fresh_gas986

In the late eighties we had a trader called Malcolm, the hardest man on the floor, who never smiled and was rumoured to have once shouted a junior into the Thames. In the winter of '88, he found a kitten in the alley behind the office, and from that day it lived in his bottom drawer. On quiet afternoons he’d sit with it on his lap, stroking it more gently than any of us thought possible. One Friday it got out, walked across his keyboard and left him with a huge position going the wrong way, fast. He couldn’t get out of it. He sat there until the market closed with the cat on his lap, stroking it and watching his career go down the drain. Over the weekend the market turned, and by Monday it was the best trade he ever made. Malcolm never traded without the cat again.