An arbitrage trader is someone who takes advantage of the difference between two markets in bonds, stocks and commodities. I was an arbitrage trader before today’s traders even knew the term, only I wasn’t a Wall Street bull, I just traded in them.
One of the few things I do well is guessing the weight of cattle. I attribute this to being on livestock judging teams and to the fact that when I started in the cattle business auction markets didn’t have ring scales, so you didn’t know the weight of an animal before you bought it. One of my idols, Pat Goggins, changed everything when he installed the first ring scale at PAYS in Billings. (Pat also had the first video sale.)
Before ring scales cow buyers had to be really good at estimating weights. As a field editor I worked ring at auctions and sometimes I had an extra day to kill between purebred sales in foreign locales, like Socorro, Salina and Sealy. As an auction junkie I usually spent this time sitting in auction markets trying to guess the weight of cattle. It was my golf game.
I started in the cattle swappin’ trade at a time when there were way more bulls than buyers and that was reflected in the prices paid. Often, the purebred auctioneer selling the cattle didn’t know the weight of an animal within 200 pounds. Of course, if the sale was at an auction market, or if it was a sale barn auctioneer, all bets were off. Because I paid close attention to slaughter prices, when a bull entered the ring and the bid was cheaper than what I could get at the nearest auction market, I’d buy it. The most bulls I ever bought at one sale was 41 head.
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