A short YouTube monologue (uploaded July 22, 2024) in which the speaker—reflecting on managing Merrill Lynch's Global Foreign Exchange and derivative businesses—recounts floor anecdotes (traders throwing phones during stress) to emphasize that maintaining calm under pressure enables better decision-making and reassures others.
I managed Merrill Lynch's Global Foreign Exchange and derivative businesses and things. In those days it was all very noisy and people would have real phones. Like, these days it's all electronic and you hardly do that. But you get what's called phone throwers, right? So traders who are having a bad day and it's all going to custard, honestly, I swear to God, it's a dangerous environment. They'd literally pick up their phone and hoof it across the dealing room. And like a couple times I had them firing past my head and all this stuff. And I used to sack all the phone throwers. And the reason wasn't because they weren't necessarily good traders, but they were good when it was all fine. But as soon as things wrong, they would just lose their marbles. And the problem is you can't make good decisions when you're doing that. So the most important thing is if you're calm, other people will think that it's all good.
