The size of your right hand digital units, that is…..
Tags: Health
Archive for the ‘Traders’ Category
Harvey Houtkin’s family sues the hospital where he died
On August - 29 - 2008
The family of controversial "father of daytrading" and so called
"SOES bandit", Harvey Houtkin, is suing the San Diego hospital where
he died. After his death following "uneventful emergency
surgery", a doctor who worked at the hospital sent an anonymous email to
the San Diego Medical Examiner alleging “erroneous, misleading and perhaps
fraudulent” information on Houtkin’s death certificate. According to the
San Diego Union Tribune:
Tags: Legal
RIP: Harvey Houtkin 1948 – 2008; Controversial “father of daytrading” / SOES bandit dies after surgery; was the hospital at fault?
On August - 4 - 2008
Harvey Houtkin, the controversial "father of daytrading" and so called "SOES bandit" who showed thousands of daytraders how to exploit the Small Order Execution System (SOES) in the late 1990’s, died after what was called "uneventful emergency surgery" in San Diego. Sounds like the hospital where the surgery was done has been in scrapes before, and is being implicated in his death via an anonymous email sent by a hospital doctor to the San Diego Medical Examiner alleging “erroneous, misleading and perhaps fraudulent” information on Houtkin’s death certificate.
Tags: Obits
“Wall Street Warriors” needs new warriors
On May - 14 - 2008
Calling all publicity hungry hedge funders / traders: Wall Street Warriors, the series shown on HDTV network MOJO-HD wants you. (That’s the show that chronicled publicity ho & bar mitzvah money hedge fund wannabe / flame out Timmy Sykes, among others). It seems that now that we’re in a credit crunch no one wants to be filmed — they’re having trouble rounding up warm bodies to fill up the screen for next season’s. They had an open casting call on Tuesday, but we bet if you really, really want to be on the show, the producers would still be happy to talk to you….
Tags: Hedge funds
Testosterone and you…..
On April - 15 - 2008
A study of London traders reveals that high
testosterone levels equals more money but also shows that the mood swings behind
market bubbles and crashes may be influenced by testosterone along with another
hormone cortisol, linked with uncertainty in markets and profits, explaining why
people caught up in bubbles and crashes often find it difficult to act
rationally.Dr John Coates lead author of the study, warns that a real danger in the present
credit crisis is not merely the extent of the market’s fall but its duration.The longer volatility stays high, the greater the cortisol exposure experienced
by traders, and this can lead to a condition psychologists term "learned
helplessness" when they avoid any and every risk.This work raises the speculative idea that one day City firms may try to
engineer the hormones of their traders – using drugs such as Flutamide (which
cuts the effects of testosterone) – if a market is spiralling out of control.This "terrifies me," he says. A better approach to evening out the
behaviour of traders, he explains, would be to have more women and older people
on trading floors, who have a different response to that typified by hormonally
charged twenty something male.
Tags: Health, SAC Capital
Well heeled: Securities trader sues over lapdance gone wrong
On March - 18 - 2008
A securities trader named Stephen Chang filed a lawsuit over a lapdance gone wrong, alleging that the stripper nailed him in the eye with the heel of her shoe.
Stephen Chang, a securities trader, said in
court papers filed Friday that he was at the Hot Lap Dance Club near Madison
Square Garden and was getting a paid lap dance when the accident occurred early
Nov. 2, 2007.According to the lawsuit, as the dancer
swung around, the heel of her shoe hit him in the eye, causing him "serious
injuries."A man who identified himself as the manager
of the Hot Lap Dance Club said he was unaware of the accident or the state
Supreme Court lawsuit. The club’s lawyer, Stephen Ateshoglou, did not
immediately return a call.
Let’s assume that the trader is based in NYC (as opposed to visiting). Bloomberg lists several Stephen Changs who look like they may be based here, including Bank of America, Lehman Brothers, Platinum Partners and King Street Capital. There are more listed abroad. Will the real Stephen Chang who filed the lawsuit please stand up!
