It not all about the money

Working in financial services has its funny moments although I must admit that some anecdotes are difficult to relay to someone from outside the sector. The following are just a few that I heard or experienced myself.

The penny-share man

A man approaches an investment advisor wanting to invest in a penny share. The advisor states up front that he does not have the expertise to provide advice on penny shares and thus the client would have to trade on an ‘execution only’ basis.

The client, bloating with confidence, promptly replies that this was not a problem; he possessed the necessary knowledge and experience. The share that he wanted to invest-in was JC Penny!

His mark

A regular client happened to be illiterate. A financial advisor would first go through the investment suggestions. The client would then mark documents with a cross. I remember that this particular client had an exceptional instinct at picking the right investments.

One fine day, this same client, exhibiting a look of pride that was impossible to miss, picked up the pen, and with a shaky hand, a sparkle in his eyes, signed his name.

The investment advisor, with the tact of a chicken, and the guile of a dodo, looked at his ID card, compared the signatures and asked the client to cancel the signature and mark the documents with a cross.

Diversification

An investment advisor patiently explains to an investor about the need to diversify his investments with the resultant benefits of risk spreading and possibly increased income. The investor only had bank deposits with one local bank.

The investor spent a week opening and transferring funds into different bank accounts in different branches of the same bank across Malta.

The peseta trade

This one is from some time back. A relationship manager receives an order to purchase Spanish Peseta for a client. The manager calls a familiar trader requesting the purchase of ‘five hundred’ Spanish Peseta. Five hundred Peseta represented circa one Maltese lira.

The trader moves on instinct and buys 500 million pesetas, volumes of Lm 1million are normal in his environment. The request was for 500 thousand. That same day, the Spanish bank were the money is placed, goes bust.

Fortunately, the Spanish Bank is capitalized and the funds are returned. So no harm resulted in the end, just a few days of suspense.