Mike Offit: Nothing Personal: A Novel of Wall Street

For the honest brokers, executing customer orders at $3 a contract could be a nice and honest living, but only the traders with their own cash at stake made the big money—or lost it. It didn’t matter to Warren. Despite the money he was making, he had no real taste for the pit, just as he hadn’t enjoyed the trip to Atlantic City he’d taken with a few other traders. His grandfather, a bookie, had inoculated him against gambling in all forms, and what he was doing was almost purely gambling. He figured out a way to make a reliable income trading “spreads”—relatively safe trades that exploited small changes in the relationships between different delivery months, and he found his strategy made him a tidy income without the big swings that could wipe him out.

The real change came for Warren one afternoon when he’d started a conversation with a well-dressed man who came to the floor only occasionally, one who seemed to command the respect of all the traders and brokers, and the only person on the floor who consistently wore suits made of natural fibers. Ned Johnstone worked for Merrill Lynch, and over a Diet Pepsi in the lunchroom, he’d patiently explained the difference between an investment bank and a stock brokerage house and told Warren the key to getting a good job on Wall Street was to go to a top business school. Brokerage houses made most of their money selling investments to middle-class individuals, mostly at big markups. The investment banks were the “class” of the Street, the middlemen between the biggest corporations and financial institutions and the vast pools of capital that were held for investment by insurance companies, pension funds, and big professional money managers.

“The question is,” Johnstone said, “how important is money to you, really? All of this is based on the same drive—greed. You’re not saving lives or making art.”

Warren leaned back in his chair. “I never really thought about it before. But now that I’ve made some, I like it. But this place is just plain nuts. It’s all risk, no certainty. I don’t know how these guys can stand it.”

“Warren, you can make over a million dollars a year at an investment bank if you’re any good at it and never risk a cent of your own money. You might get fired, but even then, you’ll probably get hired somewhere else.” Johnstone smiled a little. “The best thing that ever happened to me was getting fired by Smith Barney.”

Warren let out a low whistle. A million dollars a year? That was as much as Ivan Lendl made playing tennis! “Jesus. You think I’d have a shot at a decent school?”

“You went to Brown. With your experience down here, you’ll walk in. You’re a good-looking kid and Lucien Nahid likes you.” Johnstone waved at Warren. “I’d get out of here as fast as I could if I were you.”

Like so many things he did on impulse, Warren had called Columbia University that afternoon and asked about the admissions process for the Business School. He was told to take the GMAT, a standardized test used like the SATs to evaluate applicants. Another call to the Educational Testing Service in Princeton got him the registration forms, and four days later he went as a walk-in to an auditorium at Pace University. The majority of the other people in the testing room looked dead serious and slightly nervous. A nice-looking, tall brunette came and took the seat next to Warren, smiling at him. The proctor checked everyone’s ID and went through the rules. Warren realized he hadn’t brought any pencils! He raised his hand, and when he asked the proctor if any were available, the girl reached over and poked him, then tossed him a crisply sharpened pencil with the International Paper logo printed on the shaft.

“You wake up late or something?” she asked him. He shrugged, smiled, and thanked her. Warren knew he had a knack for standardized exams and finished each section quickly, comfortable that he had done well. After he finished the last section with fifteen minutes to spare, he’d run across the street and bought a $60 roller-ball pen and managed to catch the brunette before she got to the subway.

“I wanted to return the favor,” he said, extending the Montblanc box.

“Are you kidding? That’s like a confirmation gift or something!”

He liked her big smile. “I’m Warren.” He leaned toward her and put the box in her hand. “And I wrote my phone number on the bottom… there.”

“Well, Warren, I’m Deborah.” She was still grinning and opened the box. “Give me your hand.”

“My hand? Jeez, we’ve just met!”

He let her take his right hand in her left. She turned it over, opened the top of the pen with her teeth, and wrote her phone number on the meaty part of his palm. “Maybe you can give me a call and explain to me how you finished every section of that test half an hour before me. Did you actually answer any of the questions?”

“I guess so. Who knows? Are you free for dinner tonight? Does International Paper let you out for meals?” She really was pretty, and he liked the way her hair fell across her eyes.

Deborah stepped back and gave him a long once-over. She nodded. “You’re pretty cute. Pretty sure of yourself too. You think you can figure everything out so fast?”

Warren smiled and looked down, a little embarrassed. “I’m not that quick, and I don’t get phone numbers from girls like you very often. I didn’t want to let you get away.”

“You’re good! Modesty and flattery are a lethal combination. I live on Forty-Ninth and Second. Call me at six thirty and we’ll meet at seven thirty. You got that, Warren?”

“I’ll be early.”

Deborah looked at him for a second and smiled. “I just hope you’re not always in such a rush!”

His almost perfect score on the exam, together with a nice letter from Johnstone, and a pleasant interview through which Warren remained charming and enthusiastic, had secured Warren a place in the January class at Columbia despite his slightly lackluster grades from Brown. His date with Deb had also gone well, and he had seen her once or twice a week in the three months since the test. She was hoping to go to Kellogg at Northwestern University in Chicago or UC Berkeley Business School, so they both knew it wasn’t likely to last. She got in to NYU and Berkeley, and Warren was disappointed when she told him she would be moving to California. IP had an office where she could work part-time across the Bay and would pick up her tuition. He always liked having a girlfriend and couldn’t stand going to parties or out to clubs to try to meet girls. Deb was smart and funny, and with her long legs and high energy she was a lot of fun in bed. But, he was in New York for good, and he couldn’t convince her to stay.

When he got the acceptance letter from Columbia, he called his dad, who had moved back to Millbrook, New York, after he’d left for college. He taught at an indoor tennis club four days a week and also worked with the team at the Millbrook School. “Jesus, Warren, I never thought you’d have any interest in business. You only read the sports pages and the funnies.”

“I think you’re the only person left alive who calls the comics funnies, ” Warren had said into the phone, smiling.

“Well, your mother thought you’d do something in the art world. She figured you had a nose for it—the ‘commercial instinct’ is what she called it.”

“Dad, I think the only people less honest than art dealers are probably commodities traders,” Warren said with a tinge of disdain for the thievery he’d witnessed.

“Warren, I’m not sure you’re going to run into a whole lot of honest people in the finance world. My pops always told me the only straight people he’d ever met were bookies. They told you the odds, paid when you won, and you knew up front what the vigorish was.”