A Quick $10,000 in A Few Weeks - Former ER Associate Shares His Story

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Member @greenspud graduated from undergrad right during the height of the Great Recession in 2008. Learn how he was able to land an equity research position at an investment bank, what he did when things went south and how he was able to pivot to a new career as a software developer. He explains his stint trading for himself and how he was able to make a quick $10,000 but that the psychology behind trading lead him down a dangerous path. Some very important lessons about culture and timing in this episode.

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WSO Podcast Transcript:

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:00:06] Hello and welcome. I'm Patrick Curtis. Your host and chief monkey, and this is the Wall Street Oasis podcast. Join me! As I talked to some of the community's most successful and inspirational members to gain valuable insight into different career paths and life in general. Let's get to it. In this episode, remember Greenspud graduated from undergrad right during the height of the Great Recession in 2008. Learn how he was able to land an equity research position at an investment bank. What he did when things went south and how he was able to pivot to new career as a software developer. He explains his stint trading for himself and how he is able to make a quick ten thousand, but that the psychology behind trading led him down a dangerous path. Some very important lessons about culture and timing in this episode. Hope you guys enjoy my. All right, member Greenspud, thank you so much for joining the Wall Street Voices podcast.

Greenspud: [00:01:12] Yes, my pleasure to be here, thanks for inviting me on.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:01:15] So it'd be great if you could give the listeners just a quick summary of your background.

Greenspud: [00:01:20] Well, I am a Indiana University Business School graduate, and during the 2008 financial crisis, I worked for just under a year as an equity research associate for an investment bank in the south side. And since then, I've worked my way over to being a software engineer, and nowadays I make web applications very cool.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:01:45] So you were basically graduating at the worst possible time.

Greenspud: [00:01:50] Oh God, it was terrible.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:01:52] He graduated from undergrad in 08, so I assume that was, you know, may of 2000 or, you know, May or June of 2008, which we were in the right in the heart of it. So tell me about like what you were thinking coming out of there and how you even landed a job in general at that investment bank. Can you tell me about that, that recruiting process and how you kind of got that?

Greenspud: [00:02:15] Well? Well, I have to say that it was beginning in the middle of 2007. The job market actually started getting really tough. If you want to be in the money management field or the investment banking field, so I think it was, let's see, was it was it the beginning of January 2008, the or was it 2007? I don't, I don't remember. But around the time you started having the subprime lending companies, they started to blow up. There was one called Lone Star Financial. I actually was watching the stock because it had a 15 percent dividend yield at the time. Wow. I remember when that one blew up and it seemed to be like a one time thing. And then a month later, you had Bear Stearns blow up and go under, and that was a huge deal. You know, a big investment bank. I mean, I wasn't supposed to happen, right? Right. But around that time, like I was interested in working in the investment management field, I was interested in equity research and it started getting really tough because I was doing all the networking meeting people in the industry. And I even had interviews lined up and just one by one, like every list, every bank on my list. I had to cross them off because there was a hiring freeze at every single place. Right. So I was very interested in the computer field. I was really into like the whole story of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and everything. My favorite movie was, well, one of my favorite movies is called the Pirates of Silicon Valley. It's about that story of I'm starting their companies and I wanted to work in the computer field. So I went to Purdue to study computer information systems, and I felt like that program wasn't a good fit for me because I already taught myself how to write software. I knew how to do some dot net stuff and write Windows applications. So so the entry level, that stuff was really basic for me, the finance sort of stuff. You know, in that program, there was an accounting class I took. I really enjoyed that. And you know, it was towards the end of my first year at Purdue, I decided to transfer to Indiana University in Bloomington. So I made that transfer there. But because of the way the credits lined up and the transfer, I actually had to spend an extra year in undergrad. So I was like a five year undergrad. Got it. And it was it was my fourth year that I was actually started to learn more about the investment banking industry and the types of jobs available there. And a professor recommended that I look at equity research. So it was around. Then I started exploring the equity research field and learning how to meet people and the networking thing.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:05:16] And so you didn't start till senior year like that sounds super late, so you didn't have internships in finance or anything like that. Greenspud: [00:05:23] It was just. No, I actually did not manage to get an internship. I actually started a little bit too late.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:05:29] And so did you have internships and other stuff that you were able to point to or put a resume together for?

