Free to Trade Read Free Page B

my jacket.
    I had a thought. 'Just a moment, I have got to make one more phone call.'
    I dialled the Imperial Hotel. When I asked for Hamilton McKenzie the operator told me he had left a message specifically asking not to be disturbed. I marvelled at the man's coolness. So much at stake, and he had deliberately taken steps to avoid hearing about the outcome. He had enough confidence in me to let me handle it by myself. As usual, he had been right.
    With my smug look intact, I switched off the machines and followed Debbie to the lifts, leaving Jeff still engrossed in his statistics.

    CHAPTER 2

    The train lurched to a halt at the Monument station. Silently, about a quarter of the passengers stood up and picked their way through the carriage to the doors. I was one of them. We dropped on to the platform, and climbed the short flight of steps through the ticket barrier and out into the July sunshine. There our company of office workers split, and was met by a much larger battalion marching out of step across London Bridge. I joined a contingent striding up Gracechurch Street towards my offices in Bishopsgate. A few lost individuals struggled against the advancing army in an attempt to fight their way down the street. They were jostled and pushed for their temerity. Since 'Big Bang' the commuting crowd had started earlier and earlier, as salesmen, traders and settlements staff struggled to ensure that they were not the last to their desks to talk to Tokyo, or Australia, or Bahrain.
    Although the army seemed unified by one purpose, getting to work and making money, each individual carried his own concerns, worries and responsibilities with him or her. Some days I would thrust myself through the crowd, eager to get to my desk and work on the problem that I had mulled over in my disturbed sleep the previous night. Other days I would drag my feet, jostled from behind, as I delayed the inevitable confrontation with yesterday's bad position. Often, I would just drift along with the others, my mind still asleep, shutting out the expected events of the day until I was sitting down with a cup of coffee in my hand.
    Today, though, I rode above them all. I had made $400,000 in the last twenty-four hours; who knew how much I would make in the next? I had an irrational conviction that any trade I did would turn money into more money. I knew this would not last. But I should enjoy it while I could. Eventually luck would abandon me. Fifty-fifty trades would all go against me. Certainties would be blown away by the unforeseen. My computer would develop undetectable bugs. My job was like a drug with highs and lows. Was it addictive? Probably.
    It was certainly more exciting than the large American bank I had joined after Cambridge. I had spent six years in the credit department, analysing companies that borrowed from the bank. I had to decide whether the companies would be in a position to give the money back. The job was intellectually interesting, but the bank had done its best to make it boring. It felt like a grey factory, staffed with grey workers who had weekly quotas of a certain number of pages of analysis to produce.
    It had suited me though. The bank had been very understanding about the hours I kept. They obviously thought it was good public relations. The general manager of the London office was an American, an ex-college football player and a devoted sports fan. It was fine with him if I arrived at work late or left early. Holiday days were not counted scrupulously; I could have as much unpaid leave as I wished. The whole office was proud of its Olympic eight-hundred-metre bronze medallist.
    They hadn't understood when I had given up running. None of them had. The general manager had taken it personally. There was nothing wrong with me. I was still young. In four years' time the gold medal was mine for the taking. How could I let him down like that?
    The grey work got greyer. I was expected to work a full day. With nothing else to