Remember Block Trading? Flashback article -- I recall reading it back when it came out 12 years ago.
inc.com;
I still have an original copy of that INC magazine. I happened to be in Houston a few months before that issue was released and talked to some trading buddies of mine from 1987/1988 from when I lived in Houston. They told me about what was going on at Block Trading office (located in the Galleria). It was this thing called "daytrading". => He told me, "you've got to go take a look".
I was in town for a training class for the week, so on Friday I cut out of class early to 'catch my flight', and instead boogied on over to the Block Trading office to see what was going on. Pretty cool, watching them trade:
Two traders would be sitting beside one another (each with over/under double monitors) watching price quotes. On the opposite side of the same table would sit a broker (or inputter), who would be responsible for inputting their orders into the system. I believe at the time, Block Trading required licensed brokers to independently enter all orders from the traders, as a check to ensure that the traders couldn't exceed their margin, or do anything illegal, etc. Maybe it was a regulatory requirement, not sure. In any case, you'd hear things such as follows (my comments in parentheses):
Trader: "Load to buy Intel at 45 and a quarter" (i.e. load but don't send an order to buy 1000 shares of INTC at 45 1/4)
Inputter: "Done"
Trader: "Load to short Dell at 56 and a half"
Inputter: "Done"
Trader: "Cancel Intel" (Cancel the loaded INTC order, which was never sent to the market)
Inputter: "Cancelled"
Trader: "Send Dell"
Inputter: "Done"
Inputter: "Dell filled long at 56 and a half"
I left after watching this sort of trading for ~2 hours. Before leaving, I had seen one of the traders I was watching make a photocopy of something, then make a second photocopy and crumple and throw the first one in the trash. I casually walked over and picked up the sheet out of the trash before leaving. It turns out that this trader had done something like 16 transactions in about 3 hours, netting a profit of $1600 that day. I was amazed. Right then and there I thought "Man, if these guys can make this sort of cash, this quickly, and manually... Imagine what you could make if you automated the entire process!"
=> That was the initial starting point of my daytrading career (a day I'll never forget). That reminds me... I want to get that INC cover framed.
Thanks for reminding me of that memory. I owe my trading success to that office of Block Trading, and in a way, to that INC magazine article. Ahhh, the memories... |
