Trading Reality Read Free Page A

the New York Stock Exchange. It was irrelevant to nearly all of us, but Bob Forrester thought it gave the place a true American investment-bank look, and besides, it allowed him to keep up with his personal portfolio. It was of no use to the only people for whom it might have had any professional interest, since they couldn’t see it; they were sitting directly underneath.
    Another Forrester touch was the brown HB logo on every column and wall, there to be picked out by any visiting TV cameras providing those background shots for market reports on the news. The room had to look good.
    I stopped at the water-cooler just by the exit and poured myself a cup. The equity group, too, were all winding down after a hard day’s work. All of them except one. Karen. She was sitting on her desk, a phone jammed between her cheek and her shoulder, her long legs resting on her chair. Despite the day’s excitement, her yellow skirt and white silk blouse had not a wrinkle in them, and she looked as cool as she had at seven thirty that morning.
    ‘Oh, come on, Martin, really? You didn’t!’ She chuckled down the line. I sipped my water and listened. ‘Now, how many of those Wal-Marts do you want?’
    She brushed the fine blonde hair out of her eyes, and winked discreetly at me. She turned to a trader who was packing up to leave. ‘Jack! Before you go, what’s the offer on Wal-Mart?’

2

    I looked over the clusters of dark suits gathered around the huge atrium. She wasn’t here yet.
    The atrium was ridiculous. Waterfalls, smooth sculptures, and whole trees seemed to take up most of the space in the middle of the building, leaving a narrow shell around the outside for people to work in. We had both been invited to a party by Banque de Genève et Lausanne, who were opening new London offices. I usually avoided these things if I could, but Barry, their head trader in London, had been insistent that I should come. I didn’t know anyone there, and was happy supporting a black marble column that shot fifty feet up into the air above me, sipping a glass of champagne.
    What a day! I had managed to lose over two million dollars. Whichever way you looked at it, that was a lot of money. My year’s profit and loss should be able to stand it. In fact, Ed and I were, or rather had been, three million dollars up on the year. But dropping that much money had hurt my pride badly, especially since I had foreseen Greenspan’s move and done nothing about it.
    Still, in a funny kind of way, I had enjoyed the day. I was facing quite a challenge – to make back two million dollars in a treacherous market. And I was determined to make it all back. I had my reputation to think of, my track record. For a trader, the annual profit and loss is all.
    And I had a pretty good track record. I had started trading the proprietary book for Harrison Brothers two years ago. In my first year, I had made eight million dollars for the firm, and that had grown to fifteen million dollars in my second year. Not bad for a twenty-eight-year-old trader. And my salary, and especially my bonus, were beginning to reflect my trading success.
    So, how was I going to make back that two million dollars? Bondscape would certainly help. It had given me a tremendous feeling of power. I had been able to visualise the whole bond market, to get right inside it, to see and feel it moving. And I was the only one in the market with that capability. Richard and I had been working on Bondscape for a few months. I had been through several practice sessions, and suggested a number of changes. I had known it would work, but never dreamed it would work that well.
    It was a strange sensation. I had indeed experienced an alternative reality. I had always been sceptical that virtual reality provided an experience that was any different from a fancy computer game. But today I had felt as though I were living and moving inside another world, an abstract world of bonds, yields and currencies. What