Jan

7

We regret to inform you that Edward T. Dunne (more simply know as Ed, or Mr. E), a longtime friend and major inspiration for this site (in fact he was one of the 4 spec list founders, back in 1998), died on Monday of a heart attack.  To honor his memory, the Dailyspec will be in mourning for 1 week.

Information about the memorial service can be found here .

Some memories of Ed. He knew more about the technical details of the infrastructure of every market than any man alive. He always knew what the current and future weather conditions of every country in the world were and would call you up to wake you up , to stay out of the cold, or beware of a coming earthquake or tsunami, or get out of your positions.

He was the inventor and early user of many of the financial innovations in the fixed income and energy markets. He was a loyal friend who would always be by your side in a time of need.

He played a great piano, and confided that several of the pieces that Billy Joel and Chris Rock sang, he wrote for them.

He liked to tell you that grains were sure to go thru the roof because he had just driven thru the farms in Iowa and could tell you exactly what the growing conditions were.

When an attractive woman was in the audience, he would confide to her that he personally owned 50% of the entire world wide soybean crop and could guarantee that his market call would be rite.

The last time I saw him we sang Old Man river together . He had a great bass voice, and a beautiful operatic voice. The last time I spoke to him he called me up at 1 am to tell me that there was conspiracy going on in France particularly and that a eminent personage I mite have wished to communicate with was likely a spy, and that any contact with him mite bring us all down.

I had the pleasure of lending him money when he was in need, and he confided to me that he didn't wish to sell any of the 5 or 10 business magazine he owned at this time as they were worth in the hundreds of millions but he didn't want to sell them now because he cared for the employees.

When he entered a room, all conversation would stop and he would sit in a big arm chair and stentorianly regale the hundreds in attendance with the latest conspiracies that were going on, and how he had made billions by seeing thru it.

He liked to confide that he had picked up a check for the junior members of a firm, because of oblige. He was very proud of his son and confided that he was the best trader and squash player in the firm and was running it, except for the boss.

He and I liked to talk about his ancestors, who was the head of Tammany Hall, and the best handball player in the world and the power behind the building of the Brooklyn Bridge and every other important thing that happened in NY in those days.

If there were an attractive woman in the room, he would let her know just how powerful he was and all attention from the woman would gravitate to him. He liked to send 200 newspapers from around the world to you every day so that you could not be the only one to miss out on the skinny.

He confided that he was one of the three people who had seen the keys to Rebecca and in that book, it told him what each day was going to bring for the next 1000 years in the markets.

He was a character out of Shakespeare ( Falstaff ), Louis Lamour ( Old Doc Yak ) and Rabelais ( Pantagruel ), and he loved to play the role. No one knew how to work the phones better than him, and he loved to call up important talk shows and get on with his certainty of being connected with his battery of phones, only to get the host in a conversation that would move markets in his direction.

He grew the best tomatoes in the world, and caught the largest tuna in the world in his boat, and would often bring a portion of two of tuna to the spec parties. He was a very good athlete surprisingly mobile, and confided that he once won the pivotal game against Princeton.

He often had personal ones on ones with the Chair of the Fed at Princeton soirees which only he and a few select friends were allowed to attend. He could game the system and pretend to be various persons in Email better than anyone in the world.

He confided that his bonus for the last year was in the nine figures but that he hadn't taken it for fear that it would create too much havoc. He loved to call people a girl if they made a market prediction based on regularities that was in an opposite direction from his recently taken 100% gain.

He and Yale Hirsch were always fighting about his conservative views and Yale's opposite and Yale demanded a vote as to who would stay on the list, and he won the vote 100 to 1.

He loved to tell you how he just made 100 million and was up 100% in the
month, and better yet, he got it from the pockets of the atheists,
people of  the wrong persuasion, immigrants, and liberals.

I could go on, but there never was a man like him. He was powerful, multi-talented, omnivorous, ad totally sagacious, and completely cognizant of all his assets, and he only wished that you could share in them. There never will be one like him and the world is a much smaller place. He was highly religious, and certainly believed that he would be watching over us in the unlikely event that he ever died, which was impossible because he had just lost 50 pounds and exercised every day. Vic


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1 Comment so far

  1. Bruce Hillyer on January 8, 2015 2:53 pm

    I appreciate the re-write, thank you.

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