David Greenberg on Decision-making in Volatile Markets

Informing your decisions with intelligence analysis and insight brought to you by the team@ooda loop.com hi, I'm Matt Devoe and welcome to the Oodacast and today I am happy to be talking with David Greenberg who David and I first met as board of directors on Transparency LLC and found his insights on decision making and kind of his experience to be very unique and thought it would be of interest to all of our watchers. So David, thanks for joining and by all means please kind of give us your background and your kind of how your career developed over the past several decades.

No, thank you and an honor to be on the show. So thank you. So I have a very interesting way of looking at the world for a couple of different reasons that we can discuss. But you know, the main reason was, you know, I was trained and brought up on the trading floors first in Chicago and then of New York. And for those of you that don't know about what the trading floors are because a lot of you guys are in the girls of the younger generation. Imagine a 25,000 square foot trading floor with 40 foot ceilings. It wasn't like the stock market, it was pits, these round circular places where you stood and it goes smaller, smaller, smaller. In my pit I was in the crude pit. So there was 200 people in the crude pit and we were trading the world's energy as far as crude oil. And it was literally a moment by moment decision making process. But I was lucky enough to start out as a clerk in Chicago. I had some great training there with some great advice and we can talk about that later on in the show. Then moved over to New York. And what you'll learn about trading is that I have a saying, life's a trade. Everything you do in life is the risk, reward, trade. And if you look at life as trading, you're going to be able to handle the disappointments better, you're going to be able to handle the adversity that you come in better and you're also going to be able to handle the wins better. And we were, we were lucky enough that I was one of 17 traders that were brought down to Quantico to be drilled by the, by the generals, top generals. That how we could think so fast, how we can make so many decisions when so much money was on the line. And I, you know, they knew I was the type of trader that traded my own money. So it's not like with some people, they say, well you had a bad day but I still got my commissions. If I had a Bad day. It was a really bad day. With the amount of news that was coming in and with the amount of input of 200 people screaming into the pit and we had to decipher all that input. It really gave me a very unique quick way of thinking and also handling the thoughts if I was wrong and when I was wrong. That's just a brief background about it. I was also on the board of the exchange. We grew it from 800 million and then took it public for. It started 800 million when I brought Bain Capital and to value it. Then we ended up with General Annex seven years later and we took it public for 7.5 billion. One of the largest IPOs at the time. Grew it exponentially. The two Gulf Wars, Katrina with all these other things. So I look forward to talking about this stuff and however I can be a help to you and your viewers, let me know.

Excellent. So can you give us a little bit more background when you were brought down to Quantico, what did you tell those DOD folks about your decision making process and kind of how you were processing the information that was kind of flooding you? Right, because it seems like it's almost a signal overload, yet you were able to.

