Okay, Javelin, I have one question


What would you say is scarce???


I mean, it just sounds so easy. You keep this book of clients, they're all dumb, you uncover opportunities for them, given their unique situations, and then you split the profits.


So far as product placement, if you're friendly and have a good reputation, and the value is there, how hard could it be? So far as discovering and structuring products to place, Paul says these people are too dumb to do it themselves.


Is there really all this low-hanging fruit that no one else has the expertise to pick?


It really sounds like if you have the expertise, and no one else does, you could just about talk into a phone all day, and these fund managers will be afraid to put down the receiver at the other end, for anything short of an earthquake.


I mean, if I had a whole desk at my fingertips to dump off the other side, I could just about walk through a client's entire balance sheet through the end of time - while he pays the bar tab - and dream up about a thousand inefficiencies to exploit per page.


If I had two clients and two balance sheets, I'd find about a thousand 2+2=5 opportunities in three minutes. With 10 clients, in different industries and countries, I'd be looking at 1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1 = 100 in about an hour.


There'd be more opportunities than I could dream up if I didn't sleep for a year, for ten years. Is exhausting this stuff just a matter of creativity? Is it a matter of wishy-washy clients who are too wary of being hustled?


It just sounds like free-flowing cherry pie with no crust, and not enough forks.


And the back-office bean-counters - who make sure all the distributions line up at each point along the duration curve - what do you have to pay them, a few hundred thousand a year? Less?


Is it just a matter of salespeople who are simpatico but too dumb to get to the meat, is it clients who demand too much love, is it not enough phones, what is it?


Are the traders not good enough to give you an accurate picture of how fast the paper can be moved, at what price? Where's the weak link?


Is it that hard to price a default risk, to hedge a vix? Aren't there enough people to ask, to bang, at the other end of a thousand phones?


I'm a little baffled as to how you could not know who's near the end of their margins in any given month, in what industries, and in what products.


I'm a little curious how you could not have a window the whole way up the chain, whether into global revenue repatriation, bond-fund investor flows, or buy-side earnings model adjustments.


Is it just a matter of pushing all these wide-eyed dopes and nerds - fresh out of college - to collect it all, and run the numbers?


Do they chew gum, stutter, have a hang-up about guys, girls, strangers, closing aggressively?


What's scarce?


eLROY


P.S. I guess a better question might be, what's scarce now, that wasn't scarce two years ago? Thanks for your fun stories!