Alice Adams - Invincible Summer

‘What’s happening in BTPs?’

She looked around for Big Paul or Robert, but their desks were empty; it was definitely her he was talking to.

‘Well, they opened fifteen basis points up on the back of the ECB announcement,’ she told him.

He nodded. ‘Feels like something’s happening in the market. Ten-year Italy’s as expensive as I’ve seen it in, what, four years? Haven’t you guys got a big order today?’

‘Yeah. Nine hundred million. I’m in the market for the first six hundred before today’s close.’

He leant down with an arm on her desk, close enough to engulf her in a cloud of expensive aftershave, and read from her screen over her shoulder. ‘94.10 to 94.60. Where are we long?’

‘A bit higher than that, but it’s all under control. I’m just letting the market settle here before bringing out the big guns,’ she lied.

He stood silently looking at her, or perhaps at something in the distance beyond her shoulder. Had he not heard her? Was something else expected?

‘Should make a big number on this,’ she continued, hearing the words fly out of her own mouth without meaning them to. What the fuck had she said that for? Did she have some form of impress-the-management Tourette’s? God, she was pathetic, as pathetic as the Brad-cultists.

‘Make sure you don’t end up the wrong way on this, Evelyn.’ He smiled broadly and vacantly in her direction, already beginning to glide away. ‘Year-end cut-off is tomorrow, and it’s touch and go as to whether we make budget. We need everything we can get.’

Eva slumped in her seat, half relieved at the conversation being over and half in despair at not having owned up to her losses, and worse, making it sound like she was going to make money. Still, she reasoned, she couldn’t really make the situation much worse anyway. If she lost another half a million she’d have reached her stop-loss and she’d have to ring Market Risk and own up, and would be effectively barred from trading. Game over. You did occasionally hear of traders getting stopped out and then having their losses cleared and their trading book reset to zero but for that to happen you’d have to have friends in high places, which was in no way an accurate description of her own situation.

A broker was walking across the floor handing out takeaway food and she grabbed a couple of bags of greasy thick-cut chips, wolfing them down at her desk without taking her eyes off her screens. They sank to her stomach like boulders and stayed there, refusing to digest.

‘How’s it going?’ asked Big Paul, arriving back from a meeting.

‘I’m a bit underwater on those BTPs at the moment,’ she mumbled, thinking that even if she was going down, she’d be damned if she was going to let him see how nervous she was.

He looked at the numbers on the screen and then back at her pale face and laughed. ‘Just a bit, eh? Look at you, you’re bricking it. This is all going to be fine, I’m telling you. You just have to hold your nerve.’

‘Easy for you to say. Whitman’s been walking the floor and I was the only one here. He asked about the BTPs and basically told me I better make him some money today. On the upside he called me Evelyn — he can’t fire me if he doesn’t actually know who I am, right?’

Big Paul smiled. ‘Oh, don’t worry about that, it’s just how he keeps people on their toes. Graces you with some unexpected attention and then menaces you with his expectations. I worked under him at Goldman back in the day. He knows fuck all about markets, but he’s supremely good at making people scared enough they’ll do anything to make money for him. You notice how his eyes point in different directions? The rumour used to be that he’d had an operation to do that on purpose, the better to freak people out when he talks to them. You’re never quite sure whether you’ve got his attention and then he pounces on you like a shark.’ His voice was admiring. ‘Has he done that other thing to you yet, where he makes a comment and then just stands there without saying a word until you start gabbling to fill the silence? God, it’s effective. I’ve seen him break people with that in meetings. They end up telling him whatever they think he wants to hear, and then it’s on them to go away and make it happen.’

‘I’m still trying to picture a shark pouncing,’ said Eva, to avoid admitting that that was exactly what had just happened to her.

‘Like a fucking great-crested pouncing shark, I’m telling you. Anyway. It’s what, one thirty now, so two and a half hours till close. Try not to get stopped out or lose our bonuses, eh.’

*

It was still a bit early to be trying to really work the market but Eva thought she might actually scream if she had to sit there fidgeting any longer, so she opened up the line to her broker.

‘Put a forty bid in, Graham.’

Her bid appeared on the screen and she waited, expecting the seller from earlier to hit her out of sight. The seconds stretched out, warping and elongating in the air around her. She slumped in her chair with a clammy sense of inevitability, growing so resigned to her fate that she had to blink and double-check when suddenly the sixty offer disappeared from her screen. That was unexpected; could the market actually be shifting back in her direction or was it just a blip? A few trades and ten minutes later, the offer was back up to 95.10. Was it actually possible that the sellers were finally getting scared off?

All day the momentum had been against her, and momentum was almost impossible to reverse. But now it felt as though something was weakening, slackening. Was it really possible that this could turn from a career-ending day of humiliation and failure to a triumph? The sheer range of possible outcomes and their implications for her future seemed unfathomably vast as she sat balanced at what might just be a point of inflection. Things could still go either way. Eva felt a strange calm descend upon her. She opened up a line and began to trade.

*

‘There, look, you’re nearly back to flat,’ came Big Paul’s voice from behind her some time later, sweeping her attention out of the screens of flickering numbers that she had been entirely immersed in, and he was right, she’d forced the market back to a level at which her losses had almost completely evaporated. Her surroundings swung back into focus and she realized that he’d been doing nothing but sitting at his desk watching the BTP market move as she traded.

‘Damn right,’ she told him. ‘Watch this. If we can just get back up to ninety-six, we’ll be in business.’

It was three o’clock now, with just one hour to go before the market closed. Over the last few minutes two of the higher offer prices had disappeared from her screen, which could mean that people were finishing up for the day, or just that they wanted her to think that they were. Still, if there were ever a time to strike it was now. Eva kept buying steadily until she had about two-thirds of the six hundred million bonds she wanted that day and there were just twenty minutes to go. The sellers were pulling back and she could see the path to the finish line opening up in front of her. The best offer was now ninety-seven, allowing her to exhale.

‘96.50 bid,’ she told the broker. It was a high enough bid that she expected to trade immediately. Fifteen minutes to go.

‘Can show you eighty offer,’ came Graham’s voice down the line.

‘They’re coming at you,’ growled Big Paul from behind her. ‘Hold your nerve.’

‘Repeat my bid,’ she told the broker. She was damned if she was going to bid at a higher price now.

‘Seventy offer,’ came the reply.

Time for a show of force. ‘Mine. I’ll cover your size.’ She was putting her cards on the table now, revealing that she’d buy as much as they would sell.