Yeah, no, it was, it was, it was amazing. Also the funny thing was, is that we made the mistake. I guess it was a mistake. It was, it was a lot of fun. They say looks and we'll put you up in a hotel. Like no, we don't want to be in a hotel. We want to be. We want to see what it's like. So they fly us down on C130. Everyone's getting sick in the back of the plane because they didn't turn the air up all the much. You know, the way we land, we get into the barracks, there's uniforms for everybody, you know, and then that next morning we're all sleeping, you know, we had a nice cozy dinner at the colonel's house. And we get up the next morning at 4:30 in the morning with some big guy taking a trash can, throwing it against the wall, ripping us to shit, you know, and just absolutely, you know, it was like being. It was being there. And they put through us all the drills and all the weapons training and everything. And then we had a long talk and we sat down with them because they wanted to see how we reacted to something so new and unexpected. And they were a little bit surprised on how fast that we adapted to the situation. And part of it we were saying, and it was interesting they were talking about that the pressure of trading our own money and knowing that our family's future depended on it in some ways was almost harder than their pressure. And I looked at them and go, no, you are at war. This is a whole different thing. However, I enjoyed the respect that they gave us about the decision making process. And we really went over quickly because they wanted to know that if the chain of command was broken and there was no communication, how they could get their soldiers to think as independently and quickly as we do. And it really comes from the one thought about if you are wrong in your decision, it's not a big deal, you can fix it. If you're wrong and you sit on your button, sit there, oh my God, it was wrong, and beat yourself up, that's a problem. But if you can wrong pivot, make the next move. And that's what we did in trading, because there were days that 50, 60, 70% of our trades were losing trades. So we were not in the ability to sit there and if we got a bad trade and then just sat on our button, be pissed off about that trade. That trade was literally over the second the trade is over. And that's why we talk about things bad trade done. And it's funny because I trained athletes to do this. Even my son as a young lacrosse player when he was like 7 or 8, and kids would miss the ball, when they scoop it up, they get pissed and they go. He would just roll a shoulder, go back and get the ball. He was one of the highest scorers in the game because he didn't think about a shot after it was made, if it was in or out. And the key about decision making, the key that we were trying to get in the crust of the generals, is that when you make a decision, first of all, you're never going to bet a thousand. And people get too hung up on being right on everything, as long as it's quickly thought out, well thought out. But more importantly, that if the trade or the decision goes bad, that you can be the type of thinker that can adjust. You'll make every decision and you'll make it like that because you're not afraid of the outcome. And another way that I describe it to the high school kids is like if you're in your kitchen and the carton of milk falls and your parents are out, and the milk goes onto the counter, down the counter, onto the floor, but you clean it up by the time your parents come home, that's one way of handling the situation. Or the minute the carton falls you take your hand with your sweatshirt or your shirt and you stop it immediately from ever getting to the floor. You sacrifice your shirt. That's a quick decision that was made that now stopped the exponential flow of the milk down to the floor. So, okay, so you might have ruined the shirt, but you stopped the problem. So this is the way that we thought. We thought very quickly and independently. But the information that you talk about, think about 200 people in the pit screaming and yelling. You got all this information flow. You have to take it in. You have to decipher who's real, who's not, who's bluffing. And there are little tells, and everybody has a tell on everything. So there was a guy behind me when he had a 500 lot order, and he was this guy, Tommy O'. Connor. He'd be screaming and yelling if he had a real 500 lot lawyer. He was holding onto my shoulder, literally pushing me down, and I'm holding him up. I had two shoulders surgeries from this when he was offering 500 lots and didn't touch me. I knew he didn't have an order or with his other broker, one of the Goldman brokers would turn around, breathe in. Well, I knew that to have a big seller, you had to take a big breath. So whenever he would breathe in and go, just come around, I knew he had a big sell order. So I just hit everything in front of him at 60 or 50 or 40 or 30. I look at him, 20 bid and sold. So if people get used to the fact that they can be patient, get to know people and read people. And I always say, don't read people in a bad way. Read people because you want to know what really what they're thinking. Because the face says everything. Right. Their body actions really say everything. So if you put all these together, these were the way that we made decisions and we made them quickly, efficiently, not always right. And it was no big deal.

So there's a couple of themes there. It seems like fail fast is definitely a component of it. Right. You don't get stuck lingering in your.

Own decisions, but getting stuck, lingering is a waste of your time.

Yeah. Which requires some emotional detachment. Right. I mean, you.

Oh, yeah.

You're willing to be wrong, I think. Right. You have kind of the fortitude to be wrong. Recognizing that that's a key part of the business. Instead of saying, well, I was wrong, but maybe I'm right. I'm going to hold onto this trade or I'm not going to sell at the loss early. It seems like Those are the kind of the mindset issues that really impact people in that they move away from the trade itself and they start to get focused on the emotional component.

It.

Is that a fair characterization?

