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“Wall Street to me was professional sports
without the contact,” he said. As a commodities
trader, “each day there was a final score. You knew
if you’d won or lost. And I loved that mentality. I
loved that competition every day. That, to me, was
the hook of Wall Street.”
He quickly worked his way up to be head gold
trader at Drexel Burnham Lambert. Then in 1996,
he got a call from Goldman Sachs. He met with
two of the company’s executives, who explained
their head gold trader was leaving and they wanted
to offer him the position.
“And I remember sitting there thinking, wow,
this is pretty amazing.” Adami said when he asked
if he could have a little time to talk to his wife and
think about it, they looked him in the eye and said,
“You can have all the time you want, but we need
a decision before you leave this room.”
They were testing him, he said.
“You have to trust your instincts in life,” he
said. “We make thousands of decisions each day,
most of them mundane — ‘What shirt am I going
to wear?’ ‘What am I going to have for breakfast?’
But every once in a while, you have to make a decision
that’s going to change the outcome of your
life.
“I think we’re all born with great instincts. I
think we get ourselves in trouble when we fight
against our instincts.
“So I said: ‘You know what? You’re right. I don’t
need any time at all. When do I start?’ I trusted
my instincts and they proved to be right.”
A few years later, he faced another big decision.
Adami could see he wasn’t on track to make partner.
He’d have to decide if he should stand pat or
take his Goldman Sachs pedigree and parlay that
into an opportunity somewhere else.
In 2003 he got a job as an executive director
with CIBC World Markets. It proved to be a serendipitous
move.
Barely a week into his new job, CNBC came in
to do a segment on CIBC’s annual Charity Day.
When several colleagues balked at going on-camera,
it fell to Adami to do the segment.
“So, I went on air with Bertha Coombs, and we
talked about aluminum prices and steel companies,”
Adami said. “It was probably about 45 seconds
to a minute, and it went really well.”
In fact, it went so well that about a week later
Liz Claman called and asked if he’d like to come on
her show once or twice a week and give a report
from the trading desk.
He did this for about six months. Meanwhile,
CNBC was developing a new show, an “ESPN for
trading.” After a long audition process, Adami was
picked to be one of the “Fast Money Five.”
“Fast Money” began as an 8-minute segment
on another show. Then after a one-week run filling
in for another show, the network decided to give
“Fast Money” its own one-hour time slot.
“Now, I still had this day job at CIBC World
Markets,” Adami said. They’d been OK with him
doing his short segments, but they felt an hourlong
show was too much of a commitment. Adami
countered that it would be great publicity for the
company.
“The guys at CIBC didn’t see it that way,” he
said. “Once again, I had to make a choice.”
He was 42 years old, had three kids and was
making a good living. But how often does an opportunity
like this come along? Never again, he
figured, not if he turned down this one.
16 Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2019