The Last Hedge (4 page)

“Good. Sounds like the type we could use around here. Work out his compensation with Martha and I’ll approve it. Just don’t break the bank, though.”

“I won’t.”

“Congratulations, Dylan. Welcome aboard!”

Dylan had told Binky to meet him in a bar near the corner of East 86th street and Third Avenue. It was typical of the neighborhood, a low-key Irish pub on a side street off of the avenue. It was half past five and the bar was empty, awaiting the afterwork crowd that usually gathered each evening. Dylan took a seat at the bar and ordered a Guinness. Ten minutes later, Binky walked in.

“Hey, dog. What’s up?”

“Binky, how are you?”

“Good man, What’s up?”

Binky was the nickname for Charles Bannister, a prep-school moniker from Choate Rosemary Hall. Binky was in his early twenties, patrician features, with an oversized mop of brown curls that accentuated his youth. He was wearing his favorite pair of faux-nerd horn-rimmed black glasses. He was wearing his usual outfit: black sweater, white shirt, black slacks and shoes. Hacker, musician,
Neuromancer
. Binky’s nickname came from his prep-school habit of walking naked, dripping and tiptoed, back to his room from the cluster of shower stalls down the hall. One morning, the resident advisor had caught him in mid-stroll, and snapped at his ass with a long, white towel. “Get some clothes on, you binky bastard, and don’t ever let me see you walking naked through the hallway again.” Binky had complied with his request, but the nicknamed stuck and remained.

“I’m good, Dylan. When do you start the new job?”

“Next week. I’m pretty excited.”

“How much money do you guys have under management?”

“Come on, Binky. You know I can’t get into that.”

“I understand.”

Dylan knew that if he had told Binky the modest amount that they had capitalized compared to his previous firm, Binky would have spilled his drink.

“Dylan,” Binky said, “you could give me a hint.”

“Hints are not facts.”

While they were speaking, a group of attractive women entered the bar and seated themselves. As they ordered drinks, Binky turned to watch them.

“So,” Dylan asked. “How are you doing, Bink?”

“Ah, I’m doing okay. Nothing great. I’m a little bored. Basically, I’m doing some bullshit programming. I am essentially a spreadsheet jockey.”

“That’s it?” Dylan asked.

“What else can I do? That’s all they’ll give me.”

“That’s what I was afraid of.”

Binky had a degree in computer science and had been the expert programmer on the derivates trading desk. Binky’s father ran a hedge fund, which Binky would no doubt take over one day. He was preparing for the future at a firm different from his father’s, easing the transition into the family business. When Dylan had left the firm, they had reduced Binky’s role to that of a computer programmer. Though he was still officially classified as a trading assistant, he had been reassigned to a group of people that supervised trader operations; essentially back office personnel who helped facilitate the operations that occurred on the trading floor. Out of pride, Binky had refused to quit, laboring on despite the drop in status.

“Look, Bink, there’s a reason I wanted to speak to you. I want you to come and work for me.”

“Work for you?” Binky asked, as if it were the shock of his life. “As what?”

“As my trading assistant. You would help me structure the trades and execute them.”

“After what happened? I don’t know.”

“Look, I know you got screwed when I left. That’s why I want you to come work for me. You know what I always say, ‘Loyalty is my priority.’ I promise that if you come and work for me, you will be taken care of financially if we make money trading. No corporate politics, no pecking order, no end-of-the-year speeches about the bonus pool. You will be paid based on how much money we generate trading … and on your contribution. I give you my word on that.”

“That’s what you said last time. So how much could you pay me?”

“What are you making now?”

“125K.”

“About what I figured. Listen, Binky. We’re prepared to go up to around 175.”

“Without a bonus?”

“Of course without bonus. Trust me,” Dylan said, “You will do well. Just give me a little time to work on it. Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

Dylan took another hit from his beer. Binky was checking out the women sitting next to him, as he fancied himself a ladies man.

“You still playing dodgeball?”

“Oh, yeah. Where else am I going to score so easily?”

“Always got an eye out, huh?”

