Wall Street Meat: My Narrow Escape from the Stock Market Grinder Reprint Edition

Excerpt

Chapter One

Right 51% of the Time

I dialed the phone number in the ad.

“Hello, Research,” said the woman on the other end of the line.

“Huh???” I thought. “Research?”

“If you could be so kind, may I speak with Robert Cornell, please?” I can turn on polite in a hurry.

“He’s gone for the day. May I take a message?”

“Have him call Andy Kessler at this number, and by theway, research where?”

“Paine Webber.”

Now I had seen the Thank You Paine Webber commercialswith Jimmy Connors but had no clue what Paine Webber evenwas. No problem, I’ll figure it out tomorrow. It’s 1985 and I’m 26 and in no rush.

Bob called back the next morning. He had a deep exotic,take-charge phone voice. He grilled me on my background,and then asked when we could meet. I was headed into Manhattan from my house in New Jersey to meet with a head-hunterwho placed programmers and tech people in temporaryassignments. I could meet for lunch.

I decided to wear the best clothes I had. A maroon shirt,navy blue wool tie and double knit Haggar slacks. No jacket. Itwas very early Geek Chic, circa 1985. I ran into a college friendon 51st and 6th Avenue, who asked me where I was headed.”An interview at Paine Webber.” He gave me one of those you-dumb-shit looks. “Dressed like that?”

OK, so I was a dumb-shit, and now a self-consciouslyunderdressed one. At 1285 Avenue of the Americas, I took theelevator up to the ninth floor and headed to the receptionist.Behind me, a door opened briefly. I caught a glimpse of awhole roomful of people who were yelling at each other andinto phones. What a strange place. The reception area wasfilled with the worst art I had ever seen, ugly contemporarypieces that had probably been drawn by three-year-olds.

“Hi, I’m Bob Cornell,” the surprisingly short and smallishBob Cornell said, with that same deep phone voice I had heardthe day before. As he pumped my hand, his eyes slowly lookedme over from my face down to my shoes (did I mention myugly brown Florsheims?) and back up. He had this funny smileon his face that I would later realize was an I-think-I-just-found-what-I was-looking-for look.

“C’mon in, let me introduce you to a couple of guys who are joining us for lunch. Steve, Jack, let’s go.”

A somewhat round, well-dressed, light-haired guy cameover first and said hello with a British accent. “This is Steve Smith, he is the number one computer analyst on Wall Street.”

The next guy was wearing a three-piece suit, with jet-black hair combed back and a pointed, almost sinister-looking beard.He said hello with a Philly accent, an almost Rocky Balboa-like”yo.” “This is Jack Grubman, our hot telecom analyst. Like you, he used to work at AT&T.”

It was the start of a very wild ride.

···

Bob Cornell moved things along. “Let’s head over to BenBenson’s. It’s across the street and we can talk there.” The fourof us headed down the elevator and crossed 52nd Street. As wequeued up at the Maitre d’s station, Bob Cornell remarked tochuckles from Steve and Jack, “I hope they don’t have a dresscode in here.”

We gorged on Flintstone brontosaurus burger-sized steaks.I had just spent the last five years of my working life at BellLabs, the research arm of AT&T, spending huge amounts ofratepayers’ money. I had designed chips, written lots of softwarefor graphics workstations, installed million-dollar mini-computersystems. But AT&T was in the midst of maximumchange. The breakup took place in 1982. I needed out.

I went through my electrical engineering background, thestuff I did at Bell Labs, and what I thought about computersand PCs and modems and fiber optics. It was time to go in forthe kill. “I’m not really the corporate type. What you guysreally need is a consultant like me.” I meant to say it as a statementbut ended up with the inflection of a question.

Bob jumped in, “We don’t need no stinkin’ consultants. Weneed an analyst, someone to follow the semiconductor industry.”I wasn’t sure what he meant.

I spent the next two hours telling them that I wasn’t kidding; I really wasn’t the corporate type. I didn’t even own asuit, didn’t know a thing about financials, only about technology.I must have struck a nerve. All three launched into a coordinatedattack, convincing me to take the job as an analyst, ajob I didn’t even know existed until that morning.

The more I protested, the more adamant they were. It wasa great negotiating technique. I wish I had thought of it aheadof time and done it intentionally, but I really was clueless. Ioccasionally wake up in a cold sweat worrying about the consequenceshad I been more convincing as a slacker that day.

Wall Street is filled with analysts, covering every imaginableindustry. Oil analysts, retail analysts, beverage containeranalysts, auto analysts, insurance analysts, ad nauseum. A rip-roaringbull market had started in August 1982, and the hotstocks were those in technology – computers, semiconductors,and telecom. The old-line analysts who had been around forten years waiting for this bull market to start were experts atIBM but not much else. IBM was half the computer industry’ssales and 90% of their profits. But the bull market brought withit a boom in initial public offerings, IPOs, in 1983 …

(Continues…)

Excerpted from Wall Street Meatby Kessler, Andy Excerpted by permission.
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