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my worst mistake...my first real job in my trading career at a new ibank, was making about 100-150k per day (on avg) for about 3 months trading outright clips of 20-30mm 30yr bonds...was up about 7mm (my budget...the P&L i was expected to hit for the year was 15mm...so i was half way there in only 3 months...i was overly excited and got overly confident/cocky)....then got real cocky one night and took a large position home overnight (stupid mistake)...traded decent size overnight (clips of 100mm 30yr bonds) by 10am i had lost it all in a selloff where i got caught bigly long and didn't stop myself fast enough...down 7mm...got stopped out by the head of the desk. Took me a while to get back into risk taking mentality. One could argue that It was actually good for the long term of my career in that i spent the next year and beyond really learning how to trade (i was very ignorant)....but that day was a serious gut check. I thought my career would be over.
A few months later the head of the desk then told me to put on every good RV position in illiquid off-the-run bonds i could find in my sector of the curve using my model, and to put them on with decent size. I was also asked to teach the junior guys how to run my model, and to automate as much of it as possible with the IT group. I did, and then a few months later, the head of the desk fired me (ok, i was laid off along with a group of other people...but that's just semantics).
lmfao yeah
The thread should be floating out there somewhere (Though is the kid had a brain he would've taken it down). Anyways I'll do my best to recap.
This kid was apparently working IB in NY and was tight for cash as a 1st year. He decided it would be a good idea to buy a receipt printer and start printing out fake receipts for meals he was cooking himself at home. This was a smart little fucker because he made sure to tailor the price of each meal to the meal itself (A steak would be close to the seamless max budget of like $30 while a sandwich would be more like $10).
Some time in the future he got a bit too drunk and told his friends about it. One kid asked to borrow the receipt printer (obviously OP had to let him borrow it or risk them outing him) and did it himself. This moron, however, was charging EVERYTHING to be the $30 max. Yeah that's right, $30 sandwich, salads, breakfasts, etc. He got caught within a month and apparently the next week both the OP and his friend were called in together for a meeting with their managers.
He proceeded to post all of this online and asked how "fucked" he was. He ended up divulging that over the course of a year +ish he had pocketed like $9k. We proceeded to tell him he was an idiot and they could very well just make an example out of you and press charges for fraud.
https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/whats-the-worst-that-can-happen
Haha "I'm in a bit of a pickle here"
Began getting some looks from owners (BOVs, inbound calls, general meetings, etc..) in the market I covered alongside a VPish level guy. Guy was not smart, hadn't sourced a deal, well, ever, and was really disingenuous. Bad combo. I called him on a few of his not so good qualities several times as I felt it was hurting our chances to win business. Well, he declared an allllll out war on me, real nasty stuff. No big deal though, bailed to the principal side and never looked back.
Moral of the story: pick your spots, but make sure you pick'em right. I did not pick the right spot.
In my first development job it was my responsibility to put together and bring the presentation deck to our official zoning hearing for a $1B office/retail project. You never know where you are on the agenda at these hearings--sometimes you are first up, sometimes you have to wait for 3 hours. Anyway, we get there, the hearing is just starting, and I realize I copied the completely wrong file to the thumb drive. I had to get across town and back with the right file before we were up. Made it with plenty of time to spare due to the hearing order, but I've never had a worse hour stretch at work in my life.
Pulling up a spreadsheet on the big screen in a conference room with your COO in it and all the numbers #REF!
Sounds like a typical Monday morning for me.....
My previous boss is now about 41 years old and is a real estate genius who kills it. But right out of college he worked at one of the predecessors to CoStar. He was tasked with calling to get information for their research. He called up CBRE (at the time often called CB Richard Ellis) and--teehee--he called up CBRE--bhahahahaha--he called up CBRE and asked for a "Mr. Richard Ellis to talk about one of his listings." He said the secretary thought it was a prank phone call.
Oh my God, too funny.
I sent an NDA to the CFO of a potential acquisition with a rival company's name and CFO's info pre-filled in the document.
I've tried to avoid sending pre-caffeine NDAs ever since.