Stock Trading and Hedge-Fund Posture
ByEquities at Citi.
Salomon Brothers disappeared into Citigroup more than a decade ago, but its legacy endures, and even traders who missed the glory days still like to think of themselves as working at Salomon rather than Citi. And a central piece of that enduring Salomon Brothers legacy, as made famous by my Bloomberg View colleague Michael Lewis in “Liar’s Poker,” is looking down on equities trading. The insult “Equities in Dallas” originated at Salomon (“We could not imagine anything less successful in our small world than an equity salesman in Dallas; the equity department was powerless in our firm, and Dallas was, well, a long way from New York”), and I am fond of a cruel story about gamma-hedging equity options. It is fair to say that, across Wall Street, there is still some residual embarrassment about working in equities just because Salomon Brothers bond traders so savagely, stylishly and memorably made fun of it a quarter-century ago…
Stock Trading and Hedge-Fund Posture
