The Money Makers. Harry Bingham

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СКАЧАТЬ back the dark. Every now and then a phone rings briefly in the silence. But apart from a few early-morning cleaners there is no one here to check the screens or answer the phones. No one except Matthew. It is five fifteen am.

      Matthew was attached to a group of four traders dealing in the smaller European currencies: the Swiss franc, the lira, the Dutch guilder, the Swedish krona, the peseta, a few others. Between them his four traders mustered six passports, thirteen languages, and a shared passion for dealing.

      Matthew’s job was to support the group in any way it wanted. He was meant to forage for information, calculate spreadsheets, run errands, and get the coffees. So far the only job he’d done at all was getting the coffees. He couldn’t stand the trashy coffees from the vending machines, so four times a day he went to the Blue Mountain Coffee Company’s boutique to get the world’s most heavenly cappuccinos at £1.80 a cup. If it weren’t for this unaccustomed service, the traders would have had Matthew fired weeks before. As it was, they rated his survival chances at just about zero. As Luigi Cuneberti, the Swiss-Italian who traded Swiss francs and lire, put it: ‘Matteo, we give you a job when Italy has paid its national debt and the lira is worth more than the dollar.’

      That needed to change.

      All banks have the same information from Reuters, Bloomberg, Telerate. A million computer screens can be accessed with a few key strokes. Data is updated every second, news reported as it happens. It’s not information that makes the difference but judgement. And judgement requires the right facts in the right format at the right time.

      Matthew set to work. He scrolled through the overnight news stories on Reuters, printed off the full list of headlines plus the handful of stories he thought important. Next, he called the bank’s main Far Eastern offices: Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, Sydney. Some markets were quiet, others not. After every call, he made detailed notes.

      Then, he went out on to the street to an international paper stand, where he bought eight European newspapers plus the European edition of the Wall Street Journal. He wasn’t fluent in any language other than English, but he had spent enough time skiing in Courcheval and Zermatt, enough time in the bars of Tuscany and the beaches of Mallorca, and enough time with girls in all these places to get the gist of what he read. He made clippings of the articles he thought important, and added them to his growing stack.

      He looked at his watch. Six forty-five am. He had more to do, but was out of time. He collected up his work and ran it through the copier five times: once for each of his traders, once for himself.

      As the pages copied, Matthew realised three things.

      First, he had absorbed a surprising amount since being at the bank, despite his weeks of indolence. Second, there was an almost infinite amount of research he could do. Today’s effort was only a start. And third, he had eight weeks of his summer job remaining. At the end of those weeks, he had to convince Madison not just to hire him, but to hire him right away without waiting for him to complete his degree. That was unheard of. But if Madison turned him down and forced him to return to Cambridge in October, he’d have failed to meet his father’s goal before he’d even started.

      6

      Through the glass doors at the end of the room, Luigi came in. He exchanged insults with the Italians working in fixed income and blew a kiss at a secretary he was trying to seduce. Then he arrived at his desk, banged down a coffee and bagel, and stared at Matthew.

      ‘Santa Maria!’ said Luigi. ‘You have the time wrong, my friend, no? Or a brain disease? It is serious, I hope? Hey, what is this?’ Luigi held the neatly stacked papers on his desk at arms’ length.

      ‘It looks like work. It smells like work,’ he said, sniffing, ‘but, there is nobody here except Matteo.’ Luigi’s face grew sombre. He swept some clutter off his desk and knelt on it. He raised his eyes to heaven and added, ‘Grazie a Dio! A miracle has happened and I am unworthy.’ He got back to his feet, scanning the package more seriously now.

      ‘You’ve spoken with Tokyo about the trade surplus overshoot?’

      ‘Yes,’ said Matthew. ‘The figures look enormous and are well above the consensus, but the Tokyo market seems to have shrugged it off. Our economist out there tells me that if you dig into the data, it’s mostly one-off items. There’s a reasonable summary in the Wall Street Journal actually.’

      Luigi stared at Matthew, then flipped through his package to the article which was highlighted. His eyes scanned it briefly.

      ‘Hmm. So no issue then.’

      Matthew hesitated a moment. ‘I’m not sure that’s right,’ he said. ‘If I made out the headlines properly, I think the Italian press is a bit more excitable.’

      Luigi followed his train of thought. It wasn’t the data itself which mattered, it was other people’s interpretation of it. If Italian investors got the wrong end of the stick because of bad reporting, then they might misjudge their trading strategy until they wised up. Luigi turned to the articles from the Italian press. Again, he scanned the articles in a few seconds.

      ‘Interesting. I know the Banca di Roma needs to close out a short yen position at the moment. Be interesting to see how they react.’ Luigi meant that the Banca di Roma needed to buy some yen. If it thought the price of yen was going to soar, they’d want to buy quickly before the price had moved.

      Luigi was a good trader. He scanned the rest of the documents and picked up his phone. He wouldn’t put it down for more than a few minutes until the end of the day. Right now, he was checking facts, sensing attitudes, exchanging banter with traders and investors, trying to sense the mood of the market. One idea always leads to a dozen others, and when Luigi picked up an interesting lead, he pursued it. He said not another word to Matthew.

      The market was in full swing by eight thirty by which time the other traders – Anders, Cristina, and Jean-François – were in and busy. Each of them reacted the way Luigi had to the new-look Matthew. But they were restrained in their praise, waiting to see how long his new work ethic would last.

      Luigi called the Banca di Roma, letting the conversation play from his speakerphone. The two men bantered briefly before switching to business.

      ‘Hey, you better be getting out of that giant short position you’ve got on the yen. Did you see the trade numbers? You’re going to get toasted today unless some kindly person takes you out of it.’

      ‘Bullshit, Luigi,’ said the Banca di Roma guy. ‘We couldn’t care less about the yen. We don’t have a short position and anyway a month’s data is neither here nor there. The Tokyo market didn’t move much.’

      This already told Luigi a lot. If Banca di Roma really didn’t care what happened to the yen, their trader wouldn’t have prompted Luigi to keep the discussion going. Luigi now had a choice. He hesitated so briefly that Matthew, who was following the conversation intently, only just noticed.

      ‘Amico mio,’ said Luigi, ‘the market didn’t move because the data was bullshit.’ He quickly summarised the reasons why the yen hadn’t moved. ‘If you try to get out of your position too quickly, my friends in the market here will stiff you. You do need to close out your position because there are more big numbers coming out in Tokyo and Rome next week and God knows where rates will be by Friday. But you need to go slowly and use your head.’

      The Banca di Roma guy almost audibly relaxed. He asked a couple СКАЧАТЬ