I never wanted to be a derivatives trader, but I knew my shit. I was play acting and making them more money in ways they never realized.
I hated every second of every day in that business. I found it full of greed and swindlers. I did my best to never cheat anyone, but I made compromises.
In 1988, my firm sent me to New York, and it was windy and freezing cold. They put me up at the Helmsley Hotel. I could have expensed anything I wanted, but they wanted like $25 for a cheeseburger, fries, and a small bottle of Diet Coke, so I went out into the cold and got a cold turkey sandwich and a soda for much less because I didn’t think it right to pay those prices.
Soon after, I was at the Swissotel, expensing whatever I wanted out of the mini-bar. I wasn’t gluttonous, but I wasn’t walking out in the snow and wind anymore to save them money.
When I reached San Francisco, I saw traders leaning on order flow to squeeze more money from customer paper. At first, I stepped up and made the options trade at fairer prices, but I endured a lot of abuse, and to get along, I participated in it.
Aside from that, I did nothing in that business that I believe to be unethical. I never free-rolled anyone who backed me. I never broke any rule that made sense to make extra money.
This cost me a ton of money. It’s easy to join in with a cabal and get rich. I’m not perfect, but I did my best.
I’m supposed to be marketing my writing right now, but I thought of the best person I met in the business, Kelly Lively.
She was quite beautiful when she was young, but she was always beautiful to me. We were in love with each other the second we met.
She was bawdy, funny, told the truth, and got things done. She sized me up in a second and liked me. She stood up for underdogs.
She died too young. Tragically, she was supporting a sick husband who was an artist. He passed shortly after, as all true lovers usually do.
People only know that she worked in clearing, but people who know trading know that clearing is everything. She made that place tick. She ran that place. She knew where all the bodies were buried, and she shared it all with me.
Man, she was fun. She was the best person I have ever met in any business.
I wrote this for her memorial. I’m not really a fan of wakes. I usually want to mourn in my own way, but I took a bus 10 hours to read it. I messed it up. I got nervous and couldn’t do her wonderful Texas twang. It was the last time I was at that firm’s office and hopefully the last time I work in that business. I miss her every day.
* * *My first encounter with Kelly Lively was a memorable one. It was an encounter that we would never fail to laughingly rehash in social situations.
Ones like the great Halloween parties she and Kurt threw. That awesome party at their condominium, the one where it took me about 7 minutes to comfortably make my way upstairs, where I promptly fell asleep on Kelly’s bed with two of her dogs for the remainder of the night.
We would go on to share many words and many laughs, but the thing that made our first encounter so funny to us was that it would prove to be the only time that we were in the same room with each other where we shared not a single laugh, in fact, we didn’t even share a word.
It was my second or third day at Peak6. Peak had just hired seven other new traders and me. They had meticulously prepared a week and a half of orientation presentations. These presentations were so crucial to the firm that they had scheduled nearly every single person who worked there to speak for at least an hour or two.
When Kelly spoke, you must know that I really wanted to pay attention. She was discussing clearing.
I’ve made many mistakes in my life, but in the course of it, I have learned how essential the clearing person is.
A good clearing person and Kelly was exceptional, could save your job. Most traders know very little about clearing other than that they’d much rather walk 20 minutes to work in the pouring rain without an umbrella than deal with a clearing issue once they get there.
So if there was any speaker that I really wanted to pay attention to, it was probably Kelly. This is where I have to make the following admission.
I have no idea what Kelly said in the next 40 minutes. To this day, if enough people told me that she had sung and tap-danced her way through a medley of Beatles tunes, I’d probably have to take their word for it.
About two hours before Kelly spoke, my left side had started to hurt. Minute by minute, the pain was increasing. During a short break, I called my mother and asked her which side of my torso meant appendicitis. My mother was stumped but suggested that I take a cab to the hospital.
“I can’t go to the hospital,” I panicked. “I’ve been here two days. What will they think? I would have to feel like I was being stabbed and gutted repeatedly with a razor-sharp dagger for me to leave.”
About 30 seconds into Kelly’s presentation, that’s how bad it started to hurt. I kept shifting sides in my chair, desperately looking for a position that wouldn’t make me feel like screaming out in utter agony. Sweat was pouring from every orifice of my body. A foot and half away, Kelly had an amazing front seat to what probably looked like the heroin withdrawal scene in the movie “Ray.”
A performance that didn’t end for 39 or so agonizing minutes, at which point, I finally decided that it would be best to take that cab to the hospital. Once there, they quickly told me that I was being attacked by kidney stones. To this day, I’ve never been in more physical pain in my life than those 40 minutes.
A week or so later, I was back in business, well, sort of. The entire orientation had been videotaped, and I had set myself up on the floor of the wonderful old cloud room to sift my way through about 40 hours of videotaped powerpoint presentations.
It was there that I first truly met Kelly as we compared notes on our first meeting. “I was up there speaking, and I kept thinking to myself – this guy doesn’t look good; I think there is something seriously wrong with this guy!”
It was the first time I heard that wonderful, full-bodied laugh of hers. Kelly had a great laugh, and she wasn’t shy about sharing it with you. Talking to her was incredibly easy. She was so down to earth. There was no affectation or artifice.
She was earthy in the best sense of the word. I suspected that she loved to curse just as much as I did.
At the end of our first meeting, Kelly had me pegged completely. She still thought there was something seriously wrong with me, but she assured me that Peak6 could use a few more bright eccentrics like me.
She told me that I should get to know Scott Anderson, who was completely off his rocker but also extremely wonderful and brilliant.
Kelly would just come right out and tell you how much she liked you and enjoyed spending time with you when we all knew that getting to spend time with her was always the better side of the bargain.
She always had the greatest gossip. There were times when I would hear something juicy and run over to Kelly to share. I was never sharing. Not once. Without exception, she had already heard the story and knew ten times as much about it as I did.
Kelly knew everything about everyone, which made perfect sense because she was always such a joy to talk to. She never had any children of her own, but she was everyone’s mother.
Who could possibly meet this wonderful woman and not feel comfortable baring their soul to her? If something happened, it almost didn’t feel real to you until you talked to Kelly about it.
She was the center of every party. If there was fun to be had, it was definitely in her presence. You could talk to her for hours and never get bored. She was a great audience, and that contagious full-bodied laugh of hers was always given out generously. She had strongly felt odd, but loving spiritual convictions, and you got the impression that she had probably proudly done tons of fun things that most of us would have been far too embarrassed to let ourselves enjoy much less share.
She always called me either Hon or Sugar. “You know Sugar, you really need to stop smoking” or “Hon, can this really be a surprise to you?”
The last time I saw her was about six months ago outside of the CBOE. I had just taken a job that I was unsure about, filled with panic and stress.
“Honey, you just need to relax a little bit, and everything will be alright.”
When Kelly was there, everything being alright always seemed possible.
When I found out about Kelly’s death, I was utterly floored. This couldn’t possibly be true. She was indestructible, wasn’t she? I can’t believe that I will never hear that wonderful laugh again.
Life is a gift that some of us eke our way through with angst, trepidation, and doubt. Kelly seemed to eat up life, devouring every second of it with joy. I wish she could have had more time because she truly seemed to know what to do with it. Selfish though it may seem, it feels like her death is more of a loss to us than it could possibly have been to her.
She was someone, who instantly made you feel comfortable enough to walk upstairs so that you could fall asleep on her bed with her dogs, and everyone knows that those people will forever be in great demand.
