If people say I paid someone more because I liked them, okay. I don't think that's a bad thing.
— Howard Lutnick
The only reason to have money is to share it with your friends and have fun.
When you take away all the people whose shoulders a CEO stands on, the CEO is just a person.
Dead-low interest rates are great for stocks. They don't run up, they creep up.
People looked to rating agencies to do the work for them.
My goal after 9/11 was to take care of the families of the people we lost, and that was the most important thing.
After Hurricane Sandy, we adopted 19 elementary schools in tough neighborhoods. We took each kid in those schools and gave the family a prepaid Visa card.
The combination of Cantor and eSpeed will earn more money and be more profitable than we ever were before September 11.
The people in Washington spend too much time in Washington, so they think Washington-centric thoughts.
People don't value strongly enough how much time they spend in the office. Imagine you could work with people you love - wouldn't work be great and staff turnover be lower? And your productivity higher?
Haverford was there for me and taught me what it meant to be a human being.
Anything commodity-like will be sold online. The world is going to trade commodities like it trades stocks.
It's the details that make people distinct, that make them individuals.
You can't make promises you can't keep.
Athletics weren't really in the cards in my family - books, not body.
What people really haven't thought about with real estate is, if you get tax reform, you're going to see real estate now... the velocity of selling and buying real estate will just kick.
It's hard for bad things to happen when you have no debt.
Data drives success. That is how we began our success with eSpeed. It was always based on the data.
The best way to show someone you love them is to care for the people they love.
Our whole lives, did any of us actually think a quarter of a percent was actually an interest rate?
Personally, I find it odd that they would name it One World Trade Center. Frankly, I think if they named it any company name, I would think it was - you know, the memorial is beautiful, but I don't know why they don't change the name. That just seems so odd to me.
Washington is not the engine of the economy.
With management and employees on the same side of the table, your interests are aligned, and shareholders look at you as one.
In this business, technology is life or death.
I worked during summers on the foreign exchange desk as a dollar/yen broker for Noonan, Astley & Pierce. I used to write the chairman notes about how he could improve his business. And I met Bernie Cantor through this job.
For us to be successful, we have to kick our competitors' butt.
I would blast AC/DC and walk out onto the tennis court and try to hit the ball hard.
I have great kids and family.
eSpeed took the worst that the world could dish out, and it still stood and performed.
The idea that big buyside firms are going to come in and trade mano-a-mano with high-frequency trading firms shows a lack of knowledge of the business.
The World Trade Center was the target for the world, and they hit the target.
The Cantor reputation is one we get from clients and those we hire.
New York is a spectacular place, and those who are jealous of the way we live our lives are always going to, you know, to strike out, and, you know, we're always going to be a target, sadly. London is going to be a target. You know, anywhere in the West, you're a target.
You have to give people more than one chance. We hire people in job A, and if it doesn't work out, we try them on job B. We'll generally give them three different tries. You have to be more committed to training, but you know they have the right stuff because someone you think highly of has recommended them.
Without parents, you sort of lose the gravity that keeps your feet on the earth.
In 1997, clients balked at self-ordering. They thought it was beneath them. But in 1998, a sea change in perception came, thanks to the rise of the Net and online trading. The concept of doing it yourself was not crazy.
I believe in what I call 'the surfer's theory.' You see a really, really big wave. You keep surfing, keep going forward. You just don't look back.
