Pit Bull

Lessons from Wall Street's Champion Day Trader

Chapter One

Trade or Fade

Three Bid for Ten, Three Bid for Ten, Three Bid for Ten. I kept saying it over and over in my mind like a mantra. If Mesa Petroleum hit 625/8, I was going to try and buy ten October 65 call options at $300 per option. Each option would give me the right to buy one hundred shares of Mesa stock at a "strike price" of $65 per share any time up until the third Friday in October, the expiration date of the call option. This was going to be my first trade from the floor of the American Stock Exchange and I was scared to death that I was going to screw it up, that I wasn't going to be able to hack it as a trader.

It was Monday morning, August 13, 1979, and Trinity Place was bustling with men in business suits heading to work. New York's financial world was preparing to start another day. I stopped outside the entrance of the building marked 86, took a deep breath, pulled out my badge, and for the first time walked through the door that said "Members Only." The guard looked at my badge, saw that it said "Martin Schwartz & Co., ... read full excerpt from: Pit Bull ebook