Champagne Problems
If you worship cash and status, then New York is a city of churches; too many people spending money they haven't earned to buy things they don't want to impress people they don't like.
You want to avoid this sort of individual. On a trading desk, this distinction is between friends with you and those who are friends with your seat. Many of my better colleagues were recent immigrants. I found them down-to-earth in a way that you didn’t get from your typical Ivy League jock Wall Street trader. Yet the immigrants made a quirky group. I knew an ex-military intelligence officer from the Middle East who would rifle through the upstairs offices overnight and take photos to give the rest of the traders a preview of the annual bonus plan. Another Middle Easterner was someone I’ll call JT.
In 2002, the price of oil was in the 20s. A year later, it doubled. And then it doubled again. This was before American ingenuity disciplined the market, and all sorts of crackpot theories were circulating about Peak Energy and how the Saudis had hidden nuclear bombs under their oil fields. At the time, JT’s hedge fund wanted to know what this rush of money meant for business in the Arab world, so they sent him there to find out.
In 2007, Wall Street’s sense of geography was based on World War Two history. Most portfolio managers thought that once you pass Italy, you keep going a bit to reach Japan. So, having someone on the ground in the Middle East was useful. If they got this trade right, their peers would look like blacksmiths in the 1920s, watching Model Ts come off the assembly line while hammering out horseshoes.
JT gets flown over to Dubai first class. Top-shelf tickets on Emirates were unprecedented - only six were available per flight, and they came with a room and shower. JT’s fallen asleep in his room after a massage, and probably a sneaky handy, when screaming wakes him up. He wanders out to see a fellow passenger locked in a room, evidently suffering from claustrophobia and freaking out. His panic starts to spread to the flight attendants, at least one of whom is crying.
JT might have had one of the most critical seats during one of the most consequential periods in history, but he also used to be a flight attendant for Royal Jordanian Airlines. He’s a take-charge guy, so he hammers on the door to tell the trapped passenger that help is on the way and orders the Emirates employees to get him an axe. They look confused, so JT heads to the storage closet, returning with a fireman’s axe. He levers the axe under the handle, prying the door open, a spark jumps out onto the axehead, and all the lights on the plane go out.
The flight attendants begin running around in circles, breaking into hysterical fits. At the same time, the other first-class passengers tear away down the stairs toward economy, yelling and bouncing off the walls. It’s a shitshow. JT knows everything is fine; these planes have multiple backup systems, and the emergency lights have already kicked in, so he decides to go back and reassure the rest of the passengers.
The main cabin is quite curious about what’s going on with their flight. When they see JT in the dim light, his eyes are like saucers, and his hair is all sticking out from the electric shock. He’s still wearing a white tank top, thick wiry hair sprouting from his chest, sporting a big Turkish beard, and holding an axe, and everyone loses their minds as he reassures them he’s just here to get to the bottom of what’s happening with the oil.
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Although Champagne Problems didn’t appear in my book Occupy a Job on Wall Street, JT remains one of my favorite people in our business.
