The World Trade Center lay in ruins as Jason Carroll and Alex Morcos pushed a borrowed mail cart past police barricades into lower Manhattan’s empty streets and toward the headquarters of proprietary trading startup Tower Research.
Wanting to be ready when markets reopened days after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the two employees heaped the cart with computer gear, dragged it to Morcos’ car and drove to Long Island, where a broker let them set up temporarily. But even after all that effort, they lost money once prices started moving.