Greenspud: [00:05:35] Yeah, I did actually through one of my scholarships. I was able to get the connections to get an internship at a company in Chicago where I work in their I.T. department and I was doing programming stuff there.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:05:53] Got it. So you at least had something on your resume. So you, have some work experience?

Greenspud: [00:05:57] Yeah, I had I had summer jobs and such. So. So how

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:06:02] Did you even Land in that respect?

Greenspud: [00:06:03] But I just I just didn't have something in the financial industry.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:06:08] So how did you even land the interviews for finance if you didn't have if you had more comp sci stuff? Do you think people respected that or how should the listeners think about that and how, you know, if you're coming from a. Oh.

Greenspud: [00:06:21] I had to be really aggressive in using the network and the alumni network and just talking to people, and I was really I really liked stocks that that was something that was an interest of mine even before college as well, along with computers. So I was working really hard to do financial modeling, you know, learn that and do my own little stock analysis and try to pitch stocks. And just

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:06:57] So when you were, when so

Greenspud: [00:07:00] Get in the

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:07:00] Industry. So there was nothing about like online or on campus recruiting. There was nothing about that really helped you is really just the alumni network networking. And were you meeting mostly people around school where you flying places where you always including like a pitch in your first email to them? Or how did you kind of structure that?

Greenspud: [00:07:16] Oh yeah, okay. So there was a lot of campus recruiting going on, and a lot of people in my classes did get placements that way. Yeah, it just happened to be that. For me, the way that worked for me was going to the alumni network and and doing sort of one on one conversations. Indiana University, they have a special class that's really selective, called the Investment Banking and Capital Markets Workshop. Yeah, that's of like a little career class that kind of preps you for the Wall Street sort of interviews. And so I managed to get into that class.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:07:59] Is that competitive to get into?

Greenspud: [00:08:02] Yeah, it's pretty competitive.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:08:03] So why do you think you got in even with all that comp sci background?

Greenspud: [00:08:07] Well, I did a little side project that actually was really useful for the school. I started a student organization called the Mad Money Club. And remember back around 2006, you know, the TV show Mad Money with Jim Cramer?

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:08:26] Oh yeah, oh yeah,

Greenspud: [00:08:27] Yeah, yeah, that was really popular then. It still is popular, but I mean, it was like really fresh new stuff. And he was doing this college tour and I got a group of students together and we actually reached out to CNBC and did a pitch to Jim Cramer and got him to come out and do the show for us.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:08:46] That's awesome. That's awesome.

Greenspud: [00:08:48] So yeah, I I pretty much put spearheaded the whole campus effort to get the Indiana University on the college tour.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:09:00] So that was kind of seen by the administration or whomever was the leaders of that organization has enough to to get in.

Greenspud: [00:09:08] Yeah, they were pretty impressed with that. So they let me get in the Capital Markets Workshop.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:09:13] Cool. So you're in that workshop, you're learning about finance, you're learning about modeling. You're kind of start putting together some pitches. Are you leading with those pitches, like for specific stocks when you're kind of trying to do these coffee chats? Or are you just trying to get informal coffee chats with alumni and then bringing a pitch with you? How are you doing that?

Greenspud: [00:09:29] Well, that was some time ago, so I don't remember exactly how individual conversations went. Mm hmm. But, you know, I think a lot of the conversations I had were more so like, you know, I'll email somebody, say, Hey, I'm going to be visiting New York to meet a few people there and you want to go grab some coffee. You know, I, you know, some analysts that I contacted, you know, if they have coffee with me and I just asked them about what they do and what their job was like and and more general questions. You know, I don't remember if those coffee conversations ever got like too technical, like. I don't think it got really technical unless I was in like an actual interview interview.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:10:25] Right. And then from those kind of coffee chats, you manage to land what is a couple interviews at banks and you ended up with one one offer? Or how did how did that work in terms of like as you were, as you were, as you're crossing banks off your list? It started getting pretty stressful, right? Like because you're like thinking,

Greenspud: [00:10:40] Yeah, it was getting pretty stressful. In fact, I I even graduated without an offer hand. Ok. I didn't get an offer until two weeks after I graduated.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:10:55] Hmm. Wow. That must have been a relief. Yeah.

