The Unemployed Life

Out on the Street: A Day in the Afterlife

Each week, “Joe the Trader” chronicles his experiences with life after Wall Street.

For eleven years, I was short on time—or at least I told myself that.  Now time is what I got.  Welcome to January 30th.

2 a.m.
Turn off Australian Open tennis and head to bed. Nikkei down 1.8%, Hang Sang down 1.5%.

5:15 a.m.
Sleeping. DAX down 1.6%. FTSE down 2.2%.

5:35 a.m.
Still sleeping. Two months ago, when I was still trading, I would already be on my Blackberry, checking how Asian markets had closed and the European markets were opening up. I would know that emerging market currencies are getting tagged again, that the Russian ruble is down 2.3% and the Hungarian forint is down 1.9%. I’d probably be worried about my South African rand positions, as usual, and would be on the phone with my counterpart in London.

6:45 a.m.
Go to the bathroom. Go back to bed. Brazilian markets open down.

9:15 a.m.
Get up. God, I can’t keep staying up to 2 a.m. watching the tennis.  Make myself coffee for me and turn to my lady. “Tea today Ma’am?”

9:33 a.m.
Flip on Bloomberg TV, mostly for the company. So much better than those yahoos on CNBC. Joe Kiernan and Dennis Kneale can suck it.  Joe, when did you put the bull market pompoms away? How’s your personal account, hot shot? Oh Dennis, the recession started in Q4 2007, remarkably well timed to when you first began your on-air bullish jibberish.  How do you still have a job? I’m not bitter.

10:08 a.m.
Scan the to-do list, which gets longer every day. I have to get food for the weekend with the kids—remember TP, Clorox Clean-Up, Emily likes Special K and Liam likes Raisin Bran. Pick up the laundry. Coffee at 2:00 with TJ and two of his unemployed finance friends.  5:30 drink with senior ex-colleague, Jack. I’ll get to kiss the ring and drink a couple of expensive cocktails on the bank. But, the most important task of the day is to follow up with Stevie, Tom and Sudeep.

When I first lost my job in December, I went into a flurry of activity and was able to get five interviews in a week. Those fund managers were the most promising due to the mix of relationship and opportunity, and I was thinking, “Man, the joke will be on the bank when I land a job and still get my severance.” Clearly things have cooled off.  They all needed “clarity” from their management. I know if they had any clarity they would have called, but I still have to stay in front of them.

10:28 a.m.
Pick up phone.

10:28:20 a.m.
Put down phone. Might as well shower first.

11:06 a.m.
“Thanks for checking in,” “Keep me posted.” “No clarity on our end.”

12:23 p.m.
Toilet seat fixed.

2:00 p.m.
The first He-Man’s Unemployment Club meeting commences. Present are TJ, Roberto and Hal. Topics for discussion: What will the financial landscape look like in a year? And is anyone hiring? We try to stick to an agenda, but slip into gossiping about which hedge fund blew up, who just lost a job—plus complaining about our new taskmasters, our wives and girlfriends.

TJ, a former colleague, has been out of work for a year and a half, yet always manages to have a positive disposition and be excited about some new possibility. It probably helps that he was able to sell his house before the market crashed and had done very well by the European invasion into Tribeca. He spends two hours a day in a Starbucks logged into every possible financial website, trading for his personal account. While mothers meet for coffee and gossip before picking up their children from kindergarten, he executes an average of 30 trades, more than I would in a whole day when I was employed as a professional trader.  Somehow he’s able to filter out all of the stories about Sadie’s birthday party and how Sammy and Brett are constantly at each other, and concentrate on how many contracts of oil traded at 43.25.  After two hours he logs off and takes his daughter to dance class.

3:18 p.m.
Go to Equinox on 45th and Lexington. When it first opened, it was conveniently located near Barclays, Bear Stearns, JP Morgan and the Park Avenue hedge funds. Bear is gone, and I wonder how much longer the others will be around. There sure are a lot more guys here in the mid-afternoon than I would have expected. Are they all out of work too? Or do they just have nothing to do at work? I guess one positive benefit of the recession is that a lot more Wall Street guys will be able to run an eight minute mile.

5:20 p.m.
Put on my best face for the drink with Jack. Not as hard as I expected—I’m feeling pretty good after the workout and steam.

5:45 p.m.
Jack looks like hell. He was always overweight, but he’s larger than ever, tired and completely distracted. According to him, morale in the office is worse than when I left. Any fun that used to be had, like Friday morning pizza for the trading floor to assuage hangovers, is gone. Worse, senior management is ratcheting up the pressure to make money without taking any risk— that’s easy, just ask Madoff for his secret.  When I worked we had to provide daily estimates of our profit or loss. Now Jack has to provide estimates three times a day.  “All this crap for what?” he asks, “No one is going to get paid the money that they used to.” In fact, until my severance runs out, the only difference between him and me is that he has to go to work—there will be no more bonuses. Another round of layoffs is planned and this time he can’t protect any of his guys. Is he implying that I hadn’t been one of his guys?  It doesn’t matter.  I just realized that my day was a whole lot better than his.

Out on the Street: Time Value of Me

Tags: Out on the Street, The Working World, Wall Street