Episode 1: Jay Woods is the Most Popular Man on Wall Street
In the first episode of our new podcast interview series, Off the Charts, my co-host Steve Strazza and I interviewed one of our favorite people on Wall Street, Jay Woods. But he’s not just our favorites, he is a favorite of many. I would argue he’s the most popular man on Wall Street!
One thing I’ve heard repeatedly over the years is some version of: “Have you gotten the Jay Woods tour of the New York Stock Exchange?” Gratefully, I can say I have. And the breadth and depth of Jay’s NYSE history is quite literally off the charts. Steve and I are both incredibly grateful to call Jay a friend.
In this hour-long chat, Jay talks about the first chart he ever created (by hand). His uncle (famed market technician Ralph Acampora) purchased two shares of IBM for a young Jay as a gift and encouraged him to do so to track his first investment. We then fast-forward to his days as a Wall Street intern where his job description might best have been: ‘Lunch ticket order taker.’ The unspoken silver lining of that experience was the skills he learned in this process that translated into the ability to multi-task and eventually thrive in a fast-paced role as a Specialist making markets in several stocks at once. In his younger days, Jay considered himself to be a bit shy and reserved. But soon after becoming a full-fledged Specialist on the floor of the NYSE, Jay acquired a wonderful sense of humor and quick wit that has earned him the respect and admiration of nearly everyone he now meets. But it was not just an affable personality that Jay won on the floor, he also learned the hard way that having a short memory helped him stay sane and move on from tough lessons metered out by an often unforgiving market, angry stakeholders, and plans gone awry. And while Jay won’t admit to “seeing it all,” he’s seen a lot — from the dot-com bubble to literally being just 3 blocks from Ground Zero during 9/11, to the Great Financial Crisis, to navigating the ever-changing shifting corporate sands and trends that have completely changed the role Specialists now play on the Floor of the NYSE.
Grab a snack, settle in, and enjoy this delightful conversation with the amazing Jay Woods!
We talk to a lot of traders. Not just on this podcast, but across everything we do. And one thing that is common to most of them is some level of stress which must be routinely navigated. And it’s often a real struggle. Many of them are emotionally damaged and scarred by it.
In fact, many of our conversations get into discussions about how to best navigate ourselves out of these negative spirals.
“I don’t need to kill it right now. I need to make sure I’m around for the next cycle that is favorable to my trading style.”
According to Anthony Crudele, most traders struggle because they are too short-sighted. He believes most successful traders think longer term—not about time frames but about how each trade, day, or week fits into the bigger picture of what the trader is looking to accomplish.
From an early age, David Hale had hustle in his DNA. At just 10 years old, he was sneaking into casinos to play slot machines. By 11, he was betting on horse races. And before long, he was hunting for arbitrage opportunities in baseball card values. Inspired by his bargain-hunting mother, David developed a “value-player” mindset that would eventually spark a deep fascination with trading the markets.
It’s hard to believe Denise Shull is a product of parents and grandparents who believed in “buy and hold” and wouldn’t even know how to sell a share of stock if asked to.
Today, Denise is well known as a Performance Coach to big Wall Street traders, specializing in modern psychoanalysis.
“I would not give a fig for the simplicity on this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.” ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes
There’s a profound simplicity that can only be reached by working through complexity. It means that deep understanding is often simple, but achieving it requires grappling with and overcoming complexity.
Jason Leavitt believes this wholeheartedly. And this was his path.
When he first got involved in trading, everything seemed simple: buy low, sell high, make money.
Reinventing your career after 20 years is no small feat. Now, imagine trying to do that by becoming an active trader. That’s exactly what Andrew Moss is doing—but he isn’t going in blind.
Andrew’s fascination with the markets began as a teenager when his father introduced him to point-and-figure charts. From there, he pursued a career in brokerage and wealth management at a major Wall Street firm, gaining deep insight into the industry.
“We all have to follow our own path,” Andrew reflects.
Matt Kenah is Building Positive Momentum Every Day.
If we only learn one thing from Matt Kenah, I hope it would be this: “The only goal we should have every day is to live to fight another one.”
Matt has lived this ethos and he has been repeatedly put to the test. And passed.
Starting out on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange trading floor as a runner just out of high school, Matt quickly rose the ranks to Arb Clerk and was earning great money as a young man in his early twenties.
To say Andrew Menaker took an unusual path to Wall Street would be a severe understatement.
While negotiating with an armed bank robber to de-escalate the situation and ensure the safety of customers and bank employees, he had to let Wells Fargo know he wouldn’t be making it to his first interview that day and, therefore, would have to pass on an opportunity to work with the firm.
Among the many things that stood out during our conversation with David Lundgren, it was this quote: “I want to find a way to listen, and learn, and get a little bit better every day.”
This is a mindset that every trader, every human, can benefit from.
In his early days, David described himself as a “systematic researcher.” This process of discovery held sway for him, and when striking out on his own, he employed the same systematic philosophy to portfolio management and trend-following trading.
For Wall Street veteran Jared Dillian, getting away from Wall Street might have been the best thing he ever did for himself.
Now living in South Carolina, he can’t be further removed from the lifestyle of your typical Wall Streeter. And he’d have it no other way, as he’s convinced Wall Street took at least 10 years off of his life expectancy.
As Jared says, his stress levels are now “basically zero.”
Milton Marmanides does the hard work that traders don’t have the time to do. He sifts through the firehose of headlines, news releases, data points, and social media to cut through the noise and deliver only the market-moving information active traders need to make smarter decisions.
And in his nearly 25 years in the business, first as a trader, and now as a market data provider, he’s seen a lot.