Greenspud: [00:10:58] Yeah, it was very relieving. Yeah.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:11:00] So tell me, like, say you're crossing banks off, you're still kind of interviewing or networking and tell me how that final kind of how you ended up with that, that actual offer, how to make that process.

Greenspud: [00:11:13] Well, one of our sons, I, he was an analyst at this bank. They were looking to expand coverage of the companies in the health care space that they were covering. It was actually health care information technology. So he liked the fact that I was familiar with the the whole its I.T. world health care. It is a little bit different when more specialized, but I basically have like the aptitude to understand the industry pretty well, right? He like that. And you know, I came out to the came out to his investment bank and did like an interview with the director of research and a few other people there. And they liked me enough to hire me as an associate.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:11:58] And what was that interview like? Was it was it like technical or did they ask you to pitch a pitch of stock to them and or what was that like?

Greenspud: [00:12:06] You know, I honestly don't remember because that was so long.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:12:09] No. Yeah, it's almost like over

Greenspud: [00:12:11] Time it was personality fit type of questions. Got it. But then, you know, there was like the basic, you know, what's an income statement? What's a cash flow statement, those sort of things.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:12:22] And were you up against a lot of other people for this position at this point? Or did you feel like you had a pretty good answer?

Greenspud: [00:12:27] I don't think so because, you know, I think when you find a job by word of mouth. And it's not through like a like a like a recruitment pipeline. I think your odds are a lot better because you're face to face with the people that you'll be working with right there.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:12:46] And yeah, that's a key takeaway. That's a key takeaway.

Greenspud: [00:12:49] Yeah, cut down the number of competitors I had.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:12:52] Yeah, for sure. That's a key takeaway. Just being able to, you know, find jobs that are off market almost you get you get a much better odds of actually landing them. So. So you get there, you you start the job pretty soon after you graduate, then you know you got the offer two weeks after you. I assume you start pretty soon after that, are you? What's your impression? You get there. You start immediately, start covering these other companies. Is there a lot of training? Tell us. Tell us a little bit about that as an equity research associate, what life is like?

Greenspud: [00:13:22] Oh man, yeah. So when I got into the job, it was really tough because, you know, I'm just like a twenty two year old kid, you know? No real world experience on these sort of things. And I just had to kind of wing it. It was a tremendous amount of information to learn. And then, you know, like the industry itself is really specialized. I, I had to even get like a like a couple of textbooks about, you know, how to write T fits and hospital operations. It was like something that you would get if you were taking a degree in that like, I kind of skim through that book just to understand what all the different parts of a hospital are and in different types of systems that they use.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:14:14] Got it. Got it.

Greenspud: [00:14:15] Ok. You know, there are few players in that space we covered. I think it was like 15 different companies. And, you know, they're kind of obscure companies. It's not like Google or Microsoft that that everybody knows. It's it's really their names that unless you work in the industry, you probably haven't heard of them. Stuff like like Cerner or McKesson, which is a big drug wholesaler that has an IP division. You know, there's all scripts, you know, those are probably lesser known companies by the general public, but they make very specialized software and they're using hospitals and physician clinics everywhere.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:14:56] Got it. And so this this was a kind of a new space that the bank wanted to get coverage on. And you were tasked with kind of learning this space really well.

Greenspud: [00:15:04] Yeah, that's correct. So it was a lot of just basic research digging through all of the 10Ks and the financial filings, Investor Day presentations and everything was looking at all the conference call transcripts. It's a lot of information. And on top of that, I was also having to spend time to study for the the regulatory licensing. So you have a Series seven, sixty three, eighty six and eighty seven. I think it was for me if I had to take four exams.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:15:40] Wow. Yeah.