Oh, oh, sure. And we talked about that with the. With the generals. And then later on, we proved it. I proved it, sadly, because my mother was dying of cancer. And when I walked into that ring every day, my emotions literally were left at the door. Okay? And this is why we. This is why I was. As a strategic advisor. We handle stuff so easily because. Or like 9 11, think about it. I'm a 911 survivor. So, you know, the exchange was right across the street. The building came down. We had a closed exchange. As a board member. We were back there the next day. Vinnie Viola, who's a good friend of mine, was a chairman at the time, ran it like a military operation because he's an ex West Point. We got the exchange up as the first run in exchange and the only building in ground zero that was open for those three months because the stock exchange was outside the zone. We had to go in and trade that basically that next Tuesday or that next Monday. And we knew that we had. I had 24 customers that were gone and that, you know, that they were looking for and everything. And we, you know, we got hit, you know, not as bad as some companies, but we got hit pretty hard. And we had to go in there and stabilize the words oil and gold because at that time, there was no electronic trading during the day. So what do you do? You go in there, you literally check your emotions, you put them at the door. And that's why, you know, people always say that I'm everybody's 3am phone call because one, they know I don't sleep, two, they know I'll show up, three, I'll be able to make decisions. And it's simply because that we were trained that when the crap hits the fan, okay? I mean, we are best when the crap hits the fan in business and life and whatever. Because that's where we think clearly up here. You know, when. When we're in a normal state, we're kind of in a daze, okay? Because, you know, when I stopped trading, I went through a terrible depression when the floor closed and I went to somebody and they. And they finally figured out, they go, you're going through withdrawal. Like, what do you mean, I don't do drugs? She goes, no, you were doing drugs. I'm not doing drugs. They said the endorphin levels and the dopamine levels and the serotonin levels and the adrenaline levels. Every time you screamed and yelled all day, it was like winning the super bowl every day. And then all of a sudden, that stopped. So your body wasn't calling for those levels. So now when we get into a tough situation, those levels spurt right back up. We are as focused as any supercomputer you've ever seen. And that was a big part of it, knowing that we can make those decisions and knowing that we look forward for the chaos. And if you can understand that, there's chaos in business, there's chaos in life. But as I always say in my lectures, in chaos there's opportunity. And I'll give you a perfect example. Football's controlled chaos. When I brought one of the jets down to the trading floor, he goes, how do you know where all these people screaming? How do you take it in? How do you decipher all that information? I'm like, well, listen, when I watch a football game, I see the quarterback pull back, I see him pass and I see the guy catch it or not, or I see the quarterback give the handle, I go, you see the defensive line splitting the hole. You see all the different plays, you see all the different movements. Your eye is trained for that. So once you get trained for the. And by the way, the controlled chaos is when the quarterback controls the chaos, pulls back and passes to the receiver. So what we did was we were our own quarterbacks, we were on CEOs, and we could control the chaos, step back, see it for what it was, and then see where the opportunity lies.

Fascinating. Do you think, what is your perspective on regret? Because it's one thing I've noticed in talking with people that do rapid decision making and are in environments where they have to iterate, that if you ask them professionally, for certain, even sometimes personally, if they have any regrets, they're like, no, I don't have any regrets. The decisions are what they are. Everything is a lesson learned. So do you think that that applies to your field as well?

Yeah, I've never regretted a trade that I've done. I've never regretted a business deal. I mean, there's one that I got taken on which I regret because I trusted somebody a little bit too much, there are always going to be some regrets. But if you realize that, as I said, nobody bets a thousand. And as long as your decision, and this goes, anything in life, with your children, with your business, with your friends, as long as there were good intentions and it was. You didn't go in saying, I know I'm going to. This deal sucks, but I'm going to go do it anyway. Right? There's no reason for regret. I mean, but we'll always have regrets in life. And people that don't have regrets in life are people that are really, truly emotionless. So you try to still keep that humanism part of it and that empathy part of it, but in business, there's no room for that. Right? Because as long I always say after 9, 11, if it's not fatal, we can figure this thing out. And that's the key. I mean, God forbid you hurt somebody or something happens, you don't ever want to do that. But decisions are decisions, and at the time that the decisions are made, we all think that we're making it on the best known information with the best possible outcome and for the best reasons. And you know what? Sometimes it just doesn't work out that way.

Well, I like the analogy with sports as well. My son is a ice hockey goaltender, right? Which is a very tough psychological position. And in handling the emotions, I had him read an essay written by a Stanley cup winning goaltender who said when a goal is scored on him, he has a routine where he sprays his water bottle in the air. He picks one drop and he follows that drop all the way to the ice. And then he lets the goal go. Like when the drop hits the ice. That's it. And all that matters is the next save, right? It is the next decision that you make. And you learned something from that, obviously. But you're not having this kind of compounding regret or the emotional burden of kind of carrying it forward with you. You're using it in order to make better decisions about the future, not as something that you dwell on and carry forward with you.

So y. And it happens. Interesting. I'll give a perfect example. Happened to me. I'm not a good golfer, but I was in the SEA Championship at my club that I used to belong, and I was down. I was down. The guy only had to win one hole of the 18 on the next day. And I'd played with him before. He was an actuary for Morgan Stanley. He had his whole family come out and watch. I told my family, don't even come. So I knew the pressure he was going to put on himself. So my caddy goes to me, goes, well, let's just get this over with. And I look at him, I go, this isn't over until the bell rings. You know, to the last bell rings. And I took every shot, shot by shot by shot. And I ended up winning it on the 18th hole. Okay, on the crazy putt, my cat is like, up here. Goes. Go to my feet. Goes to my feet, goes in. He had a two and a half foot putt to push it to another hole. Blew it right past the hole. Everybody just like, you know, like everybody was there for the A teams coming behind us. So, you know, for a moment I had my glory, but it really showed me because I was telling the caddy that every shot I have a trading tip. You know, treat your trades like a golf shot. When that golf shot's over, to think about that you screwed up the golf shot. What is the point? How is that going to help you on your next golf shot? And that's how it was with trading. That's how it is in my decision making. You know, listen, there's always some decisions in life that will haunt you. That happens, happens to everybody. Not going to say I'm perfect on that, but the majority of them, it's done, the trade's over, move on.

