Episode 94 ... Kenny Glick (80:28)
A funny interview with a guy who must be right around my age, clearly a Gen-Xer.
- From Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn
- Did stand-up comedy when 19 years old
- Opened up for Andrew Dice Clay, the "thrill of his life"
- Did internship at Saturday Night Live
- Hung out with Adam Sandler, had a lot of fun
- Answered phone with stupid voice, got fired
- "Who fires a slave?"
- Worked on Jon Stewart show pre-Daily Show
- Trading is hard but stand-up is harder
- 5th grade math teacher did stock market project, Kenny got interested
- Guy in suit at comedy club asked him to come sell stocks on Long Island
- Turned out to be a boiler room, Kenny had to make 300 calls a day, paid $400 a week, hated it
- Some guys from this Long Island boiler room opened another room, sponsored Kenny for Series 7
- Kenny went 30 days without smoking weed before Series 7 exam
- Kenny got 93 on Series 7, expected them to hold a parade for him, they laughed at him instead
- Boiler rooms super shady, just pure fraud
- "Don't put any of your friends or your family into this stock."
- Kenny breaks into the schpiel he used as a boiler room man [I'm falling off my chair laughing]
- Built a book of 80-100 clients, which was pretty good in 18 months
- Noticed all slot machines in Vegas made by IGT
- Recommended IGT to all his clients, one guy wanted to buy $100K worth
- Movie Boiler Room dead-on, completely accurate
- Knucklehead friend Ben made $25K a month doing boiler room sales, bought a Ferrari
- "Rebuttal Book" the key to Ben's sales, no matter what the client said, he had a comeback
- Kenny didn't like ripping people's heads off, he was just a funny guy, enjoyed schmoozing clients
- 1992-1993, this was pre-SOES, pre-day trading
- 1997-1998 Kenny started SOES trading with his Bar Mitzvah money
- 1998 Kenny started trading stocks on his own, quit the boiler rooms
- Dawn of the Internet, mentions Netscape, Iomega, RealNetworks, Doubleclick
- Saw the internet stocks jumping 10% a day, incredible
- Adaptec, the SCSI drive, all these things started flying
- "Once I learned about options, I got in trouble"
- Developed a gambling habit with options
- Got in a bad situation, wandered the earth
- Grew a beard, wore jeans shorts, Timberlands & Grateful Dead t-shirt [he hit rock bottom]
- 1999 -- All you had to do was buy breaks of the previous day's high
- Made $5-$10K a day, quit by 11 AM, would go to the park, smoke weed, and play hacky sack
- Buddies at trading firm taught Kenny to think in "If Then" statements
- Trading buddy "Isaac" taught him never to rush
- "It's better to be late and right than early and wrong." [Isaac is a wise man]
- Isaac taught him about the "dash for trash" at the end of a bull market
- Isaac told him in February 2000, "the end is near"
- Mentions CMRC, Crossroads, CMGI, SDLI ... Kenny started shorting them
- Kenny made a lot of money on the dot com crash
- But then he bought all the dot com stocks after they dropped 90% ... and then they went to zero
- Akamai (AKAM) the only survivor that he still holds from that era
- 2007 he had friends at Bear Stearns, they asked Kenny if he could find them a job
- "Why are you asking an idiot day trader for a job?"
- Shorted Bear Stearns on the basis of this
- Didn't do as well on the 2008 Crash as he did on the 2000 Crash
- Tried to pick a top in QQQ in March of 2011 or 2012?, position size 50x larger than usual
- Got crushed, dry mouth, sweaty hands ... took only half off into the close
- Gapped up the next day, ripped higher, his loss grew even larger
- This experience turned him into a megabull
- "The reason I day trade is to find swing trades"
- Kenny tries to identify "exhaustion situations"
- Trade from one consolidation range to the next consolidation range
- "Analysts are paid shills"
- Analysts only upgrade or downgrade stocks at the end of a move
- Losers take a losing day trade and turn it into a losing swing trade
- Losers take a losing swing trade and turn it into a losing investment
- Kenny likes to take winning day trades and turn them into winning swing trades
- Kenny will take off 80% of his winning day trade and hold remaining 20% as a swing trade
- If the swing trade is a winning trade, then Kenny will buy call options
- Kenny prefers holding options instead of large stock positions
- Once you find something that works, just do it over and over again
- Trading should be boring
- "I appreciate you having me on and shooting the shit like this"
- Don't short until you see something gap up, roll over, and go red
- "Let the top pick itself" -- another Isaac-ism [Isaac is a wise man]
- You're never going to pick the top, so don't go broke trying
- If you ever say "let's see what happens," get the hell out [tears of laughter rolling down my face]
- You hear someone say they're stuck in a stock, you think, "Really? Rip the Band-aid off!"
- If you're in a losing trade and mutter "let's see what happens," get out!
- "What's the worst that can happen?" Get out!
- Kenny has a list of stocks that he has "banned," refuses to trade them
- Don't hang around all day watching the market
- Once you win the money, you leave
- You don't need to trade constantly
- Not trading is a position
- If you're sitting at your computer between 11:30 and 12:30 or 2:30 PM, you're sick
- "Flat, my friends, is a position."
- Kenny runs a private chat
- People can come and hang out with Kenny in his trading room for a month for free
- "I'm a Jewish fellow [but] can make an amazing ravioli"
- Can pay a one-time membership fee to be friends with Kenny
- The hardest part is sticking to the concepts that you know work
- Kenny says some kind things to Aaron in parting
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