Man Files Suit, Claims Lap Dance Injury - AP via CBS News
Lehman Brothers suspended two London traders amid a securities valuation inquiry
On March - 6 - 2008
According to the WSJ:
U.K. markets regulator, the Financial Services Authority, has been apprised of the situation and the firm is cooperating with its inquiry, these people said. The inquiry is focused on the valuation of securities, likely those tied to equity derivatives, in markets that have seen a significant drop in liquidity, these people said.
The two traders were suspended a week ago and the trades were identified by Lehman through internal risk systems, these people said.
The FSA declined comment and top traders at Lehman’s equity derivatives desk weren’t immediately available for comment.
Lehman Suspends Two Traders - Wall Street Journal
Tags: Credit Crunch, Lehman Brothers
Timmy Sykes stock pick draws fire from a fellow BloggingStocks.com poster
On January - 15 - 2008
Relentless publicity ho turned penny stock pumper, Tim Sykes, is finding no love from one of his fellow bloggers on Bloggingstocks.com. Kevin Kelly rips into one of Sykes picks. Says Mr. Kelly:
In a recent post on his personal blog,
trader Timothy Sykes told investors to "respect the hype" in six
particular penny stocks. This perspective runs in-line with Tim’s philosophy
that investing in penny stocks is a probability game technical analysis is the
best way to play. Although I’m sure money can be made by playing the greater
fool theory, after looking at some of Tim’s picks, I have concluded that the
risks surrounding one of them — BioSolar (OTC BB: BSRC) — are enormous.
Beware of BioSolar: I would never play ‘the pump’ in this penny stock – BloggingStocks.com
Cilantro Fund mercifully youthanized by its 26 year old publicity ho manager, Timmy Sykes
On October - 1 - 2007
As expected, super self-promotional idiot trader Timmy Sykes has announced that he’s shutting down his itty bitty, funded with Bar Mitzvah shekels hedge fund. He took the opportunity of announcing that he was pulling the plug on the fund’s life support to simultaneously announce the launch of his new self-published book. Or is that a re-launch? He’s been relentlessly touting it since last July, so relaunch seems more appropriate. In any case, he provides an Amazon.com link not one, not two, but three times in his page long tribute to himself. (Thanks to the reader who sent this to us early today!) Here’s the first paragraph — we can’t stomach giving this pretender any more publicity than that:
Cilantro Fund Closing, Read All About It In
New BookToday, it is both with great sadness and joy that I am announcing the closing of
my hedge fund, Cilantro Fund Partners, LP and the official release of my debut
book An American Hedge Fund. Thanks to the success of my TV show, ‘Wall Street
Warriors’, I’ve been inundated with questions from people wanting to know more
about stock trading and hedge funds. I am sick and tired of how little the
general public knows about these subjects.. Some of you might not think this is
relevant to you, but you’re wrong. Whether you’re in finance or not, this is
about protecting our right to freedom of speech.
Gag. Next!
Tags: CNBC, Hedge funds, Toe Tags
Check mate: Wall Street trader’s $100K ‘no drugs, strippers, hookers’ “promise” to ex-girlfriend bites him in the wallet
On September - 30 - 2007
Greg Calvino, a 45 year old trader formerly with RBC (and now with Thomas Weisel) is fighting with his ex-girlfriend, Elisa Kwon, in court over a $100,000 check he wrote to her early in their relationship that she cashed because she says he broke a no drugs, strippers and hookers promise that he made to her. She says that he agreed that she could cash the check if he misbehaved. He filed suit in July alleging extortion, looking to get his money back along with interest and damages. He claims to have written the large check to protect his career and reputation, and that she cashed it for no reason. But according to Kwon there are instant messages where Calvino admitted to going to Flashdancers and he failed a drugstore drug test showing that he partook of the white stuff:
Tags: Culture, Drugs, Hookers, investment banking, Lawsuit
Timmy’s comeuppance: Idiot trader gets dissed by Trader Monthly
On September - 21 - 2007
Are his fifteen minutes finally up?: Super self-promotional boy hedge fund manager Tim Sykes, who started his Cilantro Fund just out of college with his Bar Mitzvah money, has been roundly dissed by Trader Monthly, where he was profiled last year in their "30 under 30" list. Sykes never impressed us in his silly but hysterically funny appearances on CNBC where he touted stocks often without even knowing what his chosen companies did or even their names. You can watch his dazzling analysis and commentary on the video below where he appeared on CNBC in connection with their "Million Dollar Portfolio Challenge" when the network shamefully gave him a platform to spew his idiocy. Sykes emailed us awhile ago, looking for a positive review of his recently self-published book, but we never responded to his spam. (That’s also shown below.) But we digress. In any case, here’s the scoop on the Trader Monthly diss, from Page Six of the NY Post:
