Alice Adams - Invincible Summer

‘Sixty-four million,’ said Graham.

Eva felt a malevolent smile creep across her face. That was a bad move on the part of the seller. An unrounded number meant the other side was genuinely telling her their total size. If she bought it all, the counterparty would be wiped out and wouldn’t be showing any more offers in the market.

‘Done, I pay on,’ said Eva, making it clear to the market that she’d buy more at that price. Ten minutes left and she still had some size to buy. Before anybody else had a chance to put an offer in, effectively capping the market, she made her play.

‘97 bid.’ Several minutes passed in tense silence. ‘98 bid.’ Still nothing. Time to go in for the kill with a big increase in price, an insanely aggressive move, but without an offer in the market it was worth a try. ‘A hundred bid, Graham.’

‘A hundred? Are you sure?’

‘Like I said, par bid.’

‘Yours, I’ve got two different sellers.’

‘Graham, tell them their size is my size and I’m going to be bid over. I’m keeping this market here till the close. I’ll take them both out.’

‘That should be enough to scare off your sellers.’ Big Paul rolled over to her desk in his chair. ‘Where are we at?’

‘Two counterparties have sold me fifty million each and gone away to look at doing more. I’ve got five hundred and fifty, so I only want fifty more, max,’ she told him tersely, glancing at her screen. ‘Still, only a few minutes till close.’

Big Paul was rigid at her shoulder as Graham came back on the line.

‘Par ten on offer.’

‘Mine, do twenty million.’

‘He’ll do fifty.’

‘No, twenty’s fine,’ she said, and the power was back with the seller. Another twenty seconds dragged past.

‘Yours at a hundred.’

‘How many?’

‘Twenty.’

‘Done.’

‘Second seller giving you.’

‘Okay, how many?’

‘A hundred.’

Shit. She couldn’t take a hundred, but there was under half a minute to go till four o’clock.

‘Is that his full size? I want his total size.’

If she could just drag this out until the market level was taken at four o’clock, the last trading price would be her trade at 100.00. She switched screens and tapped this number into her pricing spreadsheet. If the market closed at this level she’d be making thirty million euros. Thirty million euros in a day’s trading! There were one, maybe two other traders on the floor who could say they’d had a day like that in their whole career.

‘Two-fifty is his full size.’

She watched in silence as the seconds to four o’clock ticked away.

‘I’ll take ten million,’ she shouted down the line as the clock turned four, collapsing back into her chair laughing as the market closed. She was still three hundred million short, and without her bidding the price would collapse tomorrow on the open as these big sellers came in. She would make a killing.

Big Paul hauled himself out of his creaking chair and onto his feet. ‘Right then. Time for some PR. Follow me.’

Eva trailed after him across the trading floor, unsure where he was headed until he marched straight through Brad Whitman’s office door without even knocking, causing him to look up with a half-annoyed, half-expectant expression on his face.

‘Brad, you know Eva, right? I heard we’re scrabbling around for money to make target in time to get the comp ratio up for a decent bonus pool, so I thought we’d come and share a bit of good news.’ Big Paul grabbed Eva’s arm and thrust her forward. ‘What’s the P’n’L going to be on the Bellwether BTPs, Eva?’

‘Um, should be about thirty million euros. So about thirty-five million in dollars.’

The smile that spread across Brad Whitman’s face was far less vacant than the one he’d given her earlier, and he seemed to be looking directly at her for the first time. ‘Good work, Eva. That’s what I need to hear. Did you hear the Exotics desk posted a ten-million-dollar loss yesterday? Those useless fucks. Thank God I’ve got some traders who actually make money, eh?’

Eva and Paul backed out of the office nodding and smiling and headed back towards their desks.

‘Right, I need a drink,’ announced Paul once they were out of earshot. ‘And if I do, you definitely do.’

‘ You need a drink?’ squeaked Eva. ‘You were the one telling me to relax. I thought you were confident it would all pan out.’

‘Yeah, well, you’ve got to front it out but nothing’s done till it’s done, right? Four mil down’s not a comfortable place for the guy with the biggest balls in the world let alone a whippersnapper like you.’ He pulled his jacket off the back of his chair. ‘Come on. You need to get me to the boozer sharpish for a medicinal libation to help me recover from the heart attack you’ve nearly given me today.’

‘It’s only four o’clock,’ she protested. ‘We can’t leave now.’

‘ Au contraire , my little friend. Today, we can do whatever the fuck we want. We just made the best part of full-year budget on a single deal. Robert’ll forgive us anything once he sees the P’n’L. Angela, if anyone asks we’re with Market Risk,’ he called across to the team secretary, as he headed for the door with Eva trailing in his wake.

‘Not drinking? You’re kidding, right?’ Eva looked up at her friend incredulously. She’d been in the pub for several hours by the time Sylvie arrived, and had expected her to be delighted that she was up for making a night of it. Sylvie, though, seemed unwilling to stay for the one-for-the-road that Big Paul was insisting they have before heading off to somewhere they could talk properly.

‘Well. .’ said Sylvie. ‘I’m sort of on the wagon right now. And I thought we were going to, you know, go somewhere to do a bit of catching up?’

Robert, who had joined Eva and Big Paul in the bar and was unashamedly eavesdropping on the conversation, gave them a beseeching look.

‘Ladies, you’re not going to make us finish this bottle of champagne alone, are you now? What does it take to make you let your hair down? Thirty million of P’n’L has to be worth a celebration. And, anyway, you can’t leave me alone with this fat fuck. He tried to follow me home and climb into bed with me the last time we had a night out together.’

‘You know you love it,’ shouted Big Paul, rubbing his fingers in a circular motion over his nipples and then grabbing Robert’s face in both hands and planting an extravagant kiss on his forehead.

Eva squeezed Sylvie’s hand. ‘Do you mind staying just for one? We’ve had an incredible day.’ She lowered her voice and added, ‘Then we can go somewhere else and talk properly. Robert’s my boss, so I can’t really say no. Plus, it’s no bad thing to celebrate getting your best friend back with a glass of champagne, right?’

Sylvie didn’t look convinced but, sensing an opening, Big Paul insistently pressed a glass into her hand. ‘Here’s to big P’n’L and commensurately large Edward de Bonos. Ladies, they don’t call me The Whale for nothing!’

‘If you think your P’n’L is the reason they call you The Whale, I’ve got some bad news for you,’ Robert told him, causing Eva to snort the mouthful of champagne she had just taken down her nose and cast around for a napkin.

‘Laugh it up, bossman. But money talks, and our P’n’L is telling you that come bonus time, you gots to make it RAIN.’ He broke into song, tunelessly shouting, ‘Ooh, yeah, I wish it would rain down, down on me,’ before gyrating rhythmlessly around the table in an approximation of a rain dance.