Binky played dodgeball in a league downtown, comprised mostly of sweet young co-eds looking for fun. He was the captain of the team, and his relationship with the ladies extended far beyond the dodgeball court. Binky had slept with at least three of them.

“I thought,” Dylan said, “that you had gotten serious with Carol.”

“I had. Then Becky came back to town. Now, I can’t decide.”

“It must be tough.” Binky laughed.

“What about you? No permanent woman these days?”

“Nope, just me and Picasso.” Picasso was a small tuxedo cat that was given to Dylan by a friend.

“Well, at least you don’t have to decide.”

“No, that I don’t. But I’ll hear from you soon?”

“Sure,” Binky said. “Give me a day or two to think about it.”

“No problem.”

“Hey,” Binky said, as he raised his glass. “Thanks for the beer.”

On his first day of work, Dylan arrived at the Corbin Brothers office at precisely 7 a.m. Anxious, he hadn’t slept much the night before. He had gotten up at sunrise and made himself breakfast, and had then gone to the gym to workout. So as not to arrive too early, he had spent an hour killing time at a Starbucks. The wait seemed like an eternity.

He thought back to the jobs he had had since college. There had only been a few. Dylan took pride in. Thankfully, he had not jumped around from job to job, from employer to employer. Some of his friends were professional quitters; they changed jobs like the seasons, often on a momentary whim. He had viewed each rung as a place of achievement, a place to take one more step up the corporate ladder. This job, however, was different. Part of him felt that he was stepping off the ladder and onto the ledge. Such was the risk of working directly for a hedge fund.

He made his way up on the elevator and into the office of the Corbin Brothers.

He arrived at reception only to find that no one was there. The glass office door was open and he walked in. As Dylan made his way down the corridor towards the trading floor, he was surprised to find that all of the offices were empty. At his previous job, most of the offices were occupied by 7 a.m. When he arrived on the trading floor, Martha Thomas came over and approached him.

“Good morning, Dylan.”

“Martha, how are you?”

Martha was a tall, stunning woman with crystal blue eyes. She was nearly six feet tall. Her jet-black hair was parted straight down the middle, leaving two well-coiffed flips on each side. On her neck sat an elegant set of pearls. She was probably in her late forties but looked no older than thirty-five.

One of his first interviews at the firm had been with Martha. She had been with the Corbin brothers since the beginning, and was their trusted confidante, as well as their first employee. Based on her name and the slight hint of her accent, Dylan guessed that her family background was probably either Slavic or Eastern European, and that her last name, Thomas, was Anglicized. She carried herself with the elegance of an aristocrat.

“And when do the traders get in?”

“Oh, it depends. Around eight, sometimes eight thirty.”

“Really? That late?”

“It’s like a lot of things around here: very different.”

From the way she smiled when she said this, and the way that she lingered over the last few words, it seemed implicit to Dylan that she was inviting him to read between the lines.

“Ray is usually in by now, but got caught up on his way from the Hamptons.”

“Well,” Dylan said. “I’ll be waiting.”

Martha pointed towards a corner of the trading floor. “They’re setting up your computer now. It won’t take more than an hour.”

“Sounds great.”

Dylan made his way towards the trading terminal that had been assigned to him. It was a classic trading workstation with three computer monitors, a computer, and a speed-dial phone. The IT guy barely looked up as Dylan sat down next to him. He unpacked several of his books and his HP calculator, and removed a disk from his briefcase. Though the software at his previous firm had been proprietary, there were several models and spreadsheets he had developed on his own, and he felt that they would be useful in his new job. The IT guy looked up when he finished his job.

“Ready to go.”

“Thanks,” Dylan said.

The first trader arrived fifteen minutes later. His name was Richard King. King was Corbin’s right-hand man, and supposedly one of the smartest guys on the Street.

“Dylan Cash,” King said curtly. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“Good, I hope.”

“Certainly.”

King extended his hand stiffly, at a ninety degree angle. He was wearing a pair of perfect burgundy linen trousers, and a white-linen shirt with matching white buck shoes. His blonde pompadour was as manicured as the White House lawn, and the leather briefcase that he held from Mullholand Brothers had easily cost over one thousand dollars.