So you're, you know, of kind of the original generation with regards to the trading floor, but also kind of was there to kind of herald the transition to new technology. Can you describe for us kind of how that, how that transition happened and then what is different about the trading environment today where you don't have the pit and you don't have the folks screaming at each other? You know, how are people making decisions in today's context?

It's so much more than that. I have a whole lecture on the transition from open outcry trading to electronic trading. How it happened, why it happened, the player, the politics, and the effects on the world energy markets. So I'm going to shorten that hour and a half into two minutes. Basically, you're looking at the only board member in the world that voted against electronic trading. I knew that was going to go through. I wasn't worried about it. But they were telling the floor that it was going to be good for the floor. There was arbitrage, and I was one of four board members that actually traded on the floor. I wasn't going to go down there and lie to everybody. I said, no, it's going to put you out of business. And what I was really worried about was the compliance end of it, but more importantly about the order flow. Because when crude oil was traded, when I was there, you had the 200 traders in the pit. You had a couple of main oil companies, you had a few hedge funds that were oil hedge funds, but it was more of a supply and demand market. Now crude oil is more of a financial instrument. What happened when once you allowed everybody to tap in. Because when you traded crude back in the day, if you want to trade it, you had to call down to the broker, you clerk, the clerk had to go to the broker, the broker goes, there's a whole series of things that have to be done and you have to have an account. You didn't just call each trade up and push a button, right? So what happens now is, and you see it every day, look at the market today, okay, look at the market last week. You get the tsunami of order flow in one direction more than ever. So you now have the whole world trading crude, I mean crude move, $7 in one day, in the front month. Nobody stopped driving this week. You know, we're started driving this week. That's going to affect the world's price for the front month. That's going to be deliverable in two weeks. So, you know, now you're seeing these huge swings. There's a video that I have still from when I was on CNBC and I did that a lot. It was 11 years ago when I said, you think a 400 point move is fast now wait till you see it in a few years from now when the computer is going to get faster, the algorithm's going to get faster and this is nothing. And what's happening now is that the normal trader like myself and so many people that are watching this podcast, it's very hard to compete with that one. The Algos know the psychological background of the people that are in the market. They know where the pain points are, they know where the pressure is, they know where the margin calls are going to be and they can sweep everything. The other thing too is that when the market was open, let's say it was at 40, at 30, well, there was some idiot like me that I'm like, I think this is a value 30 bid, not like sold. And then somebody behind me was like, I'm a quarter bit sold and it's 20 bid. And everybody's like 20 bid, 20 bid, 20 bid. And they might go through them. But there were these levels in the market where you had all these differences of opinions. Well now with the electronic trading, you don't have the difference of opinions. All the Algos are run the same way. Do you ever notice the market just goes from here to here. But what we did early on, there was a study, there's a tremendous amount of volume when the move started, tremendous amount of volume on the bottom end of the move. But there's really no volume in the middle because you have these algos that pull out on momentum and all these other things. And the problem with electronic trading today is that the market is so volatile. It's become more of a casino than a true supply and demand. True. I mean some of these stocks that these companies are doing great are getting crushed simply because it's the mob mentality and you have all this order flow coming through. So listen, it was going to happen. It was great for the IPOs for every company. For us, ICE, New York Stock Exchange. I mean the IPO was, our first price was supposed to be $59. We came out at 135 due to the fact that they knew all this order flow was going to be coming in. Was it really good for the markets in the long run? Was it really good for the markets in the long run? I don't think so. Yeah, we had this 5,000 point up move since the past few years. We just lost that in three weeks.

Yeah. I was going to ask, do you think that the volatility decreases the overall economic health of the markets? Because it is, it is hard, you know, the, the volatility even for me, who I don't, you know, spend my day to day, focus on the markets. The, the volatility seems almost extreme. Have swings of 70% in some of these stocks or even greater.

