Ron Pollack, Dinner With a Friend of My Past in New York
I went to see a client in NYC lately. He was a potential institution client for the hedge fund I recently started. After the meeting I got together with an old friend, whom I’ll refer to as “Harry”, for dinner.
Harry is a “Sales Trader”, someone who executes order for institutional customers like hedge funds and mutual funds. He was very successful in the business, and used to cover me, and I was one of the accounts he had in “Ron Pollack Bulldog Days”. Though we did continue to keep in contact with each other, he and I retired from trading around the same period of time back in 2004.
Both Harry and I had varying, though generally little, success with business ventures after our time on Wall Street. After this, Harry began to miss the game and questioned me about returning to trading. I missed it as well. When I told him in early 2008 that I was going to return to managing money, he was thrilled and couldn’t wait to get back into it as well.
The start of my new funding was postponed due to the mess of a market in the second half of the year. its surprise for me that a always happy and hard working man,harry ,handle million share orders in volatile stocks looked like a depress person. Firms were closing down everywhere, and he was relying on my account for his own return but that was not there.
Shortlyl after I saw Harry, I met "Doug", a gentleman that runs a small firm catering to hedge funds. I immediately thought of Harry and I put the two of them together. It worked out since Doug offered Harry a trial run, and of course Harry aced it. After placing a few phone calls to some old accounts, he nabbed a big order and things only went up from there.
Harry has become one of the top producers for Doug and he has only been on the job for four months. It wasn't surprising that Harry was beaming when we met him for dinner. He’s making money, good money and having a blast. I was really happy. Then Harry announced that dinner would be his treat, in fact he said, “Ron Pollack I am going to treat you every time you come to NYC!I was already happy because we were eating at one of the great steakhouses in the City.
,“Every day we’ve been hearing stories of doom and gloom like the end of Wall Street, the end of hedge funds, the end of the world as we know it,toward the end of the evening, I asked Harry this question. Obviously things are messed up but I’d like your perspective on all of that changed in light of your recent success.Ron, there are a lot of people hurting right now and I truly feel for them, but I am living proof that if you’re good at what you do, have the willingness to work hard and apply yourself and are realistic in your expectations, you can make it and even flourish in times like these,His answer was refreshing and went something like this, he said. Although I'm not making as much as I used to, I cannot say I have anything to complain about. we’re survivors and there’s business to be done.
There will always be business to be done for those who find a way to be productive.here’s to you my friend!
Continue to show us how to achieve it. Ron Pollack, signing off for now.
