Two items:
1. We are in the final stages of developing our Chat Site. (about 10 days) It will be a market chat site discussing the markets. It will be "enabled" twice during the day, probably 11am to 1145 and 2:30 to 3:15. We will not hype stocks or grind any axes. We will discuss the markets action. The sessions will be hosted by one of my traders. Hopefully I will have the time to atleast join in on one of the daily sessions. We will limit participants to 50.
To protect the site from disrespectful visitors, we will have activation keys emailed to users and each week a new password will be emailed to users.
I think it will be a great way for investors to get an idea of the market's intra-day sentiment, interesting movements, volatility, other factors, etc., ask questions of our professional traders and get to know us a bit better. Obviously we are hoping to be as forthcoming and generous as possible and consider it a valuable offering. I am confident it will prove useful to those who can join us during thier lunchtime hour.
I am trying to get an idea of how popular this particular offering might be so as to determine how we can best administer it. If anyone is interested, please drop me a quick email, chatsite@yamner.com indicating that you would like an invitation when it is completed in the next few days.
2. I have received a number of emails asking what my job is and my role in the firm. I thought since we have been developing a nice relationship here, you might find it interesting to know what I do for a living.
I manage our firm, www.yamner.com. We have been around for 20 years and have had great success with clients. While I have individuals who assume specific responsibilities, I oversee and manage the marketing and promotions of the firm, the hiring and firing of traders and assistants, the oversight of trading operations, oversight of client relations, as well as the servicing of clients and clients orders. I am a principal, sales and options, for the firm.
I usually spend my mornings from about 5am till 8am working on our internet focus as well as enhancing current technologies so that we have the highest quality execution systems available to our traders. I literally have my hands on Network cards and hard drives for most of the early am. (as well as weekends). I have gotten a great education in TCPIP stacks, routers, hubs, switches, t1 and other tech stuff. I am sort of a techie so I usually love this period of the day.
I also spend time developing relationships with newer clients, describing the firm and our market approach etc.
I am fully committed on having this firm dialed into the highest quality technology for trading. We have made a tradeoff in delaying developing a web trading site because of the inherent flaws of the internet. We are basically committing to our particular niche, working orders, working with clients, etc.
From about 8am till 9:30, we are usually handling calls from clients, discussing the market open, the market in general and specific approaches clients should be taking. we might make recommendations to buy/sell/hold stocks/mutual funds/fixed income, or to simply sit on the sidelines. We often get about 15% of our tickets from clients preopen. Things typically ramp up and we usually get a bit short right at 930 since we have to make sure we take care of marketable orders or stive for price improvements sine the open is usually emotion filled as offers the best/worst price of the day, depending on whether you are a buyer or seller.
Once the market opens, I try to focus on overseeing the traders and the trades, handling as many as possible as well as being available to speaking with clients. I demand that all of my traders jump for the phone within a ring or two. I personally handle a few large accounts such as the Trust Co. of NJ's and the bank of Ny's business yet, like I do with all clients, I encourage them to develop a repoire with all my traders as they are all highly talented.
I have a top down approach to doing business. All our calls are routed to the trading desk where the traders handle the calls, handle the task and then, when appropriate, pass it down the line. Because of the time-sensitivity of this business, you can't wait to be put on hold and then passed on to the right person. Most clients are not calling to find out about whether they got a GE dividend at 9:30am so if thats the case, we can pass the call onto a clerk, etc.
I spend a lot of my day watching stocks for clients. ie. someone wants to buy some (100 to 50,000 usually) of stock and I try to focus in on it to get an idea of the interest, who's doing what, how it behaving, how its printing. Because of the strong relationships, clients tend to defer to us because they know we have no axe to grind. I welcome the responsibility, yet as you all know, there is no crystal ball. You simply make a call, a decision based on the CLIENTS best interests and then give it your all.
Like any human, I enjoy the relationships I develop with many clients. Some simply call to bullshit and gab about the market, stocks, the kids, the wives, etc. Sometimes when its quiet, I can the time and do this. I enjoy it, similar to posting on here, a bit of humanity in a otherwise all-dollars business. Sometimes, like two tuesday ago, the post 550 day, I have to be quick to the point, no bullshit. Most clients understand it.
As head trader, I get all the errors, the crap, the backing aways. ie. a customer gives us a buy order and we accidentally place a sell. customer says they said ely not lly. etc. Nonetheless, our firm's approach makes this easy. As I have said often, we take great pride in never having a complaint or filing against our firm, in 20 years!. Basically, Bernie (mr. yamner)'s approach is always do right by the client. If we make an error, we eat it and give the client what they should have gotten if no error had occurred. Many times errors work to our favor, we accidentally buy something going up. Luckily we can then sell the customer's stock higher and sell the stock we boght in error. Rule of thumb if it ever happens to you, NEVER NEVER try to play an error. Don't get cute, kick it out asap.
Around lunch, if thats what you call eating turkey sandwhiches or takeout chinese in 3 minutes, I usually get about 1/2 hour to respond to emails and post a bit.
Some large orders I keep for myself since I am a bit of a perfectionist and egoist. Nonetheless, Josh, my right hand man is one of the best. Often we juggle between different execution systems and have to get crafty, sly to get trades off.
Around 3:30ish we might contact clients and let them know where they stand on days orders unexecuted. I don't personally like recommending a customer change their order, going against their intuition, but if going up 1/16 gets the stock done, do it. Don't get cute for 1/16. At very most, you own it 1/16 cheaper or sell it a 1/16 more. You get cute, you might miss the whole thing.
Around 4 we usually spend some times going through unexecuted orders making sure we didnt miss anything, putting commission on tickets, speaking with customers about the market close and other matters. I usually try to grab 15 minutes to respond to emails and post a few messages. I usually try to keep an eye on latebreaking news and late printing.
Somewhere amongst all this I have the time to do a number of trades for myself. I usually handle anywhere from 20 to 60 trades for customers through the day. I dont get paid a great salary to simply trade for myself all day. The most I might ever trade for myself would be 7 tickets roundtrip. Somedays, like today, not one. Nonetheless, Bernie is more than happy to let me grab a trade for myself as he knows that I always put client sfirst. For this reasons, in markets like this, I enjoy picking stocks and being more of an investors than a trader for my own assets.
I am usually out of the office by 5. I play basketball, hammer on the stair machine, or ride the bike every nite for about 1 1/2 hour. I come home, eat some food, (usually some easy dinner that takes about 4 minutes to prepare ...my wife runs the same tough schedule. ). then depending on how tired I am, I usually grab an 1 hour on the machine checking the itnernet, emails, si, etc. Now, I love some of these sitcoms. I am a big Alley McBeal, Melrose, 90210 and a huge Party of Five fan. Idont really pay attention but I kind of absord it while I am writing this. For example, right now something is happening with Fraser in seattle but who know?
I go to bed by 10pm (unless its thurs and I watch ER) and get up at 4:15 to do it again. One good thing is that I don't have to wear a suit, just a nice pair of slacks, a shirt and tie. Thats one perk of not being at a Merril, Goldman Sachs. By the way, my wife's name was Wax so we were thinking of starting a firm called Goldman Wax....
Anyway, market has gotten boring and I am reaching. This would be a good, quiet time to ask those questions you always were wondering about.
Someone asked me if I like my job. Love it. None better. Totally fulfilling, challenging and at times gut wrentching...but in the end I love what I do.
Regards,
Steve@yamner.com |