And listen, for the guys like me that were in and out trading all day, there are days I literally know where crude oil closed. I don't know if it was up, down, it didn't matter. I traded within the day. Right. But there's no human being in the world besides the professional funds which are not trading their own money. Okay? So when a fund says, well, we're down 20%, that's okay, it sucks, it's going to hurt them. But when you're down 20%, it hurts a lot more. So what's happening now is that, and people in this last move who had a generation and a half that could buy every dip. And I'd be going into these lectures, you can't buy every dip. You know, one of these days is going to go through you. It's going to get ugly. You know, and I, there's a difference that I teach in the trading shrink thing that we, that we mentioned is that there's a difference between adding to a position because you think there's value there and that you would have added or well, the market's down. I got, I got A dollar cost average. To me, dollar cost averaging, you know, can be just adding to a bad position. So what happened on this move is that even though the stock market's down like 12, 13, 14, 20%, whatever it is, the general population that we're adding to the positions over the last five years, right. Are now way down more than the 15 or 20% because they added, they added, they added. And then when the market coming off, they bought on the dip, they bought on the dip, and they bought on dip. And then it completely reversed and went through them. So you see this puke out and these people are like, oh, I would have held it. Yeah, everybody's a big shot until they see their account go from here to here to here to here and they got to pay their bills. So, yeah, I think the extreme volatility has not been healthy for the market. Back when I was a kid, if the market made 8% for a year, you were great. You doubled your money every seven years. It was like clockwork. There was something to it. I think it was Warren Buffett or somebody said last week that it's basically turned it into a casino to the point where somebody texted me this guy that put on Twitter, well, if you're having a problem with that slot machine, you can move to that. And they're like, oh, this is great advice. I'm like, no, when you start looking at his trading as slot machines, you should be doing something else.

It seems to me that maybe there's a decreasing role for human traders just based on the fact that you have the algorithms, you have the machine learning. And I think about just some of the stuff that was influential for me 30 years ago with regards to the books I read about collective human behavior. And now that can be put into an algorithm in microseconds. And it seems like the successful traders of this next generation, right? If you exclude the thematic. You know, there's the, the folks that are doing the macro or growth or you know, have a long term theme. They are intraday only and they are functioning like a machine. I mean, they are basically very.

That's what I did. We were basically the first out, you know, high frequency traders as we were in and out all day, right? We were making the markets. But I know a guy that was a position trader, one of the largest position local traders I've ever seen. I mean, he had million dollar swings. And I called him up last week, I'm like, how you doing? He goes, I'm not trading this market. He's like, you can't get out when you're wrong. When you're wrong, you are just wrong. And that's a problem. So, yes, the people that. What I talk about in my lectures and the people that I coach is if you're going to trade it, trade it. Like I used to, trade it, trade what's in there during the day. If there's nothing in there, don't trade it. Try to chip it out. But the days of really, this. This down move is going to wipe out a lot of the Reddit guys and a lot of the other people that thought it was so easy last year because everybody that went into the market after the big down move thought that they were heroes because the market went literally straight up and every dip you could buy. This was a reckoning on a lot of people that didn't understand. No, the market doesn't have to go straight up.

Do you have a take on the blockchain cryptocurrency environment? I know there's a lot of chaos there as well. Is that.

Yeah, I mean, moving forward, I think they're looking at the wrong thing, to be honest with you. I made a lot of money in bitcoin early on, sure, but trade's over. But I think there's a couple of. First of all, blockchain is awesome as far as the security and all that. Great. Is going to be great. NFTs. I think the real value is in titles for houses and cars and all that stuff, and that's going to be a new market. However, I think the NFT market for the art world is also going to stay, but it'll be. It'll be tweaked. Everything is early adoption.

Right.

