Feedback from Old Pro
I have received feedback over the months from an old pro in the trading industry. I share some excerpts below:
Your Boone Pickens story reminds me of how lucky I am to have met some of the great ones over the years and Boone was one of them. In the mid eighties one of my trading mentors was xxx from xxx. He died a few years back but had accumulated a small fortune from trend following and his oil business. One of his neighbors was the legendary Oil wildcatter xxx. [He] had sent his Lear 25 to [my home town] to ferry me back to xxx for the day…[they] told me Bob Mosbacher and Boone Pickens were in Town visiting and we could have lunch at the country club with them if I liked. Boone was as down to earth as any man I ever met and Bob Mosbacher was a peach of a guy himself. Bob is a Texas wildcatter cut from the same cloth as Boone. Multi-million dollar deals done on a handshake type folks. I also remember Mrs. Mosbacher who was very easy on the eye and a real down to earth lady. All these guys were successful in business and trading and the thing that stuck with me through the years was how nice they were as people. Boone treated me like we were old friends I guess partly because of my relationship with xxx but he seemed truly interested in my plans to become a CTA, which I did in 1986. I guess when I met these guys the oil business had been terrible and I bet they were all broke or close to broke. Boone Pickens told me he had been broke before but never between his ears. I would relate that to some of the ups and downs we go through as traders but it is important to never be broke between one’s ears. [From my mentor] I heard several truisms that have stuck with me over the years.
#1 They don’t dedicate monuments to crowds.
#2 A man that won’t lie to his wife is no gentleman.
#3 Brokerage houses: they may be “right” but I am the one making the money.
#4 You cannot trust a man with no bad habits or a bible on his desk. If you see a picture of Jesus in his office run. xxx was a Christian but he did not trust those who wore it on their sleeve.
#5 I smoke short camels because I can smoke them faster. Of course xxx died of a heart attack brought on by his smoking habit.
#6 If you want to know what a market is going to do just put a weekly chart up on the wall and back away a distance. Whatever the market has been doing it will keep doing until it does something else. We would call that a trend although I never heard him use the word “trend” one time in 15 years but he was a trend follower.
