Goldman Loses Charity Trading Event Due To Lack Of Frontrunning Opportunities

Author:
Publish date:
Updated on

Non-profit organization Junior Achievement of New York, which places volunteers in NYC and Long Island class rooms to “teach students about their role in society and how to successfully navigate their futures,” held its annual Stock Market Challenge last night. The fundraiser, sponsored this year by Merrill Lynch, simulates 60 days of trading, with teams (from banks and other businesses) being issued $500,000 in mock dollars that they use to purchase fake stocks before the “opening bell.” They then buy and sell through a “floor trader,” several of which roam the room taking orders. All proceeds go to funding JANY’s programs. Unfortunately, we weren’t invited. Luckily, one participant took copious notes. Normally we’d make you wait for the results (as you would expect, ranking from first to last place is determined by how much "money" each team has at the end), but they’re too hilarious—and telling—not to put out there up front. (You’ll note that Citi did not place in the Top Ten, which had less to with lacking skills and more to with neither participating nor donating to the event, because it was awake at the office doing work.)
1. Best Buy (1)
2. WaMu
3. Merrill
4. Deloitte
5. Keyspan (1)
6. Goldman (2)
7. KPMG
8. Best Buy (2)
9. Keyspan (2)
10. (I forget, but not a big-dog)
11. Pitney Bowes
.......
19. Goldman (2)


Some additional points of interest:
- Last night’s win by Best Buy’s A-Team (B-Team came in 8th, still beating Goldman by a long shot) represented its third straight 1st place finish in as many years.
- Both Best Buy teams were wearing their trademark blue shirts; the Goldmans wore suits, in addition to their cloaks of failure.
- Man from MetLife yelling at the bartender, “Just give me a fucking Amstel if you don’t have fucking Budweiser! I got 30 seconds before opening bell!”
- Deloitte employees stealing intel from a team that didn’t show up. (Each team was given a package that included “paperwork,” two "Press Release" tags (providing news on the mock stocks through the weeks) and five "Portfolio Summary" tags.))
- One of the volunteer traders telling a Merrill guy to "fuck off" for getting spit in his ear while shouting trades.
- The fact that Merrill’s third place finish represented a tremendous improvement from last year, when it came in 21st place (out of 24 teams).
- Everyone putting down their heads and walking out of the room in (near) tears, while the Best Buy Geek Squad guys showered each other with praises, while high-fiving and chest bumping.

Related

News

Goldman Sachs To Offer More Would-Be Partners Opportunity To Go David Tepper On An Executive's Ass This Year

Each year, after a long and very comprehensive background check, a lucky group of Goldman employees are abducted from their desks, blindfolded, gagged, and led by candlelight through a dark hallway and into a subterranean conference room. Standing on the table before them are Lloyd Blankfein, Gary Cohn and the rest of the management committee, who ask if they are prepared to pledge their devotion to the firm above all else. Those who agree have their nether regions dipped in a vat of gold, genuflect before Cohn's groin, and, at the stroke of midnight, are inducted into the Brotherhood of the Sach. While there are many ways that becoming a member of the club will change one's life, the most important one involves the partaking of astronomical profits on payday. As a result, when people are not invited to join the group, they tend to get very upset. For instance, hedge fund manager David Tepper, who became a billionaire many times over after leaving the firm, was still so upset about the snub twenty years later that he bought and bulldozed the house of the guy who passed him over. Others probably wouldn't have even gone to the trouble of buying the place first, and operated the wrecking ball themselves. Which is why we say in full seriousness that the Partnership Committee might want to watch its back. Goldman Sachs has begun vetting potential new partners and is expected to appoint a smaller number of bankers to its upper echelons this year, according to senior executives involved in the process... The nomination process for new partners ended during the summer. The internal vetting process began earlier this month and is expected to last until mid-November when the new class of partners will be announced. The vetting process is known within the bank as “cross-ruffing”, in reference to a manoeuvre from the card game bridge and typically sees a team of partners deployed to every division to talk to employees who know the candidates. [FT, related]