, postcards, lanterns, and bras hanging from a huge mirror. Lots of bras. The air is thick with the smell of stale beer. Two female bartenders dressed in skimpy leather tops and jeans stomp around in their black shit-kicking boots. As the speakers blare “Pour Some Sugar on Me,” a girl lies on top of the bar with her shirt pulled up to her neck revealing Victoria’s Secret, a pretty pink push-up, while a bartender pours whiskey into her belly button. The head bartender sees me and waves me over. She plants a kiss on my lips, then hops up on the bar, straddles the patron, and sucks the whiskey out of the girl’s innie. The crowd is delirious. They raise their Buds, PBRs, and Rolling Rocks as suds fly everywhere. The jukebox is blasting. People are singing. The two female bartenders begin making out as the crowd eggs them on. I order eight longneck Buds and turn to hand them back to my group. The girls stand there, mouths wide open, in absolute disbelief. Dave clinks his longneck to mine.
JUNE 1997
I’M SUMMONED into Stephanie’s office. I think I’m in trouble. She looks very stiff, like something’s wrong. She tells me to sit down and close the door. I know what I did. I might be fired.
Morgan Stanley recently has had mice problems. We’ve received several emails reminding us not to leave food on our desks at night. My desk-mate Michelle is terrified of mice. So last week when she went to lunch, I snuck under her desk. It was too tight under there, so I had to slide open the black metal door under her desk to crawl into the area where we hide our computers and all of the phone wires. I barely fit. When Michelle returned from lunch, she kicked off her shoes. I knew it. A perfect pink glossy pedicure. I bet she wears sexy outfits and open-toe high heels on the weekends. I took my index finger and thumb and started giving her little mouse bites on her feet. It was the loudest scream I’d ever heard. She jumped up from her desk screaming. Her lunch flew into the air. This must be why Stephanie called me into her office. Everyone had to have heard the scream.
Stephanie looks like she’s shooting arrows from her eyes. She picks up the phone and dials a number. “Hey, John, I just want to confirm what we talked about,” she says.
I don’t like the sound of this. But as she hangs up, her serious expression melts to a big, shiny white grin. “I want you to plan a party,” she says. It takes me a second to realize I’m not in trouble. Meanwhile, Stephanie has begun to go into detail about the morale on the floor, which, she says, is too low. Apparently the department is allocating three grand to boost it.
“I’m in,” I tell her. I know how to throw a great party. I majored in it at college. When I get back to my desk I realize Stephanie must have been talking with John Straus on the phone. He’s the head of the department, my boss’s boss’s boss, the very top of the food chain. I don’t even think he knows my name. I admire him. He’s like a general, but willing to stand on the front line. He’s a family man with values. His hints of gray hair show his age and make him look distinguished.
I find a bar near Thirty-Seventh Street and Third Avenue. It has a narrow room with a long wooden bar, exposed brick, and a jukebox. There’s really nothing to it, except the huge outdoor space they have in back. After one trip there, two phone calls, and three emails, the entire night is planned. Now all I have to do is to make sure the party is a success. I know both Stephanie and John Straus plan to attend. I don’t want to end up looking like a complete failure in front of two of the most important people in the office. I come up with a plan. On a Sunday I call up my high school friend Chris Arena, who moved to the city before I did. He works for the NBA in their main office in Midtown, and he has a computer program in his office I want to use. He meets me at the side entrance of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral off Fifth Avenue; his office is across the street. As we make our way through his lobby and into his elevator bank, I explain to him what I have in mind: a newsletter. In Chris’s office, I sit in front of his computer looking at the blank screen. I love a blank screen. All I want to do is fill it up.
The whole purpose of my newsletter is to get people excited about the party, but I also want it to be fun to read. The who, what, when, where, why, and how of the party fills the whole first page. I add some cheesy champagne bottles and flying streamers clip art, and also a table of contents—a teaser of what’s inside. I know I can’t provide any of my coworkers with market knowledge or insight that they don’t already know. This has to be straight-up supermarket checkout lit. Water cooler talk. When I realize this, the stories begin to fly out of me. I title the first story “So … You Want to Be a Porn Star?” Eight hours later—an interval that goes by in the blink of an eye—I finish the last of the blind items. All that’s left is to give the newsletter a name. I write The Turney Tape in large, bold font across the top.
At noon, I look at the stack of newsletters and begin to wonder if this is a huge mistake. There’s at least a fifty percent chance I’m coming out of this looking like a joke. What if nobody laughs? When I stand up, my trepidation gets even worse. It would have been hard enough distributing some type of business-related research I’d done. Even that would have left me wide open to snide remarks and criticism. But an office gossip newsletter? What was I thinking?
In front of me stretches the block-long open office. Though most of the brokers and many of the assistants are still working, on the phone or intently studying the computer screens, there’s also the first sign of lunchtime on their desks: paper take-out bags and cafeteria salads and sandwiches. I take a deep breath and begin my march. One by one, I hand out copies of The Turney Tape. I stop at every desk. It’s easier to give them to the sales assistants, because I know them all. The brokers seem a little more skeptical. I guess they assume it’s official Morgan Stanley business, information on a new product we’re launching or something. But with each copy I hand out I become a bit more emboldened. I tell myself I don’t care anymore. I’m doing it.