Confessions of a Cat-holic (193)

So I told Edmond that he was too dull, in the bedroom specifically. I wanted him to explore more, be more adventurous and go into the unknown. He would always have me at his back welcoming him home. I wanted him to play more, get drunk more, and hook up more with random strangers so he would come back to me with the certainty that I was the one for him. He was too boring. He needed to break borders, go beyond boundaries and get international. He needed to try chicks from Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines, Japan, Macau, China, Taiwan, Cambodia and Laos. He needed to have mistresses and secret lovers, it was a sign of wealth and power anyways. Even sex with prostitutes was too plain vanilla, too predictable with no surprises. He needed to go out there and have fun, maybe try unprotected sex once in a while to release his stress and to reward himself for all the hard work and hours he pulled in. It felt like an electric shock without the condoms on, hell yeah.

I told him to work hard, and play even harder. Sex should be a good thing; it was a legal escape to forget your pain, damn right it could be so good for your health with no bad consequences. It could speed up your blood circulation and metabolism and flex your muscles. Ejaculations and orgasm that came with it could release endorphins. He should have sex and watch porn whenever he needed a break from work. Sex in the office, next to the copy machines, after a conference on the table in the meeting room, or in the bathroom whenever he felt like it. Lan Kwai Fong was just around the corner. Wall Street wouldn't care if you went to a strip club for paid sex over the weekend. All they cared was how much revenue you brought to the firm. Apparently, all the notorious nightclubs, Tasmania Ballroom, Volar, Magnum and Prive (as well as Sugar and Hei which no longer in operation) were owned by the managing directors of the banking industry, and specifically Merrill Lynch, as overheard from gossips in the street. After all, my friend, Gary Choy, was the owner of many nightclubs in Tsim Sha Tsui and Soho. He was also a financial expert in backdoor listing in the local stock market. And you should keep in mind that Rex, my first love, had a helicopter parent from Macau mob. Hong Kong wanted you to have fun and buy sex, so why not? Pimp, pimp, hooray.

In order to help Edmond succeed, I needed to get familiar with the banking industry myself too. So I took introduction to accounting and finance with Jaywon Lee, a graduate student at the business school at the time. I worked very hard for the class, because I wanted to know the basics of corporate finance. I didn't intend to work in IBD but I needed to see what it took to get myself there. I attended every TA session held weekly outside of class; I asked thoughtful questions whenever I had a doubt about anything; I never missed a class; I did every problem set as told and sought help from my Singaporean friends. Before the exam, I churned up every detail in the mock test and made sure I could understand all the concepts right.

I also learned to buy a few stocks, as suggested and recommended by my instructor, Jaywon Lee. I opened an account at Charles Schwab, an online e trading platform with just 500 USD dollars to start. Part of the reasons why I didn't consider Wall Street at all at the beginning of college was that I hated stocks and stocks investments. I always doubted the legitimacy of those stock trading recommendations on TV and in magazines; if they were so good at investing, they wouldn't be a 講股佬 offering tips in the press. I never believed in free lunch anyways; how trustworthy could those free stock tips be if it was offered to the public at no costs?

I learned to read the balance sheet and cash flow statements, thus knowing how to analyze a firm's P/E ratio or EBITDA, while minding the fact that I grew up in Hong Kong where stocks were mostly traded on emotions and headline news, often times with insider trading. There was no science to trading, I supposed. I reckoned that it was all psychology. I picked a few stocks based on the theories I learned in textbooks; and it turned out that what I learned in class had nothing to do how the market operated.