How did you get started in this industry? After graduating from college in 1976,1 backpacked around the country. In Salt Lake City, I answered an ad
for a commodity broker position. I didn't have any idea what it was, but I figured it was something like a stockbroker.
I got my license while working for a guy who was basically running a boiler room operation.
You really started out on the wrong side of the business. When I walked in, there was a guy seated at the back end of a penny stock office. He spent his days on the
phone trying to convince people to give him $5,000 or $10,000 to speculate onhis charting system. It was a real fly-
by-night operation.
I was keeping his charts for him, while getting registered. I kept saying to myself, "This guy is pretty much of
a crook." I got my license and quit. Then I bummed around for another few months, just working temporary jobs to
pay the rent.
What kind of jobs? Unloading railroad cars. Then one day I walked into a Thomson McKin-non office and said, "Hey, I have a
broker's license." The fellow there said he would pay me $800 a month. That was a large amount of money for me at
the time. All I had to do was go in and cold call; any accounts I opened would be mine.
But you knew virtually nothing at all about markets at that time. I had read a couple of books, and I knew something about charts—having kept them for the first fellow I
worked for.
What books did you read? There weren't too many around at that time. The book I learned the most from was
Technical Analysis of Stock Trends by Robert D. Edwards and John
Magee (John Magee, Inc., 109 State Street, Boston, MA).
What other books would you recommend to people? The first book we have our traders read is Edwin Lefevre's account of Jesse Livermore,
Reminiscences of a Stock Operator [Reprinted in 1985 from the original 1923 edition by Trader Press, Inc., Greenville, SC.] I've read it at
least a dozen times.
Anyway, around the time that I started at Thomson McKinnon, the Ginnie Mae market was just coming into its
own. Thomson McKinnon had just hired a trading group to run a Ginnie Mae desk. I told them I was interested in
learning more about the Ginnie Mae market.
