Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Lessons - What 25 Years on a Trading Floor Taught Me About Online Gurus | David Greenberg - Fmr NYMEX Board Member & CNBC Contributor

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Lessons - What 25 Years on a Trading Floor Taught Me About Online Gurus | David Greenberg - Fmr NYMEX Board Member & CNBC Contributor · Success Story with Scott Clary

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  In this lessons episode, explore the difference between short-term financial wins and building
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  lasting wealth. Discover why hype-driven investing often leads to costly mistakes.
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  Understand how strong career foundations create long-term security and uncover why patience,
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  discipline, and learning from failure matter more than chasing quick success.
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  Well, that's what I'm so curious about because like now I see these people selling
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  investment courses and day trading on YouTube and all right. No, no, I know, but this is like,
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  this is the shit that you're dealing with now. And none of them have the experience that I
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  have and the people on the trading floor. And you know when they're like, well, you know,
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  you have to remember you had a 15-year period that every time the market came off, it bounced.
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  Yeah. So everybody's like, and I would teach my class, guys, it doesn't have to bounce. So when
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  they had the whole AMC thing and all the other things were like, oh, buy the tip, buy the tip.
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  I had this one trade I call it my public's pharmacy trade. And I would walk into my
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  public's pharmacist would go, I got diamond hands. You know, what does that mean? We're never
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  letting go. We're never selling. I go, what do you never selling? He goes, AMC and game stop.
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  So I'm like, okay, good. I go to my e-trade account. I sell like 3000, you know, game stop.
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  You know, he's like, what are you doing? Because you can't go short. That's illegal. I go, no,
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  it's not illegal. Number one, I go, one, I'm not going short to bury the company. I'm going
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  short because you're telling me I should buy it. So I go short market comes off, buy it back.
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  You know, I was in the next day, you know, and then bounced after I bought it back. So he goes,
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  told you diamond hands, diamond hands, I'm sold again. You know, I mean, I made a lot of money off
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  my pharmacist because I said, where are you getting this information? And he's like, oh, the guy in
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  the produce, you know, he knows his stuff because he's following some guy and you two, he goes buy
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  every dip. And let me tell you something, you buy every dip and it's a great way to blow yourself out.
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  And so many people got hurt in the stock market sell off of the past two years because what
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  happens is that nobody, I teach what, you know, in my trading classes and my investing classes
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  that you always take some profit. I love when people say, I don't want to take profit. I want to pay
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  the taxes. And then I call them up and go, well, now you got less taxes. You know, so, you know,
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  nobody knows the art of, you know, managing your money within a position. So they buy, buy, buy
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  in the way up and they buy, buy, buy in the way, buy, buy here and then try, hit the top of the
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  tribal and you buy, buy, buy here. Now you're down on this and you're down on this. So when people
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  said, you know, the stock market is down 20% in the other year, people are down 40% on some stuff
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  because they dollar cost averaged and didn't work their way. And as I said, there's a difference
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  between adding to a position and adding to a bad position. And it's never taught the right way.
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  And people go in and they just screw themselves over. So you got all these people online that
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  no offense to them. I mean, I'll go against my trading and my, you know, statistics any day
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  against some of these people. But I think it's also because you have these communities pop up
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  from crypto trading. Oh, yeah. And then everyone's an expert overnight. Oh, everybody, I was on
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  Clubhouse one night and it was 1200 people in the room. And this guy says Bitcoin's going to
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  250,000. And I just went, why? And didn't say anything else. Silence in the room. And he's like,
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  what? I'm like, why? Well, there's only 23 months. That's not true anymore. You know,
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  he's like, what do you mean that's not true? I said, well, derivatives and now they're trading on
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  the CME and now they're trading against other currencies. As a trader, I know the way these
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  things work. Now you have a natural push on the market. It's not just the one way market anymore.
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  And the guy just like, but it's going to 250. I know it. And I'm like, okay, you know,
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  that's what it went from 60 down to, you know, when people got pushed on that wherever it is now.
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  Yeah, 30 something, you know, but so you got, you know, the internet and Instagram and everything.
