Most professions use terminology, phrases and technical terms specific to their industry, terms that to an outsider appear completely foreign. Lawyer spiel, for example, is the most notable. Doctors get to yell out, “Nurse get in here Stat!” and say things like “Well Mrs. Robinson… It looks like bacterial vaginosis” And when your psychiatrist diagnosis your social stigma’s as a Bi-polar One disorder, chances are you will need to go home and Google it like I did.
Since traders as a whole aren’t that bright, the words we have chosen to represent our actions are much simpler. We have tweaked the meanings of 1st grade level words to suit our needs. I’m not talking about technical phrases like buy, sell and go fuck yourself. Those are self explanatory and not the ones which need addressing.
Since “understood” is probably one of the most annoyingly over used terms in the industry (especially by the tool that sits next to me). This will be the first word I tackle in an ongoing evaluation of high finance’s monkey-see monkey-do talentless world of equity trading.
In the traditional world, understood means “I understand”. In our world it’s embarrassingly more complex.
When a customer calls and gives you an order, one of two things happen. In the first case scenario the customer mutters some jibber-jabber intended to resemble instructions (the problem with a client who has no feel for the market, no opinion on the stock or any idea what they’re doing, it’s difficult for them to communicate clear instructions to a sales trader). The other scenario often involves a client who truly believes himself to be smarter than any and all other human beings (living and dead). This guy is dangerous. He’ll give you fourteen different sets of contradictory instructions and still expect you to beat the VWAP. Anyway you look at it, you have no clear instructions. But for reasons I still can’t explain, all sales traders (new and old) will raise an eyebrow, realize he has no idea what to do with the order, hide behind strong competent voice and say, “Understood.”
No further dialog is needed… “Understood” is always followed by CLICK. The more I think about it, in our shallow world, understood is a synonym for… and often used in place of “Goodbye”, “Talk to you in a few”, “I’m a complete jerk-off” and sadly “Thank you”. Clients blindly accept this false sense of security and move on to torture their next victim.
Now it’s time for the sales trader to pass this ticking time bomb over to the position trader and do their best to mumble the same bullshit they just had handed to them. And once that’s done, what do you think the position trader says..? That’s exactly right… “Understood.”
We might as well use the term Boogly Woogly because at the end of the day, when it comes down to it, neither of them mean shit, but Boogly Woogly, at least if you say it right, could be much more fun to say.
Understood! Understood! Understood! Give me a fucking break. Get a new line. For fuck’s sake – You should understand, you take orders everyday… it’s your job. Wouldn’t it make more sense to save your empty commentary for those instances when you miss something or for when you don’t understand? You speak English… I speak English… We both trade stocks for a living… You had better understand fucking simple instructions. Can’t we just assume that you do and stop reminding the world you’re a fucking retard. Stop saying “understood” and start understanding.
Have a wonderful weekend (Understand?),
Dopey
understood [uhn-der-stood]
-trader’s dictionary
1. Reminds people you are completely incompetent.
2. Trading dialog used amongst traders to demonstrates if nothing else, that you are awake. The terms give only a false sense of security and offers no true reassurance.
-synonyms
1. goodbye, got it, okay, there’s a good chance I fuck this one up, goo-goo ga-ga, boogly woogly, i am a tool
