American Consequences - May 2018

situation was to try and fake it, so I said: “I don’t know, but if you give me five minutes I can find out.” I got up and left the interview and started parading around their trading desk. The first three people I asked didn’t know. And then I finally found someone who knew the answer to my interview question. Within five minutes, I was back in the glassed-in conference room with the correct answer. I was offered the job. Knowing the answer isn’t as important as knowing how to get the answer. In spring 1999, I started working at a now- infamous hedge fund, the Galleon Group. Showing up for work every day felt like living in the second act of a slasher flick – nobody was safe . “Each day expect to be fired,” my boss said. “If you’re not, then you’ve had a good day.” I was terrified of getting fired, and it seemed like I was making mistakes daily. I once lost my chair privileges when I didn’t answer the phones fast enough. I had to stand in the corner for five minutes as punishment when I booked a trade wrong. But the biggest sin I committed was incorrectly ordering my boss’s breakfast. “I told you I wanted my bagel toasted,” my boss said. “Does this look toasted, you dumbass?” It definitely wasn’t toasted. But I never made the same mistake twice. After all, if I couldn’t correctly place a breakfast order, how were they going to trust me with million-dollar trading orders? So I learned everything matters. Every

job is like an audition for the next. On Wall Street, you’re continually trying to get that next job or the next promotion. And the best way to do that is to excel at your current job. I used that mindset when I was hired as a technical advisor on the pilot of the Showtime series Billions . I didn’t treat it like a job... It was an audition for Season One. At the Galleon Group, I noticed the most successful traders around me focused on the basics. They were in early, stayed late, and continually asked questions. I followed their lead. And because of the high-pressure stakes at Galleon, it changed my work ethic, assertiveness, and resilience for all my endeavors – far beyond finance. There are always going to be smarter, faster, stronger, and better-looking people than you. But if you choose – nobody can out-hustle you. Eventually I was ordering everyone’s breakfast without mishap. And I started giving out buy and sell orders. Early on I was taught that with trading, one of the best things I could learn how to do is limit a loss. Identify when you are wrong and change the course. It’s similar to professional sports, where sometimes it’s the things that don’t show up on the stat sheet that win the game for you. One day I called up a sales trader of mine and gave him a million shares of Amgen (AMGN) to buy. He paused, and then whispered through the phone: “Go away. My biotech trader is out today and the guy backing him up sucks !” At first, I was shocked. The guy just turned down $50,000 in commissions. But instantly

46 May 2018

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