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  Well, it can do a lot of good. Can do a lot of harm. Yeah. And you have some people out there
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  that are telling some very young generation people, some things that I think that are going to
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  really hurt them as time goes on. And I've been deep programming some of my friends kids from
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  I think you have to. I mean, so to give you an example of what I see now, I see people that have
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  meme, uh, meme coin telegram groups, right, whereas a group they buy together because they think
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  that somebody's going to shill and pump. I'm pretty sure that's illegal. Right. Well, yeah,
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  it's a pump and dump. Yeah. But I mean, like, there's like groups set up for this shit and they're
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  advertising to come join my group. Yeah, guess what? And the guy that says come join my group is
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  selling to everybody that's yeah. Yeah. So when that thing starts popping up, he has the original
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  number. Yeah. Right. And but that's that's like malicious. There's a lot of like idiots that aren't
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  malicious as well. Right. Yeah. No, no, there's just some idiots that you're just trading stuff
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  because they think it's going to work. But my question is, and this is something that the younger
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  generation is just not getting. Listen to me carefully. Just not getting the question is it might work
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  now. But what's going to work for the next 20 or 30 years? Okay. Because everybody's earning potential
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  and they're powerful earning years do not last as long as they think they do. I know,
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  I know, I know, I know, I know some really wealthy people. And at some given point, unless you
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  happen to have the right product that, you know, is ongoing and, you know, you can do it. But so
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  many of these young, what they call these entrepreneurs are not really entrepreneurs. They're just
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  getting lucky. And what happens in their 30s when they have a mortgage and the house and two kids
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  and they need to go to college and they're, they're unhierable. And that's what I think that's
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  destructive in, in the concept of today, thinking that everybody should be an entrepreneur. I believe
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  that you can be an entrepreneur and somebody else's business. And it's very similar. My son wants
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  to open up a fund one day. So what does he do? He ends up going to college. I made him go to
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  that he didn't want to go to another story of himself. He ends up getting a job for this guy. Howard
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  Lutnik, who's a CEO of Canada Fitzgerald. He works for him for three years. Then he goes and
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  he goes to NYU to get his masters. Then he picked, if he got offered some five banks,
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  pretty credit swiss. Not the right bank to pick. But it was a good, it's a bit of an experience.
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  But he's getting that experience. And I said to him, finally, he's 28 years old now. And I said,
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  oh, so maybe when you're 35, you'll open up a fund. He goes, now I'll wait till I'm 40. I got a lot
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  more to learn because what I teach these kids is build a, build a foundation that you can lean
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  back on for the rest of your life. My daughter, she was a photographer, graduated a new house,
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  you know, up in Syracuse, great photographer, great editing. She's like, I'm never going to,
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  this will not be sustainable for the rest of my life because she's so very quickly that people
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  could edit on their phones and this and whatever. So she ended up getting a law degree. So
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  and the way that I kind of got her into the mindset of the law degree because she's really an artist.
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  I said, I'm part of a restaurant called Hutton Fish Club in New York City,
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  wild ride, a great restaurant. And the waiters there are waiters to, to pay for their acting career.
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  So I said to my daughter, your photographer who happens to be a lawyer that's paying for your
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  passion. So you have all these people like, you know, what's the big thing? Go for your passion.
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  Yeah. Well, guess what? Your passion might not be able to make enough to sustain you for the
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  rest of your life. So sometimes you actually have to get a job to cover your life and your passion.
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  And that's something that I think a lot of people are mixing up. And the question is on this 20-year-old
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  and 30-year-old generation, what's going to happen when they're 40 and 50? Because you know what?
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  I just turned 59. You got a little more tired. You know, you don't have the energy. You might have
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  the wisdom, but you know, you don't have the energy. So the question that I put to some of these
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  people that are doing this, okay, it's great. You're having a blast now. You're living your truth.
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  You know, all those key words that are thrown all over the place. But what are you going to do
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  when the real responsibility kicks in? You know, when it's not just you. You know, and I hope that,
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  you know, people will have a good relationships and they'll have partners and they'll have wives
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  or husbands or whatever works for them. And then they'll have families and they'll, you know,
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  experience all the greatest things that I did with my kids growing up, which is really where the
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  real rush comes in, right? But the question is, is that no one's thinking further in the future
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  and now they're all thinking just immediate money and happy day. You know what? I get the greatest
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  thing that ever happened. You talk about my career. So two of the greatest things that ever
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  happens, me my first two weeks of being on the trading floors in Chicago. My first thing was,
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  I went to this guy who is, you know, the guy who's going to be working for it, turned out to be a
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  real mafia guy, you know, I went there the first day, they come back in two weeks, they found his
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  friend in the ditch. Like, okay, like real, real mafia stuff. So, um, so I walk into his office and
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  I say to him, you know what? I'm going to be the best broker you've ever seen. I'm going to do this,
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  I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this and he's like, David, just sit down and shut the fuck up.
