Hardesty looked at me and blinked, and then turned right back to Dad. “I’ll have to look that up, Charlie. I really don’t think that’s the way you want to go, though. I think you’ll do much better with one of the mixed equity funds we’ve had you with for the last several years.”
“It’s not my money, it’s his.” Dad just pointed a finger over at me.
Hardesty looked back at me like I was growing a second head. “You want ITT common? You shouldn’t be doing that son; you should be buying some money market mutual funds. Here, let me show you this brochure and tell you how they work.” He couldn’t have been more condescending and patronizing if he had tried.
“I’ll be looking to actively trade equities, at least as a start, but I would expect that as opportunities arise, to also move into commodities. Additionally, I’ll probably be doing some trades in options, both calls and puts, maybe some short sales,” I replied. “Is that going to be an issue?”
Hardesty looked back at my father. “Charlie, what is going on? Is this some kind of joke?”
Even Dad was getting a little pissed. “Bill, I already told you, it’s his money. He has a check in his pocket, already made out in the name of the brokerage, for $15,000.”
“Mr. Hardesty?” He looked over at me and I pulled a folded up check out of my pocket and unfolded it, although I kept it out of his reach. “I plan on being an active trader. Will you execute the trades I call in, or not?”
“Well, I suppose so, although I’ll need to confirm them with your father…”
I stood up. “Come on, Dad. This isn’t going to work.” I tucked the check back in my pocket and walked back out into the hallway. Behind me I could hear Hardesty spluttering and asking my father what he thought he was doing.
I wandered down the hallway to see the cute young Miss Talmadge working at her desk. It was a much smaller office than Hardesty’s. She was hanging up her phone when she saw me standing in her doorway. “Got a moment?” I asked.
She looked at me curiously, and motioned me forward. “How can I help you?”
I sat down at the armchair next to her desk. “I saw on the Broker of the Month plaque that you’re number two around here. Is that true?”
She smiled at me. “Yes it is. Why?”
I placed the check down on her desk. “Is it true that number two tries harder?” This was the slogan of Avis Rent-A-Car at the time.
She eyed the check and then me again. “Yes, that is exactly what it means. Who are you and what are you up to?”
“I apologize for not introducing myself. My name is Carl Buckman and I’m looking to start an account.”
“Really? You? You’re a little young for that, don’t you think?”
I gave her a soft smile. “I’ll bet you’ve heard that said too.”
She gave a quick barking laugh. “Okay, I earned that. You’re serious?”
“Absolutely. Are you?”
“Yes and no,” she replied. “You’re too young to open an account by yourself. Until you’re eighteen, an adult has to be on the account as well.”
“I have that already covered.” Out in the hallway we could hear Hardesty and my father arguing, and looking for me as well. I raised my voice slightly, and said, “In here, Dad.”
My father stuck his head around the corner. “Here you are. I thought we were leaving.”
I pointed at Miss Talmadge. “She’s number two, she’ll try harder. Dad, this is Miss Talmadge. Miss Talmadge, my father, Charles Buckman.”
“Pleased to meet you,” she said.
Hardesty stormed in. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Missy. You can’t just steal my clients out from underneath me!”
I stood up and got between them. “Mr. Hardesty, I have never been your client, so she hasn’t stolen me from you. I have no intention of being your client. And furthermore, this is not the behavior of a gentleman.”
“How dare you speak to me like that, you little…” At that moment he noticed my father standing in the corner, and he stopped. He looked at Miss Talmadge, and yelled, “We’ll see about this!” and then stormed out.
Missy Talmadge blinked and said, “Well, that was fun. Are you two serious about this?” I sat back down and outlined my investment plans. She just nodded and agreed with them. At one point she looked over at my father and asked if he was in agreement. He said he was, so she just shrugged and pulled some paperwork out of her desk. Fifteen minutes later she had the check and I had a brokerage account.
She led us out, but on the way, we were waylaid by an older gentleman, who called the three of us into a very large and rich corner office. He introduced himself as the branch manager and asked, politely, what had happened. I took the lead in explaining the situation. I finished by stating, “Here’s the bottom line. I’m not doing business with Mr. Hardesty. If I do business with your firm at all, it will be with Miss Talmadge. If that breaks some sort of rule, then give me my check back and you can just shred these papers. I am sure that Merrill Lynch would be more than happy to talk to me. I think they’re a couple of floors up, aren’t they?”
“That won’t be necessary, Mr. Buckman,” he replied, and for the first time, a man at this outfit was using that title with me, and not my father. It was a curious feeling.
On the drive home, Dad smiled and asked, “Think you were a little rough on Bill Hardesty back there?”
I smiled back. “What I think is that you can do better. He has you into mutual funds his company runs, right?”
“Yes.”
“And occasionally you find him trading in something you hadn’t authorized, but afterwards he tells you it was a great deal, right?”
“Yes. So?”
“Dad, he’s churning your account and putting you into high cost proprietary funds. I can guarantee he makes more from your account than you ever will.”
Dad stared at me for a second, but didn’t reply.
The money I got from the lawsuits was going to be seed money. How many times have you ever thought, boy, if I’d only known about this company or that company, way back when, I’d have bought it and be rich? Wouldn’t you have liked to have bought Microsoft or Xerox or Apple or Wal-Mart back when they were tiny and nobody had ever heard of them? Well, obviously I had heard of them.
There was more, however. As part of my MBA classes I had to take a finance class, and the professor had discussed the accounting practices and stock market analysis of the conglomerate craze of the Sixties, and how it had risen and fallen in the Seventies. I had even worked for several years at an ITT subsidiary, so I knew what most of the conglomerates would do in the next few years. This was the last gasp of the conglomerates. Within three years, their stocks would tank. You can make just as much money betting a stock will drop as you do that it will rise.
That was why I discussed options. This can give you incredible leverage betting on the rise or fall of a company, although you have the possibility of losing everything if you bet the wrong way. There were other ways to make money, too. The scenario I outlined of the rise of oil prices following another Arab-Israeli war would be duplicated in 1973, during the Yom Kippur War. The Israelis won the war, but the price of oil quadrupled. This happened again in 1979. For real money, the Hunt brothers tried to corner the silver market in ’79 and silver prices quintupled in a matter of months, and then collapsed in 1980. Ride the wave up, and then ride it back down. By the time I got to college, I could have a million dollars. By the time I graduated, many times that.
This wasn’t what I wanted in life. I have never really understood the burning desire some people have for inordinate wealth. A nice house, fine. Maybe a vacation place. But three, or four, or five places? Some people buy homes that they never actually even visit or live in! Want a boat? Okay, not my cup of tea (a boat is a hole in the water you try and fill with money) but I’ve had a lot of friends who liked them. How many do you need, though, and what’s the fun of having a boat that you can’t even steer, but have to hire a crew and captain to run? How many planes can I fly at once? How much is too much?