==== Is having contacts important in order to be plugged into the news? ====
Absolutely. Those of us who did well were generally the ones who were accepted by the interbank circle. The traders who stayed aloof tended to be the ones who couldn't make any money trading foreign exchange. These traders would end up calling a clerk on the Mere floor [the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, which trades futures on currencies-an active but still far smaller market than the interbank market] and would say, "So, how does the Swissy look?" What is a clerk going to know about what is actually driving the international currency market? I would be talking to bankers throughout the day and night-in Tokyo, London, Frankfurt, and New York.