As you probably know by now the sales guys on the trading desk are the 3go1go monkeys and this site is dedicated to all that they do to make wall street and the world a better place. But who are the most important playas on a sellside no risk bucket shop desk? The traders obviously. Traders use big words like convexity, duration and a lot of letters from the greek alphabet. Mostly alpha and beta. Monkeys use words like chief, guy and buddy. And monkeys never have to remember names. If we ever see a guy we are supposed to know we just say “there he is”. The traders have a very hard job. For example, when a monkey finally gets an order that he has been working all week to get. The trader has to run complex algorithms to come up with the right price to “show it out” at. The trader has many options but the two most common are the 1/4 model and the 1/8 model. Its complex and remember I’m just a dumb monkey but ill try to explain it. If for example you have a 92 bid for something the trader decides what model to deploy. If he want to make “spread” he will use the 1/4 model also known as the quarter model. Now stay with me here. If he wants to work “skinny” then he will use the 1/8th model also known as an eighth. So if for example the quarter machine is used he will go out with a 91.75 bid. And not to confuse anyone but if its an offer then the trader does the EXACT opposite. He adds a quarter. Now do you understand why all those years of education and experience come in handy and traders get respect from upper management? You just try doing that 25 or so times a day. Now here comes the hard part. They then need to use all of the other keys on the Bloomberg terminal and type up a message and send it out to us monkeys who will immediately 3go1go it. Its a beautiful system and one that take many years to perfect.
The Monkey Police
