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I worked at a multi start hedge fund and the head ABS portfolio manager would steal all the breakfast muffins every day. He had a company driver bring him and his kids to work, he’d go in, take all the muffins, give them to his kids, driver would take the kids to school. https://twitter.com/BondHack/status/1224329131640442885
He just walked in and stole muffins in front of everyone. Every day, like they were his. No one told him to stop because the ABS book was printing money for so long. The muffins just ... became his. Like a perk I guess. It didn’t last. The FBI owns the building now. No joke
follow up, I meant “multi strat” forgive me autocorrect I know not what I type
Also this was like 2 dozen muffins a day. As big as your fist. For weeks & weeks & weeks
Last, the head equity L/S trader there kept just enough Playboy stock to get invited to their annual bash
Also this was like 2 dozen muffins a day. As big as your fist. For weeks & weeks & weeks
Last, the head equity L/S trader there kept just enough Playboy stock to get invited to their annual bash
The stock was a dud and he knew it, he just wanted to hang out with big chested blondes at the Playboy mansion each year. So many PM’s were in on this game. They were like a secret club.
Remember this the next time someone prattles on about efficient markets.
Remember this the next time someone prattles on about efficient markets.
Going back to the ABS guy for a sec..they would buy and sell these MBS bonds and he would swear a blue streak at these dealers. He was Indian so you have to think of that accent, “You fucking shit ass motherfucker these fucking bonds aren’t shit you wouldn’t
buy this fucking bond if it was the last fucking piece of shit fuck ass bond in the world I’ll give you 80 and if you fucking ask for a penny more I’ll kick your fucking mouth you piece of shit.” This was constant every day. Hours and hours of yelling at dealers like this
His whole day was stealing breakfast muffins and berating our counterparties for asset backed securities and going home at 2pm. It was such a weird place man, the people were so weird. It was like everyone was from another planet.
I try to tell people about how insane this was, it was literally an insane asylum it’s just that everyone was so high functioning and has some niche area of the market they knew they could exploit and we levered up so the juice was worth the squeeze...so weird
I was a lowly analyst trading volatility in listed options and OTC variance swaps. It was so high stress...one day I’m chewing on my pen as I would normally do and some dude was like what’s all over your face? I chewed right thru the pen and ink was running out of my mouth
Never noticed it. As soon as he said something I realized there was this horrible, bitter taste in my mouth. I probably injected a half a bic pen’s worth of ink with the rest running down my chin like some weird fetish site. I didn’t even get up I just wiped it away
With a Kleenex and kept going. You couldn’t leave the desk! If you left the desk as a lowly analyst you might not have a seat when you got back.
LOL one day the ABS guy and the head of risk got into a shoving match right on the desk about some illiquid side pocket thing lol
LOL one day the ABS guy and the head of risk got into a shoving match right on the desk about some illiquid side pocket thing lol
The muffin stealing ABS guy said something like “I will fuck your mother” lol it was crazy this fat Indian guy and this super tall Eastern European quant who ran the risk team started quasi slap fighting right on the desk. Unreal
Oh man..one of the founding four partners
Oh man..one of the founding four partners
Would paddle a kayak down the Lake Michigan shoreline to work. He’d start at like 3 am and paddle up to the building at 7. I mean what the fuck right? Just drive it’s like 10 minutes. Everyone was so crazy.
I could keep going here...one of the big time HY credit guys was really into motorcycles and cars, FAST machines. He would retain a lawyer for like $5K and speed everywhere and get tickets. When the lawyer got thru the retainer the PM would go the speed limit the rest of the year
So for a while we were into movie loans. We hired this dude who was big into the movie business and the studios would go around and try to finance pictures via hedge funds. Non-correlated asset for sure. So this guy starts working and
demands that the fund buy a private plane so he can fly to Los Angeles whenever he fancies it and he can do road shows with movie executives and big screen stars and it was like you wanna do what now? What the fuck do you want again? He didn’t last
One of the craziest things we traded were “cat” bonds short for catastrophe bonds. This is like reinsurance for property insurers. Hurricanes, floods, wind damage. Every time a hurricane would roll up through the Gulf of Mexico we’d be on pins and needles
These bonds were done in deal packages that could only be signed and finalized in Bermuda. We had an office in Miami with a couple guys that would fly to Bermuda every month to do these deals and sign papers for an hour and then fly back to the States.
So for a while I worked with a PM who was this huge bear of a man named Mike. Mike was enormous, had a soft voice and an enormous temper. One day he was super pissed trying to get this options trade done and he started smashing his Bloomberg keyboard
Like full on pounding his enormous fist right down on the table it would be like a normal human swinging a 4 pound sledge. Anyway I worked right next to him running some risk sheets and he’s smashing the shot out of his keyboard and
pieces of the keyboard are going everywhere like shrapnel. Keys were flying over my head. I just kept staring straight ahead making sure all my shit was updated. As this mayhem is happening his head trader is IM’ing the IT guys “come bring Mike another keyboard”
They kept a stash under his desk because he would smash them to bits so often they could come by and switch out the busted one and he would sweep the pieces off his desk and resume trading and everyone just went with it like yeah omg okay this is absolutely normal
Like any other workplace if you witnessed someone destroying office property it would be a pretty big deal you would not forget that day ever at this shop it was just another fucking day.
Omg so this one time Mike somehow managed to accidentally draw a line on his nose
Omg so this one time Mike somehow managed to accidentally draw a line on his nose
with his pen. Don’t ask me how he did it but now there’s this huge burley dude who randomly breaks out into violence on the desk with a squiggly line on his fucking nose and I couldn’t look at him without laughing. And he talked to me and needed me to get information
so it’s like trying not to laugh in church. It just gets funnier but I’m kissing my pants terrified I’m going to lose it and accidentally laugh at him and fuck knows what’ll happen then. So I IM’d one of the rel val bonds traders and I’m like “uh, so Mike drew on his face”
He’s like “so?” I’m like “I can’t tel him because I’m going to laugh” he’s like “just tell him.” I’m like “you’re an ex marine I’m not telling him”. So the dude is like “Mike you have something on your nose.” You know what happened?
Mike tried to wipe it off with his spit on his thumb and it didn’t work so he went the rest of the day with a squiggly line on his god damn face and I went the rest of the day not looking at him at all.
I’m telling you this place was surreal and everyone and everything was crazy
I’m telling you this place was surreal and everyone and everything was crazy
