Recently I attended a typical sell side function where clients were invited and took a good look around. What a bunch of losers. I’m in a room full of people who outside of work ,I would never socialize with and everybody… and I mean everybody (my pathetic self included) was dressed exactly the same. Khaki pants, blue collared shirt and that god damned blue blazer. It looked like Blockbuster Video employee night only everyone was wearing Gucci loafers. What the story with those fucking shoes anyway..? Are they handing them out to every douche bag who passes the Series 7? Don’t these things cost like $500 a pair? No wonder we’ve got such a bad reputation.
It didn’t take long before the sucking up and the ass kissing began. I always love watching one sell sider introduce himself to another only to find out that they’re both the competition and not clients. Immediately they stop talking and then awkwardly scramble away sideways like crabs trying make their way back into the water.
Sales traders are the Remora fish of finance. The remora fish is that little piece of shit that latches onto massive sharks in the ocean. Their entire existance consists of living off the scraps of the big guy. If you can’t provide him with anythiing then he doesn’t even want to speak to you. Unfortunately, duty calls and I am forced to attend several of these Shallow Hal functions every year where I usually see the same faces. It’s like they’re on the circuit. I over heard one guy at the St. Jude’s charity event say to his douche bag country club buddy that it was safe to leave because “all the worth while accounts had left already” and he had “seen who he needed to see”. I’m sorry… I thought we were trying to raise money for sick children you fucking loser. I hope your driver falls asleep and your town car wraps around a fucking tree on I-95 while you make your sad selfish way home to Darien where your slut wife is taking load after load from her tennis instructor.
Anyway, back to the aforementioned function. The sucking up reached its peak when all of a sudden a large fund owner showed up. I still can believe this guy came to the event. I honestly truly believe that he somehow mixed up invitation details with somebody else’s party (at least that’s the way it seemed judging by the look on his face). A piece of chop meat had just been dropped into the Pirhana tank and it was as if Jesus Christ himself had showed up (with his “niece”). People started staring, whispering and pointing. Grown men starring in awe. It was sadly hysterical. Richard, his sales coverage was climbing over people, practically fell over one dude and basically drop-kicked a waitress just so he could be the first person to greet his lordship. He then proceeded to clear a path through the crowd in order to get him to a table. Then the head of sales (who happened to be taking to me) also spotted the whale. I realized he was done talking to insignificant me when he simply walked away (while I was in mid sentence of course) to make his way over and kiss the ring. He lingered for a solid 5-10 seconds before cartoonishly injecting himself with the obligatory arm on the shoulder handshake. It was clear the client had no fucking clue who this used car salesman was, but since perception is everything in this business, he had no choice but to sell it and make it look good.
After just 20 circus monkey minutes of blowing smoke, the big shark swam away. Then we had to hear from Richard how great it was for Mr. Big Fish to stop by and how tight they are. For the rest of the night, anyone who would listen was told how the big kahuna had stopped by. I’m still amazed by the amount of name dropping that goes on in this business. Allow me to clarify something for you: Contrary to popular Wall Street belief… “Hello” followed by empty small talk in no way implies best friends or signify a great relationship.
Later on, my buddy (another trader) and I were introduced to new client. I’m being generous if I say we spoke for all of three minutes. And sure as shit, the next morning I hear this sucking sound coming from the corner office and there he was telling the boss how he had met the account last night, what a good guy he was and how they had this great talk. No you douche, you didn’t have a great talk or move any mountains… I was right there with you and I’d bet your last breath that the account doesn’t even remember your name.
Looking forward to the next get together,
The Duke
