I met with representatives of am institution that was considering investing in my new hedge fund on a recent visit to New York. Following the meeting, I met up with an old acquaintance, whom I will mention as “Harry”, for supper. Stocks
Harry has a Sales Trader job, which is a person who handles the order for institutional clients such as hedge funds and mutual funds. I was one of his accounts, in my “Ron Pollack Bulldog Days”,he had an extremely successful career, and used to cover me. He retired or took a break from trading around the same time I did in 2004, but we continued to stay in touch with one another. Hedge Fund
Both Harry and I had varying, though generally little, success with business ventures after our time on Wall Street. After a while, Harry started to miss the game and asked me if I’d ever go back to trading. Really, I miss it also. When I told him in early 2008 that I was going to return to managing money, he was thrilled and couldn’t wait to get back into it as well. Brokerage Firm
I had to suspend the start of my new fund because of the market’s gyrations late last year. its surprise for me that a always happy and hard working man,harry ,handle million share orders in volatile stocks looked like a depress person. Firms were disappearing left and right, and my account that he had been counting on for his own return, was not there either.
Shortly after my visit with Harry, I met a man I’ll call “Doug,” the head of a small brokerage with hedge funds as clients. Right away Harry can time mind and I put the 2 of them together. It worked out since Doug offered Harry a trial run, and of course Harry aced it. Within his first few phone calls to some old accounts he snagged a big order and it went up from there.
Harry has become one of the top producers for Doug and he has only been on the job for four months. It wasn’t surprising that Harry was beaming when we met him for dinner. He’s making money, good money and having a blast. I was really happy. In fact he said, “Ron Pollack I am going to treat you every time you come to NYC,then Harry announced that dinner would be his treat.I was very pleased as we were at a great location, one of the city’s best steakhouses.
Toward the end of the evening, I asked Harry this question, “Every day we’ve been hearing stories of doom and gloom like the end of Wall Street, the end of hedge funds, the end of the world as we know it. Obviously things are messed up but I’d like your perspective on all of that changed in light of your recent success.Ron, there are a lot of people hurting right now and I truly feel for them, but I am living proof that if you’re good at what you do, have the willingness to work hard and apply yourself and are realistic in your expectations, you can make it and even flourish in times like these,His answer was refreshing and went something like this, he said. Although I’m not making as much as I used to, I cannot say I have anything to complain about. we’re survivors and there’s business to be done.
If you are productive, someone will always be willing to do business with you.Here’s to my friend Harry! Continue to show us how to achieve it. Ron Pollack, signing off for now.