King’s face was darkly burnished by the sun, and Dylan wondered if he had just gotten off his helicopter, a summer indulgence King apparently shared with a fellow group of traders on the Street. The whirlybird picked them up each morning in Southampton and dropped them off near Wall Street. King pretended to be “hush hush” about his morning commute, but from Dylan had been told, it was the worst kept secret in the office. When King passed by the receptionist she jokingly made a whirling motion with the tip of her index finger.

“I take it you will be trading soon?”

“I hope so. That’s what I do.”

“Well, that sounds good. Ray told me you’re a technical specialist.” King said this flatly and without enthusiasm. Dylan hunched his shoulders.

“I use quite a bit of software. Computer modeling of Elliot waves, volume levels, stuff like that.”

“I know all about it,” King said curtly.

King was an accomplished physicist prior to forsaking science to chase price action. Many people said that he was a genius. Around Harvard Quad, where King had spent his undergrad days, many had simply called him God.

Steve Wong came in next, sauntering onto the trading floor in dark shades and a baseball cap. He was one of the younger traders, around twenty-five years old.

“So, dude. What’s up? You starting today?”

“Pretty much,” Dylan said. “Looking forward to actually getting started.”

“Cool,” Wong said. “Nice to have some fresh meat for the chopper.”

“Yeah,” Dylan said. “Nice to be here.”

“Did Ray give you any of Rules of the House? How things work around here?”

“Not yet.”

“Oh, wow. Just like Ray to leave you in the dark.”

Wong was an expert on credit derivatives, a complicated strategy involving the buying and selling of interest rate fluctuations to protect and hedge the price of treasuries. Wong had gone to M.I.T. and completed a degree in Applied Math in just a little over two years. Word on the Street was that Wong had had some big months early on, but of late his trading had gone cold. Dylan instantly sized him up as a young hotshot who probably spent too many late nights in bars and strip clubs. Hopefully he would grow out of it, and soon. At least Wong was nice enough to welcome him.

“One question …” Dylan asked. “Who conducts the strategy session in the morning?”

Steve looked at Dylan incredulously, then began to laugh.

“Strategy? What do you think this is? ‘Wall Street’?”

“No, it’s just that Ray mentioned that you get together in the morning to detail what the ‘plan of attack’ is for the day.” King had wandered over, coffee cup in hand. Steve and Richard looked at each other again.

“What exactly did Ray explain that your job would be?”

“Ray told me that I would be Head of Trading.”

“Oh, really. Is that what Ray told you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s funny. Because that’s exactly the same thing he told each of us when we started. So it looks like we have a little bit of musical chairs going on here.”

“Looks like we do,” Dylan said. King downed his coffee and headed back to his desk. Wong laughed even harder.

“Come on, Dylan. He’s just joking. We know you’re the man.”

“Thanks for the encouragement.” Dylan smiled and returned to his desk. When he looked up he saw Ray Corbin had walked onto the trading floor.

“Hello,” Dylan said. Ray looked up at Dylan with a look of glazed familiarity. “You starting today?”

Dylan attempted to laugh it off, making light at having been forgotten.

“I hope you didn’t forget. I have some great ideas and I’m ready to roll.”

“Sure,” Ray said. “I didn’t forget. We had a crazy week around here the last few days; what with the markets and all.”

“I can imagine,” Dylan said, as he looked Ray Corbin over. Though Ray was impeccable in his Savile Row suit, he looked tired. His face was lined and his eyes were red. Ray smiled at Dylan absently as he made small talk. An exaggerated glance at his watch and a roll of the eyes told Dylan that the meeting was over. “Let me start the morning meeting, and I’ll catch you a bit later.”

“Sure,” Dylan said.

From what Dylan could tell, Ray liked to preach about the importance of “million dollar weeks”, days where the desk was able to clear more than one million dollars profits. For Dylan, the idea of million dollar weeks was something of a downshift. At his previous firm, they often made a million dollars in a single day. Ray stood up with a microphone in front of the trading floor. He went to the whiteboard and began to write:

“If it moves, tax it. If it slows down, regulate it. If it stops moving, subsidize it. - Ronald Wilson Reagan”