A WALL Street war has erupted between
influential Trader Monthly magazine and boisterous money manager Timothy Sykes,
who says he was rudely disinvited to its "30 Under 30" party at Gold
Street restaurant celebrating young financial whizzes after his once-mighty
hedge fund tanked."Everything was fine, and then I get a call from their p.r. lady telling me
I was no longer invited," Sykes, star of last year’s Internet reality show
"Wall Street Warriors," told Page Six"Then I spoke with the
editor-in-chief, Randall Lane, and he said I wasn’t welcome. My friends couldn’t
believe it – they were like, ‘What did you do to him, screw his girlfriend or
something?’ "Lane says Sykes is a shameless publicity hound whose Cilantro Fund lost a third
of its value since last year. In an e-mail to Sykes, he wrote: "Acclaim
comes with performance. While you’ve been busily self-promoting, your track
record this past year for yourself and your investors has been pitiful.
Laughably horrid. If you ever again become a real trader – rather than ignore
the hard work required to instead play one on TV – you’ll be welcome in our
community."Until then . . . we will have nothing to do with you, as we celebrate
those who actually perform versus those who pretend to."…Lane told us Sykes no longer fits in with
Trader Monthly’s audience: "This guy has decided to become Mr. Media as his
hedge fund loses money." But Sykes said Lane and his magazine are losing
face. "For the editor-in-chief of a magazine I used to worship, this is
crazy," he said. "It’s a slap in the face."
A well deserved slap in the face as far as we can see. And you really must watch this video if you want a good laugh:
Tags: CNBC, Hedge funds
Real estate rush: Banking firms vie for bragging rights over the size of their trading floors
On April - 2 - 2007
Mine is bigger than yours!: Goldman’s will boast six trading floors of 72,000 square feet a piece, with a 900 trader per floor capacity (vs the 60,000 square feet currently considered Tthe optimum".)
There’s a new force driving the frenzy in the New York office-property market: trading-floor envy.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. — widely viewed as a pacesetter by the city’s financial institutions — is building a gleaming new building in lower Manhattan that will feature six gigantic state-of-the-art trading floors. That project has set off an arms race of sorts among Wall Street investment banks, who are scouring the city in hopes of building or leasing new facilities equipped with all the latest technological bells and whistles….
Tags: Goldman Sachs, JPM Chase, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley
Displaced traders turning to shrinks
On November - 27 - 2006
Business is booming: Shrinks are in high demand these days by depression plagued traders who have lost their high paying jobs in the transition to electronic trading:
"Traders are now going to psychologists – of course they are," said Howard Lasher, a veteran trader on the floor of the American Stock Exchange, watching downcast traders head for the exits at neighboring NYSE. "What’s the choice?"
Dr. Ari Kiev, best-selling author of several books on the psychology of trading – he taught his groundbreaking strategies to billionaire hedge fund trader Steve Cohen – admits he has seen several traders recently due to unemployment trauma.
"Some traders would talk to me about those kind of issues," he told The Post. "They could be clinically depressed or suffering from a phobic disorder." Dr. Kiev, who refined the motivational techniques for traders he pioneered as the first psychiatrist on the U.S. Olympic Sports Medicine Council, said his aim is to get pink-slipped pros back in the game.
Laid-Off Traders Are Now Shrink Rapt – New York Post
Tags: Health
Estrogen filled Trader Monthly party: Women gather and share their experiences as traders
On November - 3 - 2006
It was a celebration of women in trading: Dozens of ladies gathered this week at a Trader Monthly party for the magazine’s current issue which features women traders. They ranged in age from 26 to 74 (grand dame of the women traders, Muriel Siebert). Most of the attendees seemed to agree, from comments in coverage in the New York Times, that there are excellent opportunities for women in trading and these days little in the way of discrimination, although women department heads are so far rare.