Greenspud: [00:15:42] Very, very intense,

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:15:43] Very intense, very stressful. So how many hours do you think you were putting in initially?

Greenspud: [00:15:49] I was easily, you know, on a on a light week, I was probably doing about 60 hours. But then again, if we had earnings, if it was earnings season, gosh, that was grueling because we I have some companies, they come out with an earnings release at like six in the morning. And, you know, so I have to be in the office like, Oh, getting all ready for that at like five o'clock. And then, you know, you write your reports and everything. And then there's a lot going on that day. And then sometimes the same day you have multiple companies reporting in the evening. So then you get like a few more, like around five o'clock to six o'clock and then they're like writing reports on the earnings release all the way until like, like 11:00 or I don't know how late, you know, I was so tired. I was looking at the clock on a week like that. I probably do like 80 hours or so.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:16:55] Yeah, yeah. It sounds like typical banking hours, but equity research tend to tends to have better hours. But like it can fluctuate and get up there in those earnings earning seasons. So OK, so that's interesting in the pay, was it, you know, back in 08, I'm assuming your bases around sixty five, seventy five or something like that. Does that sound about right?

Greenspud: [00:17:16] Well, I was I was actually higher than that.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:17:18] Oh, great. Ok, so was the bonus was the bonus?

Greenspud: [00:17:22] Yeah, the bonus. It wasn't a really big bonus, but it was something. But here's the thing about working in that industry is in New York City, and not that will be pleasure working so many hours. You pretty much have to live on the island somewhere. Yeah. And your choice is either you're going to try to save on rent by living in a really dangerous place. That's kind of scary if you're from another city. Right? And maybe it maybe has a high number of cockroaches per square inch. Or, you know, you could live in a slightly more comfortable place. I mean, the the place I was living in is the entire apartment was about the size of the little office I'm in right now talking. I mean, that was like my whole house there. Yeah. And you know, I was paying like $1500 a month for that place. And then food gets expensive, so your money goes really quick. Like you could make one hundred thousand dollars. And, you know, as a college student coming out of graduate, oh yeah, that's a lot of money. I'm going to get so rich. And then you spend all that money on rent and food, and it doesn't feel like a whole lot of money after that.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:18:38] Yeah, after a whole year of work, you're lucky expensive. Now you're left with like, you know, fifteen thousand or ten thousand after tax, after a whole year of work or something like,

Greenspud: [00:18:46] You know, yeah, yeah, you don't get ruined by tax.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:18:49] Yeah, so you're basically so you come out of school. It's really hard. So tell me, I assume you eventually hit your stride, you know, six months in or you know what made you kind of think, Hey, it's time to move on or what was that thought process?

Greenspud: [00:19:05] Yeah, so during the financial crisis, I ended up losing my job while my boss. And at that point, I did have some family problems going on to my dad passed away just a couple of years before and my mom was having financial problems. So I wanted to go home and help out with those things. And aside from that, I just I actually hated New York City, and I didn't. I just didn't feel like searching for another job in New York. I wanted to go back to the Chicago area where I'm originally from and now. But the hours were pretty intense and, you know, I didn't know what to expect in my next job. I don't know if all the jobs had hours like that or not. Yeah, but so I packed up my things and left New York and moved home for a few months while I searched for a new job.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:20:09] Got it. So yeah, you. It was basically a financial crisis. Got worse and worse. Your boss lost his job, you lost your job. And so eventually it was kind of like a chance to reset. Get back home, help your mom do all these things you wanted to do anyway. So. Tell me about that transition and kind of what brought you back to computers?

