The Smartest Move I Ever Made in the Oil Markets Was Walking Out on These Two Guys…

It's been 15 years since a short conversation with a braggadocious oil trader taught me to go the other way when Goldman Sachs makes a commodity call...

Dear Fellow Expatriate,

I wore jeans and an old Jos. A. Bank jacket that evening.

The villains wore $3,000 suits.

Their wristwatches - excuse me, “timepieces” - were worth more than my student loan balance. They drank $35 glasses of scotch.

In early 2008, I made, by American standards, a middle-class salary in Manhattan (though, I’ve got to be honest, it felt like minimum wage). We were all the same age, but everyone else at the table earned $800,000 a year…  

They told me so. And they flaunted it - well.

When I was asked to join several Wall Street oil traders for drinks, I thought it might be a chance to break into the world of commodity trading. I’d thought the traders from some of Wall Street’s financial institutions were the experts…

It turns out… they were playing an old bait-and-switch game.

And I needed to learn the rules. And believe me, so do you…

Teach Your Kids: It Doesn’t Pay to Be Young and Naïve

I went to the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. My co-graduate…