Cryptocurrency. I think there was a major failure in the cryptocurrencies with bitcoin for a couple of reasons. This Russia war should have shot that thing up to 75,000. And when everybody's saying, I'm buying it for inflation, I'm like, don't buy it for inflation. It has nothing to do with that. So you have people that bought it at 60 that are now down big money. And this whole thing with online, we got diamond hands. We're going to fight this. Don't. Nobody's bigger than the market. And I also think there's a fallacy that wasn't a fallacy at the start of the bitcoin days, when it was like, technically in 2040, I've got some very big people that are very high in the crypto world, and they're like, listen, by 20, 40, they can't mine any more bitcoin. So it's got to go up to a million bucks. Blah blah, blah, blah, right? We've been hearing that forever. Well, that was true when there was only 21 or 23 million bitcoins out in the beginning. But now you have derivatives, you have ETFs, you have Bitcoin trading against tether, against the dollar, against the yen, against this other stuff. So now there is selling in bitcoin. There will be natural sell offs and there will be natural flush outs like what you're seeing. And also the problem is when somebody's a one way market and goes up because everybody's buying. I call it my light switch theory. Well, guess what happens when the light switch goes there. I call it my bucket theory. You take a bucket, you pull it up, pull it up on a pulley, it's like this, that's an up market, right? When you let go of the pulley, what happens? I love being short. I make more money being short because it's a lot more fun and a lot faster. But most people don't understand the short side of a market. So I think bitcoin had a major failure on the price level. However, people are focusing on the wrong thing. They shouldn't be focusing on the price of bitcoin, they should be focusing on adaptation of bitcoin, Bitcoin. Because the bottom line is where I see the value. I went to London 20 something times a year for the exchange and I would go to that booth and I'd have to change my money and I get ripped off on the way in and on the way out. If I can go to London and pay in bitcoin, it's the same bitcoin that I have in my wallet here and have the same value. Well, that's really where the value to me is as a currency, not as a gambling thing. It's saying that you're going to. Nobody's buying the US dollar or the yen, saying hey, we're buying US dollars because we think it's going to explode. Yes, the professionals are, but the average person, you never hear that in the pizza place. But you do hear I'm buying bitcoin because I think it's going to. Well, it's just another currency, it should be used as a currency. So it's going to be interesting to see where that unfolds. Because when a market doesn't do what it's supposed to, it's going to do the opposite. And it should have skyrocketed with all the crap that's going on, this thing should have been up to a hundred thousand at least.

So it's counterintuitive, the fact that we're sitting at 30k for, you know, a while.

Yeah, it had, it had every reason to rally. And guess what happened? Every time it rallied, it rallied off of just new people coming in and buying or people adding their position. And then when those people stopped, what happened? You know, markets can go down from lack of buying. It doesn't have to be huge selling.

Yeah, it seems to be heavily correlated with the market as well, which means that it's primarily being used as a speculative instrument, you know, as you talk. Right, right.

So listen, you know, you can go to. I'm going to Hard Rock on Saturday. It'd be just as easy.

So I did want to talk about, you know, with an interesting mashup, you and I sit on a board of directors together. And, you know, I study, I like to study decision making. I've looked at, you know, the military decision making and business leaders and artists, et cetera, and traders is one aspect of that. I'm very interested in trader mindset, which is why I wanted to have you on the show. And there's a next generation of traders that I've been following, you know, that seem to be adopting or adapting for the current trading environment that trade like Mike, et cetera. And you are now working to try and bring your mindset to that next generation. Can you talk to us a little bit about what you're doing with the trading shrink and the type, the type of things that you're talking about with that next generation of traders?

Yeah, sure. So trade like Mike. He's amazing, okay. He's like the new form of trading, you know, tattooed, hanging out. He's got this thing called the trade club that it's just like, I wish I was younger. I mean, that's like the new trading floor. It's like the cool. I mean, the trading floor was literally the coolest place to hang out. So he's got these, he's making these units and also he does the online stuff. And what I love about Mike is that he looks at it from the younger perspective. He's quick. He knows that he's going to have good trades and bad trades, but he's bringing that younger feeling, which is really good. And what he did, what he brought me in as the trading trend kind of. He calls me the Wendy Rhodes. You know, I'm not as good looking, I'm not as Cute. But the theory is the same. And the reason why a lot of people at the exchange used to call me the trading shrink, because I used to risk manage a lot of people. I was clearing house, I was present at clearinghouse risk management. And I would talk to people like, listen, it's time to take time off. It's time to expand your positions. It's time to do this because you can read them, right, because you can see patterns. This is all about people's patterns. So what the trading shrink really is, it's talking about the mindset of getting these younger traders out of the Reddit theory, out of the Instagram theory, out of the everybody is a winner, everybody's doing great, and I teach them how to handle it when they get their ass kicked, how not to trade in pain, how to let you go at the door, how to test markets, and all this other stuff. But I bring in the mindset of being okay. Basically, everything we taught to the generals, everything that we learned, the amount of people that started on the trading floor and finished that was successful, that made it through, were like this, this big. If you really think about it, how many lawyers out there, how many doctors are out there? Millions. If you take all the trading floors in the United States, there was maybe 3,000 of us at any given time between Chicago and New York that people that were actually on the floor trading with their seats. So the trading shrink is really about the mindset of trading and also my personal coaching, which is that life's a trade and that you can bring the trading mindset into your life. You're not going to get pissed off as much, you're not going to get all freaked out as much, and you're going to enjoy your life much better.

