Deutsche Bank's ex-top trader on how to beat the Ivy Leaguers on Wall Street
Matt Connolly's Wall Street career came to two endings, one bad and one good.
In the first, Connolly - who was the head of Deutsche Bank's New York derivatives trading desk, lost his job in 2016 and was accused by the German bank of rigging the LIBOR rate. He was convicted of fraud in 2018.
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In the second, Connolly appealed that conviction, was exonerated of all charges and demanded $150m in damages from Deutsche Bank, which settled his claim out of court last July.
Following this second, and happier ending, Connolly presumably has enough money to avoid working again. He now spends a lot of time on X, where he can often be found taking potshots at unnamed former colleagues at Deutsche.
While Connolly might be the hero of traders wronged by big banks, he could also be the hero of non-target students who make it into front office banking jobs.
Connolly didn't attend a top Ivy League College. Instead, he got into Wall Street via the back door by becoming a clerk at JPMorgan in 1987. "My friend's brother-in-law hired me," Connolly, who is now aged 58, tells us. "I worked 80-hour weeks and hung around trading desks like a groupie until I begged my way into a repo desk trading job in 1990."
At that time, Connolly says that repo trading jobs were the least glamorous of all. "None of the MBAs wanted anywhere near that desk, which is the only reason I got my shot."
And yet, the MBAs and the Ivy Leaguers were all around. Connolly, who has also authored several books on his experiences, says that he was briefly invited to participate in Deutsche Bank's executive committee meetings. There, he says, he found that attendees mostly spent time discussing how to claim revenues from other Deutsche Bank business areas for their own benefit. When he asked whether it wouldn't be better to discuss gaining market share, Connolly says he was met by an uncomfortable silence. He was subsequently approached by someone in fancy French shoes after the meeting, who accused him of making the group look stupid. He wasn't invited to attend again.
"I definitely have a chip on my shoulder about anything academia related," admits Connolly. "I hate the assumption people make that someone's diploma automatically makes them smart. Or the assumption that the more money someone makes, the smarter they are."
Wall Street unfortunately attracts these sorts of people, Connolly says. "The most annoying ones were the ones that brought absolutely nothing to the table, but who smugly looked down at those of us that barely finished school and started as clerks....In every argument, their answer involves their "schooling" or professor or even referencing a person from their business school."
However, Connolly says trading has its own way of dealing with this approach. If someone waves credentials as validation for a trading position, he says you can almost always make money trading against them. Garry Stevenson says something similar about his time on Citi's STIRT desk (while ironically waving his credentials a lot in his new YouTube incarnation). "I knew if I took the other side of their trades, I would make some $$$," says Connolly. "Sometimes it was as simple as that. Annoying? Yes. Bad for the bank? Yes, when they were on your team. Fun to trade against, though."
Markets are immune to credentials, says Connolly. "Nothing is quite like the feeling of beating the snot out of someone in the markets that constantly tries to wave their diploma in your face," he reflects, gently.
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