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showed me his chart. He pointed and told me where it had to go to make his buy level "valid." I watched as the Swiss franc ticked to within two IMM ticks of his price, and then it reversed its down moves and began heading up in a rush. I asked him if he had bought any Swiss when it approached his "perfect" buying level. He replied that he would only buy Swiss francs at that one level, to buy at any other level would "negate" the trade. By the time I left that office that day, the Swiss franc had traveled over 100 IMM ticks higher from the level it touched, and still the man kept updating his hand charts. |
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On the way back to our trading room, I told my friend that I thought that man was not going to be around as a trader much longer, since he clearly couldn't "pull the trigger" on the trades he anticipated. My friend laughed and told me the old man had been around a long time, and then he changed the subject. |
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I ran into that old trader about 10 years later. I was managing money in an offshore fund, and he made an appointment with one of my money sources to meet me. When I walked into the room and saw him, he showed no surprise and did not let on that he knew me. At the end of the presentation, he ended up making a very large investment in my offshore fund. He asked me to dinner and we spent that night speaking about the recent market moves. At one point I asked him why he invested money with me that afternoon, and he told me that he knew I was very successful at trading currencies and though he had watched them closely for many years, he was not comfortable trading them; they did not move to his rhythm. I reminded him of the Swiss franc chart he had been updating that day in his office, and he smiled and told me the price of the entry level he had been waiting for that day. He told me it had not reached his level that afternoon, or the rest of the year, since the Swiss franc rallied nearly a thousand IMM points from that price. |
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I asked a friend who ran a local bank about the old gentleman and got a surprising reply: He was a major stockholder in a huge local company (well over $300 million), and his local real estate holdings were worth even more. I |
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