Judge Judy: Consider yourself in Contempt!
 
Charlie Gasparino: Steven A. Cohen, did you order the Inside Trade?
 
Judge Judy: You *don’t* have to answer that question!
 
Steve Cohen: I’ll answer the question!
 

Steve Cohen: You want answers?
 
Charlie Gasparino: I think I’m entitled to.
 
Steve Cohen: You want answers?
 
Charlie Gasparino: I want the truth!
 
Steve Cohen: You can’t handle the truth!
[pauses]
 
Steve Cohen: Son, we live in a world that has Chinese Walls, and those walls are guarded by compliance and bankers. Who’s gonna do it? You? You, Peter Lattman? I have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You celebrate Raj Rajaratnam, and you curse hedge funds. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know. That Rajaratnam sentence, while tragic, probably saved money. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves money. You don’t want the truth because deep down in places you don’t talk about at parties, you want me on Wall Street, you need me on Wall Street. We use words like edge, proprietary, frontrunning. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defeating something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very capitalism that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a phone, and make a trade. Either way, I don’t give a damn what you think you are entitled to.
 
Charlie Gasparino: Did you order the Inside Trade?
 
Steve Cohen: I did the job I…
 
Charlie Gasparino: Did you order the Inside Trade?
 
Steve Cohen: You’re Goddamn right I did!
 

By Turney Duff with apologizes to Aaron Sorkin

The one and only time I was asked to speak to an MBA class I had the microphone ripped from my hand. Goldman Sachs asked me to address their summer associates-big-brained kids pretending to be interested in what I was saying. The gig was sold to me as fifteen minutes of very casual dinner talk about how I made it on Wall Street, and then a Q&A. No problem. It might have gone fine – except for the couple of shots of tequila and my sudden desire to tell these kids what they weren’t going to hear from their famous faculty back at school.

Maybe I was wrong. Or maybe Goldman Sachs should go commando more often. You can decide for yourself—I describe the scene in Chapter 12 of The Buy Side. But in this spirit of telling the truth, I thought I’d offer a list of the classes MBA students should really be taking if they want to make it on the Street. Picture this course directory:

INTRO TO BACKBONE REALIGNMENT – In today’s Wall Street world, success is more often about what you don’t say rather than what you do. This course will introduce you to intensive lip-biting techniques and skin-thickening treatments, and remind you of how great your bosses and customers are by using early morning meditation methods.

RESEARCH & ANALYSIS – Everything you wanted to know about copying and pasting emails, instant messages and Bloomberg messages.

CREATIVE ACCOUNTING 101 – Expense accounts can be tricky. This course systematically explores how entertaining can be taken to inventive extremes. Additionally, we’ll examine critical opportunities and threats that arise from internal compliance—also, from that dickhead buy side guy who never sends in trades for the tickets you got him last night. Students will apply strip-club scenario planning and synthesize trends in the external environment in the presence of risk and uncertainty.

FAUX FRIENDSHIP FOUNDATION – More than ever, the ability to pretend to like someone is critical for success in sales and trading. Today, achieving a fake friendship means not merely smiling and paying compliments, but making strategic use of likes and dislikes. In this course, you’ll develop and refine these capabilities. For example, if your client or boss is a Cleveland Browns fan, you better know that the team selected Jamoris Slaughter in the 6th round and that his 40 yard dash at the combine was 4.6 seconds.

DENNIS RODMAN ECONOMICS – Inevitably, you and your coworkers will be invited to a charity event or to a Wall Street Back Patting Conference. This course will show how to box out other sales traders at these events, and leverage the value of being “up close and personal.” Key techniques taught are ingratiation by intimidation and, where appropriate, using soft elbows. In the cut-throat world of sales and trading, this course is mandatory. A good sales trader never let another trader dominate a conversation.

VELVET ROPE MANAGEMENT – One of the keys to sales and trading success is the ability to accurately evaluate—and maximally leverage for one’s benefit – bouncer and wait staff policies. In this course, you’ll learn how to use knowledge gained from successive nights out to “work” the velvet ropes like a maestro. The objective is always to seize competitive advantage in the club scene.