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  You could talk to people back then like that without them running out of the room being, you know,
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  all of what he said. So he says, shut the fuck up. You know, and I'm like, he was, you see that
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  trading floor out there? Like, yeah, he goes, you see how exciting it is? You see the rush that it is?
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  Yeah, he goes, one day it's going to be a job. He goes, one day you're going to walk in and you're
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  not going to want to get spit on and you're not going to want to get knocked on the head and you're
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  not going to want to deal with the pressure and you're not going to be feeling well and you are
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  not going to want to do this. He says, but because this will afford you and your family a quite
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  interesting lifestyle. And if you're good at it, you can do a lot of things with this. So if you'll
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  look at the long term and realize that everything turns into a job, very few people skip their way
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  to work every day. I am envious of the people that do a lot of musicians do a lot of artists.
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  So I love that, you know, if you could do it great. But the problem is that the majority of the
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  people don't have them. You know, so he gave me that advice. The other piece of advice I got
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  was it was a guy there. He would look like Ripley on Winkle. You know, I mean, you know, red,
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  red, crazy hair. It looked like he'd been there forever. You know, and I was, you know,
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  20-something year old shit. So this guy might have been younger than me now, but who knows, right?
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  So he looks to me and he goes, I know who you are. Because I went very quietly because my father
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  was on the board of the other exchanges in New York. And so I went, you know, just do my own
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  thing because I know who you are. He goes, listen to me. He goes, you're going to have the chance to
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  get into the ring one day. He goes, and when you get into the ring, no one's going to care about
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  who your father is. No one's going to care about where you went to school. They're just going to
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  try to rip your throat out because that's what we do here. He goes, I will never have the chance to
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  get into the ring. He goes, I've been working here for 30 years. I've been a clerk for 30 years.
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  I'll always be a clerk for 30 years. He goes, so I'm going to give you some advice. He goes,
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  watch everything. He goes, watch the people's faces, watch the people's, how they breathe, watch
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  how the runner runs from the desk to the pit. Is he running quickly? When the broker grabs a piece
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  of paper, look at his eyebrow. Look to see if that broker is looking at the girl. Did he sleep
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  with her last night? What's going on? I mean, he goes, look at everything and take it in every day
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  and you'll be a great trader who should learn how to process the information. And from that day on,
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  all through life, I look at everything. That's why we can talk about it too when I wind blind
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  to my right eye and have my world disappear. That really screwed me up. So what would happen is I
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  would get, I would put in these interns in New York and I would put them in the middle of the
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  train floor for two weeks. I wouldn't talk. And I would get a call from either of them or their
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  parents or my kids not learning. I said, really, and I would give this kid the same speech that
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  this guy gave me and all of a sudden it opened up his eyes. Because if you start looking at life
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  and you start looking at the world, literally everything, every moving part and you take it all
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  in, you're going to be quicker than everybody. You're going to understand where it's coming. You're
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  going to be able to react faster. You know, I was one of 17 traders that was brought down to
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  Quantico to get drilled by the generals. They wanted to know how he thought so quickly with
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  our own money, with that kind of pressure and being able to screw up. I have a whole class on
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  screwing up. You know, people don't realize there may be 60% of our trades 50 to 60 to 70 were
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  losers every day. But if you were upset with your screw ups, you never, you never could do anything.
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  So, you know, I talk about that, but those were the two things, you know, that this guy says to me,
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  get used to it. It's going to be a job. So they were, and by the end of it, I was like, I don't
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  want to do this anymore, you know, but you did it. And, you know, but I still, to this day,
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  thinking about that, if I could find that guy with the, you know, the Rip Round Winkle guy,
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  and just thank him for that piece of advice, you know, and that was life changing.
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  Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so
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  you never miss an episode. And if you want to dive deeper into this conversation, check out the
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  links in the description to watch the full episode. See you in the next one.