Catholics and Protestants are all Christian. Republicans and Democrats are all American. Two examples of groups that are suffering from something I read about yesterday.
“Narcissism of small differences”
I’m going to make it easy on me and you and copy and paste the definition from Google.
“Narcissism of small differences describes the phenomenon where groups or individuals, despite sharing many similarities, become hypersensitive to minor differences and engage in conflict or hostility, often fueled by a need to assert their own identity or superiority.”
I’m not sure the degree of involvement that I have personally invested in this theory, but I am a member of one of the religions and one of the political parties mentioned at the beginning of today’s Morning Chalkboard.
The one battle that I was involved in for many years was the one between The Chicago Board of Trade and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.
The Board was known as the parochial school and the Merc was known as the public school.
Both started as commodity exchanges, the Board of Trade started in 1848 and the Mercantile Exchange in 1898. The Board traded futures on grains and the Merc traded futures on livestock.
In the nineteen seventies, both exchanges quickly grew as they explored financial markets and added options on futures to their portfolios.
The trading floors exploded with volume going into the 1980’s when me and most of my colleagues entered the arena.
We hated each other and the animosity between the two trading floors was usually a mutual “Fuck You.”
My belief and correct me if I am wrong was the Board was mostly Irish from Beverly, Oak Park and River Forest. The Merc was more Northshore Wasps and Jews mixed with Italians from the neighborhoods.
Both exchanges were a perfect example of cultures working together. Christians and Jews, Irish, German, Italian, Greek, Swedes, Blacks, Polish, Puerto Rican and Mexican.
There wasn’t a compliance office or Human Resources on the trading floor. We all mother fucked each other and called each other by their derogatory names.
But our common bond of brotherhood was the exchange that we worked on every morning.
Unfortunately, the boom of open outcry trading started to fade as the new millennium approached. The exchanges both realized that the future was bright if they grasped the advances in technology.
Into the new century and after 9/11, trading floors started losing volume to computer trading.
In the late 2000’s the exchanges merged and created the CME Group. The Merc jerks moved over to our trading floor. Both groups lost their identities and had to work together. We were all fighting the same battle, the eventual end to a career on the trading floor.
Both exchanges lost their country club personas when they became publicly traded. Then they were facing eviction notices. Finally closing down with the arrival of the China Flu.
Some people were rich enough to retire. Some had enough money to start a new venture or business, but the majority was stuck trying to make ends meet. The last group had to scramble for any crumbs they could find in the real world.
All of the energy wasted throughout the years on the narcissism of small differences never really mattered.
We were all making a living at an electrifying place. Sure, we used different hand signals and wore different colored trading jackets, but we all answered an opening and a closing bell.
Protestants and Catholics follow the same skinny long-haired Jew. Republicans and Democrats live across the street from each other in the same country.
Don’t let the little things divide you when your agreement on the big things should bind you.
I miss those glory days. Many of you would call 383-7242 and get my answering machine….
“This is Jumbo and I cannot come to the phone. I’m long in Chicago and short in New York. I’m selling in Singapore and buying in London. Please leave a message and I will call you when the market is closed.”
Beeeeeeep
I was a big shot arb clerk in the treasury note pits. Just like every kid at the Board or at the Merc…
…we were all Bud Fox looking to be Gordon Gecko.
Go out there today and buy low and sell high.
