Because it was the end of the week? Yes, and there is a high correlation between the action on a Friday and the follow-through on the next
Moniday—at least on the opening.
Did you have any inkling of the siize of the impending move on the following Monday? Do you know what I really thought was going to happen Monday? I thought the market would open lower, go
down sharply, and then bounce back to about unchanged. I actually bought out-of-the-money calls that Friday for
protection.
But you said you thought the market was going down? Yes, but I just wanted to have some insurance. A trader once told me, "Saliba, in stealing second, you never
take your hand off first until your other hand is on second." That's the way I am; I always have insurance.
Still, you must have been awfully confident that the market was going sharply lower on Monday morning. According to the cover story in Success magazine [April
1988], it sounds like you knew the market
would collapse. It
says you even deliberately chose to go to the office instead of the floor to avoid being influenced
out of your position by all the confusion on the floor. Isn't that highly unusual for you to go to the office instead of the
floor on a trading day?
Yes, if I'm trading, I'm on the floor. But that article is completely misleading. They wrote it that way to sell
magazines. They make it sound like I planned and plotted to avoid the floor that day. That's not the story. I was
concerned about the positions held by my clearing firm. One guy in particular had a huge position, which he wasn't
closing, and I had to spend a great deal of time on the phone. Now, that's not as dramatic as the way the magazine
wrote it up, but that's what really happened.
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