From Dec 20-23 the New York MTA transit strike crippled movement in the city. Stories abounded of people walking miles to and from work in, conveniently, the worst weather we had had to date. Heavier on laziness than ingenuity, I decided to stay at home and work from my apartment. My job is electronically trading super-volatile equities, using high volume to capitalize on small moves. I'll probably go to hell for even attempting to make large sums of money sitting at my computer unshowered in my underwear, but during the transit strike, I was willing to take that risk.
But that wasn't the only risk I was willing to take. At work we make decisions that are extremely time sensitive. We therefore have a gigabit ethernet to whisk our orders 5 buildings away to the floor of the NYSE. As I had recently moved into a new apartment, I did not yet have my own internet connection. So I traded using my wireless, constantly jumping around whichever weak signal the 15 degree wind happened to be blowing close enough to my wall. Tuesday passed rather uneventfully: while my quotation system constantly crapped out on me, occasionally for periods of 5 minutes or more, it never happened when I actually had a position.
On Wednesday, however, the stock market gremlins made the decision that I had had it too good for too long. I was trading in and out of a crazy commodity stock, and happened to pull a monster trade, picking the very top of the stock that had shot straight up 5 points, getting it short. 60 seconds later I had completed one of my famous overconfidence-provoking thousand dollar minutes, in which my imagination proclaims me completely bulletproof. Right after I covered my short, and bravely (foolishly, perhaps) took a $95,000 long position, my wireless puked out on me.
All of the numbers on my screen stopped moving. The stock was shooting around like an unattended fire hose, making or costing me about 200 bucks every 5 seconds. I frantically put in multiple orders to sell the stock, in hopes that at least one of the orders would get through. A few seconds later my wireless recovered for my system to flash that I had covered the position flat. The wireless immediately puked out. About a minute later, my system came back up, showing me with a position again. Too many of my orders had gotten executed, and I was now short the stock, about 300 bucks in the money, as luck would have it. Frantically, I put buy orders in to once again close out this accidental position, when, not only did the wireless stop working, but the blue box on the left of my screen, where I enter my orders, actually disappeared!
My computer apparently went on strike with the MTA, as I had no idea if I had a position, what my position was, and which way it was going. I rebooted Windows, waiting patiently for my hard drive to churn my swap file into RAM. I saw I had a wireless signal and opened the program for my trading platform. The login screen just said, "Please Wait..." I grabbed my cell to call the office, but no reception. I ran down the stairs and out the door in my pajamas and a wife-beater, and finally got a co-worker, also named Josh on the phone.
"Josh, my wireless just puked out, and then my computer stopped working. Can you find out if I have a position???"
Josh: "Yeah... Let's see, you are short 1300 shares of MLM and you're out of the money about a thousand dollars. Do you want me to close it out? (book the loss)."
Me: "How did I get 1300 [expletive] shares?!?! My maximum position size is 1000 shares!!! I dunno, which way is it going???"
Josh: "I dunno, do you want me to work you out of it?"
Me: "Dude, please! Sorry to bother you, thanks so much!"
Josh: "It's not letting me into your account. The system has you as already logged in. Call you back in a sec"
I was freaking out at this point. There I was standing barefoot in my pajamas in 10 degree wind chill calling in on the phone like some Schwab customer from 1970. About a minute later the phone rang.
Josh: "I got you out..."
Me: "And???"
Josh: "You made 200 dollars"
Me: (throwing my arms into the icy air) "TOUCHDOWN!"
I bet if I thought about it long enough, I could find a lesson in here somewhere...
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