Choosing Talent

I was chatting with my wife on one of our long drives.  We were chatting about trading.  I got my start in trading from a guy named Roger Carlsson.  Roger saw something in me.  He worked me terrifically hard for two years and then gave me a chance.  I was Roger’s fifth employee

Some people have a great eye for talent.  Roger was one of those.  He built a tremendous trading operation and traded around the clock before anyone else.  If you are going to be wildly successful it cannot be about you.  It’s about building a tremendous team and Roger did that.

If you are religious, Jesus was the Son of God but he wasn’t singular.  He built a team too.

Roger didn’t discriminate.  He hired anyone.  This was 1986 in a white male-dominated testosterone filled world.  Maybe it helped that he grew up in Sweden.  He came to the US via Iowa State.  Always wore cowboy boots when he wasn’t wearing black shoes designed for standing all day in a trading pit.

I clerked for a guy named Dave Vecchione.  His badge was VK.  Dave played baseball at UIC and was a great trader.  He taught me quite a few things.  Dave had a successful career trading and was one of the “nice” guys on the floor.   Dave was employee number three.  Dave’s good buddy Marco Federighi joined us and became one of the largest traders in the Eurodollar pit.  Marco also was never a dick and a stand-up guy.

As time went by, more people came to work for Roger.  A lot of them clerked for me.  Steve Savoca, Todd Schaeffer, Matt Mabie, Mike Brophy all clerked for me.  They went on to become great traders in their own right.  Steve took a huge risk and went to Singapore to set up Roger’s operation there.  Matt was a QB at Wisconsin.  Todd and Mike went to Illinois.  Todd followed Steve to Singapore and came back to the US and became one of the best traders in the Eurodollar options pit.  He’s a minister now in Iowa.  Mike’s brother Brian was Roger’s sixth employee.  He made a lot of money for Roger and wound up having a very successful career in the futures industry.  All of them treated people well, and were stand-up guys.  Mike went to NYC and setup Roger’s NYC operation.

Funny story.  On Matt’s first day when he clerked for me we had a fun day. The next day I came in and had scads of outtrades.  I had a shitload of money in my account and I knew something wasn’t right.  Matt ripped up all the losers and just sent the winners to keypunch!  Oh was I mad but we laughed about it later.  When I started as a clerk once I went home with a bunch of cards in my pocket and forgot to send them to keypunch.  Roger’s position was totally off the next day.  I was roasted brutally for that mistake by everyone.

Forgiveness is an essential part of great team building.

Roger hired anyone as long as they were talented.  He didn’t care who you were if you could do the job.  Carolyn Hines was black and ran his office and operation.  Roger had Kandi Ferrari set up a CBOT operation and she later moved to trade in London.  Martha Morrison traded Eurodollar options for him.  I will never forget some of the looks on her face during the crash of 1987.

Roger added options traders like Norman Shanker.  He had set up a London operation as I joined the company and hired tremendous traders over there like Nick Harrison and Mark Green.

Roger wound up setting up operations in Hong Kong, Dubai, anywhere there was a trade.  He found amazingly great people to work for him and he made a ton of money.  He started in Eurodollar options, but wound up trading anything that moved.  It took years to build.  Classic entrepreneurial venture, and always cash flow positive!

I was lucky to work for him and I was very lucky to work with the people I did.