Greenspud: [00:20:29] Well, it was it was really nice to be back home for a while. And then I traded my job search like as if I was actually working. So I like get up first thing in the morning and I'd spend the entire day looking for job postings and doing the doing the networking thing, you know, like it was like a full eight hour a day job, right? And if I spend a lot more time than that actually on it, and here's a cool thing about the whole thing that, you know, like if you want to get a Wall Street job, like I typically teach students how to, like, reach out to somebody and say, Hey, let's go on a coffee date and just talk and stuff like that that works in every industry. You know, it's not just Wall Street jobs, but but anywhere that you want to work, that's actually the best way of finding work. And so I was kind of doing that, but I was really open minded. I wasn't just stuck on investment management at that time because, you know, the jobs are very scarce. My goal was just getting something that paid a decent salary and would give me some experience. So that opens up more doors, right? And I found a, you know, I was just one of the areas I started with was my industry. So like, OK, I'm really familiar with the health care industry. I'm going to try finding companies in that space and try to talk to people there. So I actually, through LinkedIn, found a finance manager at one of the major health care I.T. vendors, and we we had a conversation and the initial phone conversation was mainly just like, Hey, you could tell me what it's like to work in corporate finance. And we just we just had fun talking about that stuff a little bit. And then a few weeks later, he gave me a call and I was like, Hey, I'm starting up this this project in the corporate finance department. We're going to be doing like an audit of contracts in the financial repercussions of that, and I'm going to be hiring like about five people as contractors do this. You want to join the team. So how are you? Sure. So I, I. What the project was was this company, they have, oh, sometimes multimillion dollar contracts, you know, anywhere from between like a few thousand dollars to millions of dollars in contracts with various hospital systems. Mm hmm. And what was going on in that project was their internal operational process was in such disarray that they actually forgot to send out a whole bunch of bills. So, yeah, the contract has statements that when they achieve certain implementation milestones, they have to send out a bill. And what was going on with this company was there was bad communication between the people on the field and the people in the finance department. So the finance department wasn't aware that certain projects meant their implementation goals, right? So they never billed their clients. Right. And what the team I was on was doing is we were auditing. I want to say it was like $25 million worth of contracts. Yeah, it's somewhere in that ballpark. Yeah, just looking, just reading the contracts and then sending emails out to the project manager working on that implementation. Hey, did you achieve this yet where you guys at and then and then just marketing accordingly and figuring out we have to make any sort of billing adjustments

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:24:35] That makes sense. So you guys were helping collect? Pretty, pretty important. Yeah.

Greenspud: [00:24:40] So we were collectors. Yeah, yeah.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:24:42] Pretty important job. So OK. So you're doing that for a little while. Yeah.

Greenspud: [00:24:46] And then yeah, I did. I did that for

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:24:50] Gosh, it was a year and a half, almost

Greenspud: [00:24:52] A while. Like, I think I was there for over a year. Yeah, because this billing project was going on. And then midway through it, they actually hired me on as a permanent employee. Mm hmm. And I ended up managing the contracts department for a while.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:25:09] Wow. And so were you able to help your mom in this situation? You know, you're bringing in a decent salary, lower cost of living area?

Greenspud: [00:25:16] Yeah, yeah. So so we got her financial things sorted out. You know, my my mom, she was of the agent that she was eligible for Social Security. And you know that that really helped us out. But we got that situation under control. Great. From there, so what happened to my job at the health care it company was? They ended up getting brought by a competitor and things got kind of crazy over there. And it just it just wasn't the same place to work anymore. Mm hmm. So I I actually got a call from a headhunter. And she told me, you know, I've got this implementations job and you seem to have a good natural backdrop for that. Are you interested? So I went over there and interviewed over there at this other health care I.T. company. And then I ended up doing implementations work. Ok.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:26:23] Did you like that?

Greenspud: [00:26:24] So then, yeah, this is this is how I kind of evolved from finance in the computer field because, you know, I started off doing like excel spreadsheet sort of stuff and really close to the numbers and then it got more and more technical. So when I did the implementations work, that was kind of like a hybrid of doing business, the sort of stuff where, you know, a little bit of project management, you know, gathering requirements, sort of thing. But then I also did like some coding in that. There was some need for application development and gave me some opportunities there to get some additional experience in writing computer software.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:27:06] That's great. Ok, so you are getting some good experience, well rounded and kind of you did that for a few years and then tell me about your jump back to trade or to finance or as a prop trader. How did that happen? Because it's the winding road. This is a winding road. So trying to figure out kind of what got you