Excellent. So I have a history on this podcast of telling people that something should become a book and it becomes a book. So I'm going to say now, I think the world would benefit from you putting some of that life as a trade into written form at some point.

A lot of people have said that, and I did write a book, and it's awful. I didn't put it out. What happened was I was writing a book on my journey from a runner in Chicago making $3.75 an hour to turning down the vice chairmanship of the world's largest exchange. And then I got this idea. I had all the top people, all the top brass, they all interviewed for the book, Vinnie Viola, everybody. And then I realized it was just a mishmash of stuff. So we're trying to clean that up. But I think the life's a trade book and use it as trading and also a self help book in life because I've been through a lot of stuff and I went blind in my right eye over a bad accident. I'm a 911 survivor with a lot of 911 pain. People say to me, how do you do what you do? How do you always have this attitude? How do you do it? And I'm like life's trade, you know, and as long as we're still alive, it's all good. So thank you. I will work on that. You know of a good ghostwriter, let me know.

Yeah, yeah, I might know a couple. Excellent. So I know that we're up against a time crunch so I appreciate you taking the time to chat with us. Definitely very valuable. I love the insight from a completely different industry. You know, most of our folks are CEOs and technology companies are focused on national security issues. I love bringing this perspective. I always do like to close out though. Is there a book that you've read recently that you would recommend and we'll include a link?

Yeah, actually. Yeah, actually Raven Rock is by Garnet Graff. Raven Rock, you're going to love it. It's about the. Basically the title is how the Government Was Set to Save Itself. It goes back to I think Johnson and Kennedy and Raven Rock is I think it's the underground facility in, in North Carolina. And it talks about how that was made and why that was made and where Congress was going to go. And it talks about all the back end stuff that we just never knew about on the secret of stuff for the government and how it would work in case of a nuclear explosion or natural disaster. And it was really, it was just a fun read and it was really cool.

Excellent. Yeah, I think he actually wrote the oral history of 911 and if you encountered that one I miss a little two part.

No, no. I did a lot of lecturing on 911 and my experience, I mean I was lucky. I had actually I made a trader's club that we had breakfast. You paid $800 to Windows of the world. You had free breakfast every day. You got to all the sake tastings, you got the seats at the bar, you got reservations. And I parked my car in 2 World Trade center that day, walked up to go to breakfast like I did every day. Great way to start the day. You're sitting there having your bagels and locks, looking at the Brooklyn Bridge, reading the Wall Street Journal before you go in and get spit on all day. So I went to the elevator and there was an issue with the express elevator. It wasn't there. I don't remember. And they said, listen, you got to take the local. I'm like taking a Local 56 crossover. It's a whole pain in the ass. So I leave the building and I cross the street and I sit in my chair. First plane hits. I lost everybody from breakfast that day. And that was really, you know, a change in my life. Because you have survivors guilt. You have. What would have happened if I didn't. You want to talk about regret? What would have happened if I didn't make that Breakfast Club? And people like you can't look at it that way. You know, it still haunts me a little bit.

Right, sure.

But those are the things in life that you have to get past and that you work on and what you can learn from. It's what I take out of 911 is why I live my life the way that I do for all the people that weren't able to get out of 9 11. Because it's a shame since people like me were able to get through it. If I don't take everything out of life that's enjoyable and the things that aren't and I got to turn them around to make them enjoyable, then it's a disservice to those people that lost their lives that day.

Thanks. Thank you for that, that perspective. I'm happy you're here. I'm happy that you took the time to share your insights with us and I of course look forward to greatly our next in person meeting and conversation as well. I need to make a trip down to Florida.

You're always welcome. We'll go see Mike and we'll do a little trade and shrink on you and those people that want to go to tradeandshrink.com Yes, a plug. You'll feel free.

Plugs are definitely allowed. We're trying to build the ecosystem. So thanks so much.

Thank you and good to see you again and I look forward to our next meeting.

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