BACK TO BASICS 101 – We all know that getting a client a hot “date” maximizes returns, but in Back to Basics we focus on the little things. For example, a perfectly great night can be diminished by faulty car-service pick up. (Even a fifteen-minute delay might mean a slap on the wrist of 300K shares.) We also discuss the importance of calling the day after a huge order. Sales traders also must learn how to adroitly handle I was wrong phone calls.

BATHROOM ETIQUETTE – This is the follow-up to our wildly popular Elevator Etiquette course. Note that both etiquette methods impose a no-talking policy. Special bonus: best ways to get in and out when a Managing Director begins making urinal small talk or asking market questions through a bathroom stall.

The Galleon office is nearly empty. It’s just after 4 p.m. on the Friday before the 4th of July, 1999. All I have to do is check out a few more trades and then I can run downstairs and catch my car service, compliments of DLJ. My sales trader told me they were either going out of business or being acquired, which means that they’re going to expense everything they can.

What a day… Crazy! The Fed did something…or maybe it was some economic data that came out in this morning. It’s not that I don’t remember–I actually don’t know. It is way too early in my hedge fund career to be concerned with interest rate drops or jobless claims. I’m just trying not to get fired. I take one final look at the P&L for the day – see that we’re up thirty five million. I’m gonna miss my flight if I don’t get out of here.
“Great day,” comes a yell from our investor relations office.
“Crazy right,” I say.
“Probably sixty k for you today,” she says as I stop in front of her office. I give her a blank stare. “We take twenty percent of the profits—that means we made seven million bucks today.”
“Wow,” I say.
“So today probably added 60k to your yearend bonus,” she says as I blow her a kiss and tell her I’m late.

The plane touches down at the Portland Jetport. It’s the only real airport in Maine, but compared to the airports in New York, it’s little more than a landing strip. Both my parents greet me at the gate. Yup, I’m back in Maine all right, L.L. Bean wardrobes, facial hair and those cosmopolitan accents: “I pahked the caher in the pahking lot, ayuh.” My dad takes my bags and my mom gives me a big hug.
“We’re cooking burgers on the grill tonight, but you can go out with your friends after we eat,” my mom says. I’d already told her I was going out with some fellow Bunkies in the Old Port, two girls I graduated Kennebunk High School with in 1988.

I hear a horn honk in the driveway as I take my last bite of cheeseburger. Both my parents remain seated as I wipe my mouth and thank them for the meal. “It’s great to be home,” I say. “Don’t wait up.” It’s strange: even though I’m 29 years old, when I come home to Kennebunk I still feel like I’m a teenager. Maybe it’s the drunk driving arrest I earned while riding a moped when I was 15 is still fresh in their minds. But I’m not a complete degenerate, I’m managing just fine in the city.
 
I smell Patruli. I get in the backseat and the girls are up front. Jodi and Kelli look like the cute girls you’d see at a Grateful Dead concert, cutoffs, tie-dyes and ponytails. We head back to Portland, a drive of about thirty minutes. There are about twenty bars within a five block radius, but we usually start at Cadillac Jack’s.

Jodi hands me a beer from her twelve-pack in the front seat and I sprawl out in the back. For most of the drive we play catch up. They have no clue what I do or what a hedge fund is. I keep it simple, “I trade stocks,” I say. Kelli teaches at a high school—English, I think. And Jodi does something with shoes, I’m not sure. They want to know if I’m dating anyone, if I’ve seen anybody famous, and if I’ve ever heard of the Hamptons. “Yeah,” I say smiling, “I’ve heard of the Hamptons.”
Then the conversation turns and we start talking about some of our fellow alumni. “Did you hear about Timmy Seguin,” Kelli says, more to Jodi than me in the back.
“No what,” she says.
“He got a new job down in Portsmouth, he’s makin’ a wicked lot of money.”
I lean up from the backseat and peak my head between them, “So what’s he gonna make this year?” I ask. “A million?”
Jodi gives me a quick glance with one eye scrunched and Kelli says, “He’s gonna make like sixty thousand dollars this year.” I lean back in my seat, look out the window. We’re on the outskirts of the Old Port and you can see the lobster boats and docks and buoys everywhere in the canal. “I made that much today,” I say. They both look at me like I’m nuts and I catch my reflection in the rearview mirror. You’re right on the doorstep of douchedom, I warn myself.