We dropped in on Cooke & Burne the other day to chat with our old friend Llewellyn Swypes, a.k.a. Lewie the Dip. The Swypes family has worked Wall Street for generations now, dipping into everything that flows. Wherever money changes hands anywhere in the rackets, you’ll find a Swypes buddied up between the counterparties.
It’s the only place to be when you’re dipping.
Lewie used to dip into trades for eighths and quarters back when the Street used a fractional system, but things got decimalized, and the whole business changed, and now he’s into suckers for .125’s and .25’s.
We found Lewie straddling the Cooke & Burne main frame when we reached the Crime Family’s underground data processing center in subbasement C. The Dip was kind of nestled between input and output, astride something called the crossput, a keyboard thingy in each hand. Fingers blurred, he talked about his place in this speedy new world.
“I used to stand on the trading room floor“, he reminisced a little tearfully, “between two wise guys. Now look at me.” I did, and clearly The Dip had a computer up his a$$. But orders were passing through, and just as clearly The Dip was dipping.
“How do you dip anyway?” I asked, and Lewie’s face brightened. You could see he loved this job.
“I’m dipping .25s today. On a $30 trade, buyer pays 30.25, seller gets $29.75” I’m dipping into both sides of the transaction.
"So everybody gets dipped.”
“It‘s America. You‘re an American, aren‘t you? Everybody gets dipped in America.”
Just then two trades crossed on the tape. They had to be Lewie’s.
“Who bought from the Seller at $29.75?” I wondered.
“Cooke & Burne.”
“Who sold to the buyer at 30.25?”
“Cooke & Burne.”
“So that’s how proprietary trading works.”
“I couldn’t say. That information is proprietary.”
The Dip made $21.8 billion for Cooke & Burne last year, pulling down $1.7 billion in total compensation himself, including Christmas bonus. Most mobsters consider Lewie the smartest trader on The Street.
He’s certainly got the stickiest little fingers in town.
