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

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