Greenspud: [00:27:24] There, this is like the craziest point in my whole life. What happened here is I got tired of doing the implementations work because a lot of there was a big element of it that was sort of a customer service sort of thing where, you know, customers would call you up and the thing that they needed to fix was really simple. You know, it's like, OK, I'll just send you a software update or something like that, right? It started to feel a little repetitive after a while. Sure, there were bigger accounts that need more attention. But I guess I guess I was getting a little bit bored with the with the job once I kind of mastered it there. So I wanted to get more into the software development stuff, and I started learning on my own time web application development. I picked up this platform called Ruby on rails, and there was a company that was expanding its business and they were doing this big rails project. And so I ditched my implementations job to go work at this kind of a startup company. I don't know the way the manager pitched it. To me, it was like a really good funded startup because they were going to do all this greenfield development and they had the funding of it from from an umbrella company. Ok, well, what happened was I I I left my job to go for this other company to do development work. And then there was like some type of I don't know what happened with the management company,

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:29:10] But some falling out of

Greenspud: [00:29:12] Some sort. It didn't work out. Yeah, they didn't give us the requirements. And yeah, I ended up getting fired because the project just it just was a no go. It's never got stuck. And so I was.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:29:26] That's a learning moment, right? That's a learning moment. Not jumping before.

Greenspud: [00:29:30] Yeah, you're sure. Yeah.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:29:32] Yeah. Ok, so. So that was tough. Ok, so you left your job that you were getting bored at the data implementation? I get it. It was studying repetitive. A little too easy for you. You wanted to develop, get your ruby skills kind of more honed, right? And so you saw this as a potential, a great jump. You jumped and then boom, there was no job. So tell me, what did you do next?

Greenspud: [00:29:51] And then, yeah, I just jumped off a cliff. Pretty much.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:29:53] Yeah.

Greenspud: [00:29:55] And then to compound my problems, my wife was pregnant at the time. Oh boy. And yeah, the economy still wasn't that great, and I was still kind of lacking skills. I didn't want to go to implementations work. I didn't know what to do and I really wanted to do do finance again. Yeah. So, you know, all this all this time, while I was doing the computer work, I I was still like following the market and and doing stocks, you know, looking at stocks and everything like that. And I have my own portfolio that was trying to build and had things like Google in it, a few big companies and. I had this crazy idea. I noticed that when under certain conditions, when a company reports earnings and its really positive news, there's like a gap up in the stock price between the close of the pre earnings and the next day. Mm hmm. And oftentimes, if you catch it early enough as gap, you could cash a few percentage points, sometimes a lot of percentage points as the stock opens the next day. Mm hmm. So I did a really crazy thing. It was the earnings season at the beginning of 2014. Yeah, and I I did this, I said, I want to try this like I had this, I figured out the conditions that this happened and I I would put a lot of money on the one stock or maybe two stocks at the open that I thought were going to pop. And then why should just go?

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:31:53] And this is based on this is based on right away. This is based on just the earnings that have been released prior day.

Greenspud: [00:31:59] Yeah, just based on the news event.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:32:01] So I assume getting in quickly at the open was the challenge.

Greenspud: [00:32:07] Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So the thing the advantage that you have is a retail trader is that you're actually small fish. You know, if you're trading like, even like $100000, that's like nothing. Yeah, in the stock market, because you're there with big institutional money managers are trading millions of dollars, so you could make a trade that's like $100000 in and out, and that's not going to affect that stock price overall very much. Right. So I was trying to ride the wave sort of, you know, doing this and this strategy actually works pretty well for a little bit. And for the first two weeks of 2014, I was making a lot of money.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:33:00] So explain to me how much were you? How much were you putting up or at risk? You're just buying just this. The underlying the equity. You weren't buying options or were you doing anything?

Greenspud: [00:33:11] Yeah, I was. I was just doing equity.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:33:13] Ok, so you're just buying this. So you're literally just buying the stock at the open. When it was a positive earnings announcement and it gapped up, it would gap up or usually gap up.

