markets. He’s noticed some interesting recent activity here. There’s a tremor that ripples upwards then draws back down. The same tremor is there in Small Cap, where his target shares are located, though you wouldn’t notice unless you knew what you were looking for. The pattern’s familiar, the usual ebb and flow of the market – what’s unusual is the retracement, which has slipped back below the previous pivot point. Something similar happened last week and again yesterday, but by the time trading closed it had righted itself. Today it’s happened again, and this time the retracement is 38.4 per cent – that’s 0.2 per cent lower than it should be according to the Fibonacci code. Is this a variant within the normal range of Fibonacci retracement, or the start of a market reversal? His heartbeat has stepped up a gear. He brings the charts up on his monitor.
The thing about predicting the markets is that it’s as much about psychology as science. The more people predict something, the more likely it is to happen – the stampede effect. Fibonacci allows for this human factor, it’s an intuitive system which has quite a following among traders, thanks in part of course to Dan Brown. There are all sorts of crude adaptations of the golden ratio out there, but the real secret of making money is simple – you have to get in there first.
‘There’s money to be made in falling markets if you’re bold enough to seize the moment, and smart enough to know when the moment is.’
He remembers the exact words Chicken had spoken during his interview a year ago. Serge had been sitting on a leather swivel chair, sweating with nerves, half strangled in that same borrowed Queens’ tie he’s wearing today (the difference now is that it’s ironic), knees clamped together and anchoring both feet on the ground in order to resist the temptation to swivel.
When he was offered the job and they initiated him into this game, it seemed incredible that you could borrow stocks and then sell them on straight away, before you’d even paid for them, then wait until the price drops and buy them back for less than you sold them for, and return them to the original lender, pocketing the difference. At FATCA, the traders do it every day. Some of them don’t even borrow the stocks – they just sell them on the intention of later buying them back. It’s called naked short selling, all perfectly legal, and it’s the sort of thing that would send his mum and dad apoplectic if they knew.
Given the millions he makes for FATCA, is it so very wrong to want to make a little extra for himself – just to get himself out of this fix and help out a childhood friend? Strictly speaking, it is a bit wrong – City boys like him aren’t supposed to trade for themselves in working time. Their bonuses are supposed to reward that selfish impulse, which is a natural part of human nature, in spite of what Doro says. But many do have personal accounts registered with the Compliance Officer, who checks they’re not breaking the rules. And some people also have unregistered personal accounts, he knows, where the possibilities are greater. Although all their calls are recorded and their emails logged, it’s largely reactive monitoring – nobody actually listens or looks through them unless there’s a reason.
It’s not easy to open an anonymous bank account in these days of money-laundering regs. But the thing is, he does already have access to a semi-dormant club bank account in the name of Dr Black, which is kept ticking over by a few people who forgot to cancel their subs – it’s a hang-over from his undergraduate days when he was treasurer of the short-lived Queens’ College Cluedo Society. And he’ll have twelve k left in his savings account, even after bailing out Otto. If only that annoying restaurant bill hadn’t popped up he wouldn’t even be thinking of trading on his own account.
So where to start?
In his day job, he works on
The thing about predicting the markets is that it’s as much about psychology as science. The more people predict something, the more likely it is to happen – the stampede effect. Fibonacci allows for this human factor, it’s an intuitive system which has quite a following among traders, thanks in part of course to Dan Brown. There are all sorts of crude adaptations of the golden ratio out there, but the real secret of making money is simple – you have to get in there first.
‘There’s money to be made in falling markets if you’re bold enough to seize the moment, and smart enough to know when the moment is.’
He remembers the exact words Chicken had spoken during his interview a year ago. Serge had been sitting on a leather swivel chair, sweating with nerves, half strangled in that same borrowed Queens’ tie he’s wearing today (the difference now is that it’s ironic), knees clamped together and anchoring both feet on the ground in order to resist the temptation to swivel.
When he was offered the job and they initiated him into this game, it seemed incredible that you could borrow stocks and then sell them on straight away, before you’d even paid for them, then wait until the price drops and buy them back for less than you sold them for, and return them to the original lender, pocketing the difference. At FATCA, the traders do it every day. Some of them don’t even borrow the stocks – they just sell them on the intention of later buying them back. It’s called naked short selling, all perfectly legal, and it’s the sort of thing that would send his mum and dad apoplectic if they knew.
Given the millions he makes for FATCA, is it so very wrong to want to make a little extra for himself – just to get himself out of this fix and help out a childhood friend? Strictly speaking, it is a bit wrong – City boys like him aren’t supposed to trade for themselves in working time. Their bonuses are supposed to reward that selfish impulse, which is a natural part of human nature, in spite of what Doro says. But many do have personal accounts registered with the Compliance Officer, who checks they’re not breaking the rules. And some people also have unregistered personal accounts, he knows, where the possibilities are greater. Although all their calls are recorded and their emails logged, it’s largely reactive monitoring – nobody actually listens or looks through them unless there’s a reason.
It’s not easy to open an anonymous bank account in these days of money-laundering regs. But the thing is, he does already have access to a semi-dormant club bank account in the name of Dr Black, which is kept ticking over by a few people who forgot to cancel their subs – it’s a hang-over from his undergraduate days when he was treasurer of the short-lived Queens’ College Cluedo Society. And he’ll have twelve k left in his savings account, even after bailing out Otto. If only that annoying restaurant bill hadn’t popped up he wouldn’t even be thinking of trading on his own account.
So where to start?
In his day job, he works on
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