Megan Abbott - Wall Street Noir

After her father’s death, Malia had planned to continue leasing out the seat. But David knew the extra few thousand a week after taxes wouldn’t be enough, not if they were to have children. He wanted kids, but Malia claimed she wasn’t ready. Their discussions had become arguments, worsening each month. Malia’s parents, though distant, had provided her with a comfortable childhood — piano and riding lessons, nice house, trips abroad, private school. David figured his wife’s reluctance stemmed from not wanting less for their own kids. But that took wealth — real wealth — the kind her father had made. The old guy had never said a word, but David was sure that Malia’s dad thought his daughter had married beneath her.

“This is our chance, Malia,” he had said. After a few weeks she had given in, and David quit his job at a brokerage firm and became a trader in the natural-gas pit. That had been nine months ago.

But things didn’t work out as David had planned. Floor trading for his own account was worlds away from sitting at a desk taking telephone orders from clients. Although he had mastered the skills of buying and selling on the Floor, David wasn’t a “natural.” He didn’t have a feel for the market, and couldn’t anticipate its ebbs and flows. Before long, he had burned through their nest egg. With barely any capital left, David had been reduced to trading one and two contracts at a time, eking out less than his former salary.

But David was convinced more volume could improve his returns. “To make money, you have to spend money,” he had told Malia. But they had no access to additional funds — unless Malia borrowed against the value of her seat. A million and a half dollars of trading capital, the clearing firm rep had told him. But Malia wouldn’t hear of it.

“It’s all we have for our retirement,” she had said when David raised the subject. Despite his entreaties, this time she stood firm, and David had resigned himself to an existence as a one-lotter. Until the phone call from his brother last week.

In love with the ocean, Thomas Sherwin had dropped out of college with the aim of spending his life on the deck of a ship. He currently ran a fairly successful fishing charter business out of a small port town in Louisiana.

“Got the boats out of the Gulf yesterday,” Tom had told David. “All the signs point to a big one coming our way — warm water, cold mass descending, no wind shear. Even the old timers are leaving. Looks like it’s going to hit around where those pipelines are.”

Tom knew weather, especially hurricanes. His livelihood depended on it. When he said a tropical storm was headed through the ocean toward the Henry Hub, David believed him.

After hanging up the phone, David had been overcome with a peculiar sensation. A hunch, a gut reaction. The other traders talked about them all the time, but David had never really understood before now. It was an awareness of having arrived at an unmarked intersection in life, the sense that if he didn’t act, he would forever suffer the misery of what could have been.

Getting the money turned out to be easier than he had thought. David merely slipped the signature page of the loan documents into the stack of tax returns waiting for Malia’s signature. As usual, she scribbled her name without reading anything. His clearing firm accepted it without question.

The Exchange required all members’ trades to be backed by a clearing firm. To secure the guarantee, members pledged collateral — usually cash, sometimes a letter of credit or the deed to an Exchange seat.

David liked his clearing firm rep. Earl Kinder was a tall, middle-aged man with the dry understanding of someone who had heard too many lies and witnessed too many traders undone by the pits. Though a bit too cautious for David’s taste, he was one of the few who did business with one-lotters.

Kinder’s fingers had hesitated over the keyboard. “There’s no shame in being a one-lotter, Dash.”

A photograph sat on the clearing house rep’s desk. It showed a round-cheeked woman and two boys with Kinder’s red hair, standing among piles of leaves in front of a modest white house. David had studied it for a moment.

“I’ll be fine,” he said.

Kinder had started typing, pushing back from the computer less than a minute later.

“There’s your one-point-five, Dash. You know the drill. If you fall below your margin, start liquidating, or I’ll do it for you. Lose it all, and I have to pull your badge and sell the seat.”

David briefly clenched his jaw. A million and a half dollars was in his trading account, secured by Malia’s seat. At last I’m holding size . It was like holding dynamite. He could feel the power — and the undercurrent of danger, too.

“I’ll be fine,” he repeated. “There won’t be a problem.”

After leaving the clearing firm’s offices, David had gone downstairs to the Floor. At an unattended computer, he had logged onto the National Hurricane Center’s website. The tropical storm was following the path his brother had predicted. We are not concerned about the Gulf Coast and we expect little if any impact on the oil industry, read the latest bulletin. But David hadn’t been swayed. Tom always called storms right. His gut told him there was no reason to doubt his brother now.

With twenty minutes left before the close, David had commenced buying. Ten, fifteen contracts at a time, working his way up. Some of the traders had been curious about such volume from a one-lotter, but David explained he was doing a favor for a broker friend.

After the closing bell rang, David had flipped through his trade pad, slightly astonished. He owned a hundred natural-gas contracts. Every ten-cent change in price meant a loss or gain of a hundred thousand dollars.

On the ferry ride home, David had paced the deck, restless and jumpy. He wouldn’t be riding the slow, fat boat much longer. Maybe he and Malia would move to Manhattan, or better yet, Connecticut. Malia and their kids would have their own leaf-strewn yard.

Now, thirty-six hours later, that life was within reach. All David had to do was watch the numbers go up as the red swirl moved across the screen. The hurricane closed in on the Hub, and the fifty-cent opening bump in price became sixty cents, then seventy-five.

“Thirty Deece at eighty-five!” someone yelled from the other side of the ring. David did the math in his head. Up a million and three-quarters. Caught up in the calculations, he didn’t hear the quiet voice right away.

“Looks like you made a good call, Dash,” Kinder repeat-ed.

Because a trader could buy or sell ten-dollars’ worth of contracts for every dollar’s worth of security posted, the clearing firms kept a close eye on their customers’ positions. If the market changed direction and a firm didn’t pull a trader’s badge in time, the clearing firm had to eat the loss. David had seen Kinder physically hustle a busted trader off the Floor so he couldn’t do any more damage — not to himself, but to the clearing firm’s credit line.

“Remember, the market gives, and the market takes away,” the clearing house rep said. “Don’t you think it’s time you covered?”

David checked the quote board. The December contract price had hit twelve dollars, up twenty percent from yesterday’s close. He’d made two million dollars in less than an hour — and the storm still hadn’t hit the Hub.

“Not yet,” he said.

But watching the clearing house rep walk away, David wondered exactly whom he was trying to convince. If he sold his position, he could pay back Kinder, redeem the seat, and be left with more trading capital that he had ever imagined, his one-lot days forever behind him. Malia would want me to get out . David stretched up on his toes, preparing to shout his offer, then hesitated.