Greenspud: [00:33:22] Yeah, yeah. But but the chart had to be it just had had to have like the right look to it. You know, I got really much into the technical analysis and there was just this thing about certain setups where the stock would look a certain way. Before the earnings announcement, I noticed like after it, like how it was this thing,

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:33:45] How it led into a positive earnings announcement. So like if it if it was like slowly declining into the earnings announcement and actually ended up being a positive earnings announcement, it would be or whatever.

Greenspud: [00:33:56] I think it had more to do with the trading ranges like it was started breaking out to new highs or something like that. Got it. Ok. Or if there was some resistance on the price where what was starting to break above that, like there were certain key points I'd be working on the chart.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:34:13] It's a very technical. Ok, so and that was that was working for you. So did it stop working at some point?

Greenspud: [00:34:20] Yeah, what happened was the earnings season ended, and I don't have any sense anymore. Okay, so this is where I really started to mess things up.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:34:30] The real quick, how much did you make in that period of time and that one earning season? How much did you put at risk and how much

Greenspud: [00:34:34] Did you think it was? I made I made about $10000. Ok. Ok. Something like that. Not bad. And I thought, You know what? If I could keep doing this, then I could. I could make enough money to be going for a while and have all my expenses covered.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:34:51] Mm hmm. I mean, you need that capital base to trade with. But yeah, yeah.

Greenspud: [00:34:55] Yeah. Ok. So, um, so what happened was then I started getting nervous because, you know, I have a family to take care of. And just the psychological pressure of that got to me. And I started looking for trades that weren't there. And another bad thing I did was I joined a trading chat room because I wanted to learn more. Like, that's just kind of how I am like, like, if something's working, I want everything I can about it. Right? So, so I found this this group of traders online chat room and I started trading with them and these guys, they were trading all sorts of like crazy stuff. Yeah. And some of it, like some of them kind of worked for me. But basically what they did was they looked for like market imbalances caused by like news events or something like that. And it was kind of similar to what I was doing with the earnings thing. But but they were trading like all sorts of different types of things. And a lot of penny stocks, too. Yep. And then so I I ended up getting in a rut and I was trying to force trades. I was making very badly thought ones because I felt like the pressure to have a positive P&L at the end of every single day because there's only 250 trading days a year. I want to make every single one of them counts. And you just can't approach like trading with that type of mindset. Yeah. And so I really, really messed up. So so I lost my early winnings and then quite a bit more.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:36:48] Yeah. How much more? How much more, how much more like twenty thousand more.

Greenspud: [00:36:54] I don't even want to say.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:36:55] Ok, so is it bad? It's a bad situation. You're kind of have a kid on the way. You're trying to day trade, you're trying to find edge, you're trying to learn everything you can about it. And then you quickly realize that you're getting chewed up and spit out or for whatever reason. Exactly. Ok, so what was your next move? I mean, where you?

Greenspud: [00:37:16] Well, I conceded defeat and then I started looking for programming jobs again. Got it. Ok. So I was still studying the markets and but then I was like, OK, I'm going to put on my job search too and look for look for programming job. Mm hmm. Ok. And during this entire time, one thing that I did that really helped improve my candidacy for another programming job was I was building stock scanning tools like crazy. Like that was another thing that really helped me find interesting. Stock action was I built, I built my own stock scanners and ruby and and then like TD Ameritrade, they've got an API. I connected to that. I even made a library for I open source. So I had some impressive programming accomplishments that I was able to show when I started searching for programming jobs again.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:38:24] So you were ready, so you were trading on your own for a while then? Yeah, yeah, yeah, so sometimes so you can. Let's let's talk a little bit more about the psychology of that. So like, you had a lot of pressure. Do you feel like the intellectually it sounds like do you feel like there was you had the acumen to actually understand this stuff? But just this, like the psychology aspect of trading, was the hard part to master? Or was it just that you felt like you couldn't find any edge? Like long term,

Greenspud: [00:38:54] I think it was all psychology, really. I think as far as like finding market inefficiencies that you could profit from. I think they're always there. In fact, we could get to this later that I found trades that work for me and I do it. I still do it just not as aggressively and not on the same time frame. Yeah, but the problem for me was psychology. You know, I was really concerned about my family and and

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:39:29] That's because money you couldn't lose. So you're playing scared almost.