“I have never thought of it as a men’s industry,” said Lisa M. Utasi, who started as a retail broker at E. F. Hutton two decades ago. “I have never been inhibited by being a woman.”…“We need to dispel the myth that women cannot get into this field. We are doing it and there are many women that are successful and we need to make sure that message is open to all women,” she said.
“Women now are being treated with respect,” Ms. Siebert said. “Traders have a lot of responsibility. They can make or break an institution. They are sitting on the desks. But there are very few firms that have women as the heads of their departments.”
No Longer the 1980s – New York Times
NY Magazine Spending Diaries: The Investment Banker and the Trader
On October - 30 - 2006
As part of this week’s New York Magazine cover story on money, they show five weekly spending diaries from different income levels — from a subsidized grad student with limited income at the bottom of the income food chain , to an investment banker (where much of her spending is on an expense account) and trader at the top end. Here are the spending diaries for the investment banker and trader:
Tags: Compensation, investment banking, Lifestyle
Bonfire of the vain: Junior “Wall Street Warriors” coming soon to an HDTV near you
On October - 18 - 2006
Move over Aleksey Vayner, investment banker wannabe / legend in his own mind, and pub crawling, high living 23 year old investment banker AJ: Coming soon from the producers of "Porn Star: The Legend of Ron Jeremy, we’ll soon have some more young Wall Streeters on film to possibly ridicule. This is thanks to the new HDTV documentary series "Wall Street Warriors", premiering on INHD, "a little-seen high definition cable network" starring a group of young, self-promotional, high-living Big Swinging Dick wannabes plucked from Trader Monthly’s "30 Under 30".
When Timothy Sykes arrived for lunch at the Spotted Pig on Oct. 15—his sixth visit to the West Village gastro-pub in as many days—he was still a little drunk from the night before. Mr. Sykes is 25, a multimillionaire and the manager of his own hedge fund. He had been out until 6 a.m., he explained, dancing with some models at Tenjune.
“I really wanted to be sober for this,” he said, ruefully but not apologetically, a black baseball cap from his brokerage house pulled low over his eyes. Why? “I’m attention-starved. I really love talking about myself.”
Tags: Culture, Entertainment, Lifestyle
Trace system has cost bond traders $1 billion in its first year
On September - 22 - 2006
The buy side should be rejoicing (as the sell side cries): Corporate Bond traders and sales people lost $1 billion in commissions in the first year after the Trace reporting system required public disclosure of bond prices according to a study that will appear in the Journal of Financial Economics.
The so-called spread between bids to buy and offers to sell corporate bonds narrowed by about half, or 8 basis points, in the first year after the July 2002 introduction of Trace, the bond- price reporting system of the NASD, the study said. That represents a loss of about $2,000 per trade. A basis point is 0.01 percentage point.
The Securities and Exchange Commission encouraged the NASD, formerly known as the National Association of Securities Dealers, to create Trace as way of bringing transparency to the $5.2 trillion corporate bond market. Beginning with 500 bonds, Trace has since expanded to include almost every trade of more than 29,000 corporate debt securities in real time.
Tags: bonds
Trader Monthly: 30 Traders under 30
On July - 27 - 2006
Hotshot twenty-something traders: Trader Monthly’s next issue (that’s last year’s cover pictured), due out on August 8, will feature its second annual "30 under 30" list — the top 30 traders under 30 years old. The list includes 28 men and 2 women.
One of them, Tim Sykes, 25, runs a top-ranked, short-bias fund called Cilantro Fund Partners, which he founded in 2003 in his senior year at Tulane University in New Orleans.
Describing his success in trading, he told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday that most of the time he bets against companies whose share price he sees as overvalued.
"I’ve been doing this eight years now, so you pick up certain subtleties of the market over the years, and it’s just a niche. It’s about finding inefficiencies that appear in the small-cap and micro-cap markets," Sykes said.
Here’s the rest of the list:
Tags: Lists
