This is how you haze a Wall Street newbie with just one chart
No one likes a newbie on Wall Street, so the first day of work can be tough. Bankers love a little hazing.
That's what Jason DeSena Trennert, now CEO at leading brokerage-research firm, Strategas Securities LLC, learned on his first day on the job. In his new book, "My Side of the Street: Why Wolves, Flash Boys, Quants and Masters of the Universe Don't represent the Real Wall Street" he describes how one of his new colleagues scared him with just one simple chart.
It went like this.
In 1991, Tennert got a job at International Strategy and Investment (which merged with Evercore in 2014).
Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, Trennert told his ISI colleagues to call him "Jase" and gushed about his love of Wall Street on his first day of work.
Then he met his new colleague, Patrick Alwell, a " guy who enjoyed breaking other people's balls."
There are a lot of those on Wall Street.
After their meeting, Alwell pulled out a paper and jotted down this optimistic career projection for young Trennert:
My Side of the StreetBrutal.
"You see this big point here?" he asks. "Well, this is where our industry and your career are going," he said.
Alwell throws the paper into the air.
"Scarcely nine hours into my chance at fame and fortune as a Wall Street financier, a nattily dressed, glib Irishman with a pocket square told me that my career was essentially over before it had started. Welcome to Wall Street, pal," Trennert writes.
Kind of a rough start.