Greenspud: [00:39:35] Yeah, exactly that. That did everything to mess up the mindset that you need to to be in a trade and execute it logically, you know, to execute their plan, for sure.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:39:50] That makes sense. It's like poker. Yeah. Yeah, yep, exactly. So if I was

Greenspud: [00:39:55] In my mindset, that's something very important that you need to know about creating.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:39:58] So in terms of, you know, you eventually were saying, OK, this is not going well, I'm going to just get back into software, get a stable salary again. Right? And so how long did that process take? You got back in. Any any suggestions to the listeners in terms of if they're in finance, how to build up something, if they do want to make that transition over to software? Or do you feel like you had it for such a long time that it's hard to make that transition this late in the career?

Greenspud: [00:40:26] Uh, no, I think you can make that transition, especially software development. I think that's a good that's a pretty easy field to transition into because you're very much measured by what you could do as far as technical skill. And that's one of the cool things about it that I really like about working in the software development industry is that there's a lot less formality, you know, like bankers, a lot of that is like they like to wear their suits and go hang out with one another and stuff like that.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:41:10] It's almost like, Yeah, there's a lot more sales.

Greenspud: [00:41:12] Yeah, there's a lot of fitting in to the culture at the organization, but at if you're in software development, you could be a real complete weirdo. And if you can write really good code, though, don't respect you and they'll hire you weirdos.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:41:31] Welcome. Yeah, for sure.

Greenspud: [00:41:33] Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Different culture. Yeah. Very cool. I go to work in just just jeans and a T-shirt and some sneakers, and that's how everybody dresses.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:41:44] Do you feel

Greenspud: [00:41:44] Like it's fun for

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:41:46] People? Do you have any suggestions in terms of where people could start if they're thinking, you know, this finance thing isn't for me, or maybe they're traders and they're not having success either. Or maybe they're in banking and they want to have a different career changes their place. They should go to kind of get started.

Greenspud: [00:42:01] Well, I think one thing that when we say that I'm kind of lucky is that I have an aptitude for working in computers, just writing programming code is something that is kind of natural to me, and I really enjoy doing it. I don't know if everybody would enjoy doing it as much because there's it's kind of dry. I mean, really, I mean, when you're typing stuff out, some people just don't like doing that type of work. Yeah, the technical aspects of it. But if you do have the aptitude, I mean, like for me, I'm I'm self-taught and I've learned enough to go into an interview and be able to to talk my way through a technical problem. But if you don't have that background, one thing that might help is to do some coding schools. You know, some of them are expensive. Some are like formal boot camps that last like 13 weeks or something like that.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:43:09] And they help place you right? And they help place you.

Greenspud: [00:43:12] Yeah, those programs help place you to. Yeah. So that's a good way to start. Mm hmm. Another way to do it is to there's also online schools like you could learn front end development by just taking an online course. Yep. And I think the important thing is just building up a portfolio. Things Yep. You know, be able to show some technical projects that you did and be able to write good code. But yeah, it's it's very much, very, very much just sharpening your technical skills to be able to make it. But for somebody that's interested in that and doesn't know where to start, I probably recommend to boot camp.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:43:57] Cool. Well, Greenspun, anything else you want to share before we call the pod in terms of career or advice you'd give to your younger self? Looking back?

Greenspud: [00:44:09] Um, well, for me, working on working on Wall Street job was it was the adventure that was fun for me. It doesn't last forever. But that's okay. You know, it's fun work. And some people, they fit into it really well, and they do that for a career. But you know, if you get into it and you do it for a while and you find out it's not a good fit for you, then that's OK. And you had quite a fun time and quite an experience, and you hopefully learned a lot too.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:44:50] Oh yeah, that's great. Well, thank you so much for for joining us today, and thanks to you, my listeners at Wall Street Oasis. If you have any suggestions whatsoever, please don't hesitate to send them my way. Patrick at Wall Street Oasis. And till next time.