Alan Glynn - The Dark Fields aka Limitless

I said nothing.

Frank Pierce, who was quite chubby and had beady eyes, said, ‘Horseshit. If it could be done, you think someone wouldn’t have done it by now?’ He looked around, and then added, ‘I mean, we all do quantitative analysis, we all do the math , but they’ve been going on about this other stuff for years, this black-box stuff, and it’s crap. It’s like trying to turn base metals into gold, it can’t be done, you can’t beat the markets – but there’ll always be some jerk with too many college degrees and a pony-tail who thinks you can.’

‘With respect,’ Kevin said, addressing himself to Frank Pierce, but obviously trying to draw me out at the same time, ‘there are some examples around of people who have beaten the markets, or appear to have.’

‘Beaten the markets how ?’

Kevin glanced over in my direction, but I wasn’t going to rise to the bait. He was on his own.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘we haven’t always had the technology we have now, we haven’t always had the capacity to process such huge amounts of information. If you analyse enough data, patterns will emerge, and certain of those patterns just may have predictive value.’

‘ Horseshit ,’ Frank Pierce boomed again.

Kevin was a little taken aback at this, but he soldiered on. ‘I mean, by using complex systems and time-series analysis you can… you can identify pockets of probability. Then you patch these together into some mechanism for pattern-recognition…’ – he paused here, less sure of himself now, but also in too deep to stop – ‘… and from there you build a model to predict market trends.’

He looked over at me imploringly, as if to say Eddie, please, am I on the right track here? Is this how you’re doing it?

‘Patterns my ass,’ said Pierce. ‘How do you think we made our money?’ He leant his weight forward in the chair and with his stubby index finger rapidly identified himself and Van Loon. ‘Huh?’ Then he pointed to his right temple, tapped it slowly, and said, ‘Un-der-standing. That’s how. Understanding how business works. Under standing when a company is overvalued, or undervalued. Under standing that you never make a bet you can’t afford to lose.’

Van Loon turned to me, like a chat-show host, and said, ‘Eddie?’

‘Absolutely,’ I said in a quiet voice, ‘no one could argue with that…’

‘ But? ’ Pierce snorted sarcastically. ‘There’s always a but with these guys.’

‘Yes,’ I went on, sensing Kevin’s obvious relief that I had deigned to speak, ‘there is a but. It’s a question of velocity’ – I had no idea what was coming next – ‘because… well, there’s no time for human judgement anymore. You see a chance, you blink and it’s gone. We are entering the age of decentralized, online decision-making, with the decisions being made by millions – and potentially hundreds of millions – of individual investors all around the world, people who have the ability to shift huge amounts of money around in less time than it takes to sneeze, but without consulting each other. So, understanding doesn’t come into it – or, if it does, it’s not understanding how companies work, it’s understanding how mass psychology works.’

Pierce waved a hand through the air. ‘What – you think you can tell me why the markets boom or crash? Why today, let’s say? And not tomorrow, not yesterday?’

‘No, I can’t. But these are legitimate questions. Why should data cluster in predictable patterns? Why should there be a structure to the financial markets?’ I paused, waiting for someone to say something, but when no one did I went on, ‘because the markets are the product of human activity, and humans follow trends – it’s that simple.’

Kevin had gone pale by this stage.

‘And of course the trends are usually the same… one , aversion to risk, and two , follow the herd.’

‘ Pah ,’ said Pierce.

But he left it at that. He muttered something to Van Loon that I didn’t catch, and then looked at his watch. Kevin remained motionless, staring down at the carpet, almost in despair now. Is that it , he seemed to be thinking, human fucking nature? How am I supposed to turn that to my advantage?

What I was feeling, on the other hand, was acute embarrassment. I hadn’t wanted to say anything in the first place, but I could hardly have ignored Van Loon’s invitation to contribute. So what happens? I speak and end up being a patronizing asshole. Understanding doesn’t come into it? Where did I get off lecturing two billionaires about how to make money?

After a couple of minutes, in any case, Frank Pierce muttered his excuses and left without saying goodbye to either Kevin or myself.

Van Loon then seemed happy enough to let the conversation drift on for a while. We discussed Mexico and the probable effects the government’s apparently irrational stance was going to have on the markets. At one point, still fairly agitated, I caught myself reeling off a comparative list of per capita GDP figures for 1960 and 1995, stuff I must have read somewhere, but Van Loon cut me short and more or less implied that I was being shrill. He also contradicted a few things I said and was clearly right in each case to do so. I saw him looking at me once or twice, too – strangely – as if he were on the point of calling security over to have me ejected from the building.

But then, a bit later, when Kevin had gone to the bathroom, Van Loon turned to me and said, ‘I think it’s time we got rid of this clown.’ He indicated back to where the bathrooms were, and shrugged his shoulders. ‘Kevin’s a great guy, don’t misunderstand me. He’s an excellent negotiator. But sometimes. Jesus .’

Van Loon looked at me, seeking confirmation that I agreed with him.

I half smiled, unsure of how to react.

So here it came again, that thing , that anxious, needy response I’d somehow triggered in all of the others – in Paul Baxter and Artie Meltzer and Kevin Doyle.

‘Come on, Eddie, drink up. I live five blocks from here. We’re going back to my place for dinner.’

As the three of us were walking out of the Orpheus Room, I was vaguely aware that no one had paid the check or signed anything or even nodded to anyone. But then something occurred to me. Carl Van Loon owned the Orpheus Room, in fact owned the entire building – an anonymous steel-and-glass tube on Fifty-fourth between Park and Lexington. I remembered reading about it when the place had first opened a few years before.

Out on the street, Van Loon summarily dismissed Kevin by telling him that he’d see him in the morning. Kevin hesitated, but then said, ‘Sure, Carl. See you in the morning.’

We made eye contact for a second but both of us pulled away in embarrassment. Then Kevin was gone and Van Loon and I were walking along Fifty-fourth Street towards Park Avenue. He hadn’t had a limousine waiting after all, and then I remembered reading something else, an article in a magazine about how Van Loon often made a big thing of walking – and especially walking in his ‘quarter’, as though that somehow meant he was a man of the people.

We got to his building on Park Avenue. The brief trip from the lobby up to his apartment was indeed just that, a trip, with all of the elements in place: the uniformed doorman, the swirling turquoise marble, the mahogany panels, the brass radiator-grills. I was surprised by how small the elevator-car was, but its interior was very plush and intimate, and I imagined that such a combination could give the experience of being in it, and the accompanying sensation of motion – if you were with the right person – a certain erotic charge. It seemed to me that rich people didn’t think up things like this, and then decide to have them – things like this, little serendipitous accidents of luxury, just happened if you happened to have money.