Bond Girl by Erin Duffy Read Free Book Online Page A

thought.
    â€œJust trust me on this one. Lastly, I assume you noticed the coffee stand in the hallway?”
    â€œYeah, I saw it when I got off the elevator.”
    â€œGood. We call it Papa’s. I have no idea why. Make the guys who work there your friends. You will be spending a lot of time getting coffees there for the group, and the quicker you get there and back the better. If they like you, they will take care of you faster. Other than that, you’ll figure things out as you go. You can hang with me today. I’ll show you the screens we use, and get you used to following the markets. Cool?”
    Very cool. If I could, I’d canonize Drew. “Thanks so much.”
    â€œNo problem. Now, where’s your calculator?”
    I quickly produced the shiny new HR-issued calculator. “Right here. What can I do?”
    He handed me a printout of a grid, filled with numbers in type so small they looked like newspaper print. “Give me the weighted average of these prices. Don’t forget that these are in thirty-seconds, so you’ll have to convert them to decimals before you average. Also check to see if any of the handles look bad. They should all be around par. If not, let me know and I’ll double-check. There are probably a few errors in there.”
    â€œSure, I can do that.” And I could have, assuming someone had told me what a handle was, how to weighted average something, and how to turn something called thirty-seconds into decimals. As soon as I had those down, I could definitely do this.
    He gave me a knowing smile. “You have no idea what I just said, do you?”
    â€œI, ummm . . .” Shit, I thought. My business classes suddenly seemed like a complete waste of time. I might as well have majored in underwater basket weaving.
    â€œBe honest, Alex. Pretending to know things you don’t will only make it harder. Do yourself a favor and admit what you don’t know.”
    â€œYou might as well have been speaking Mandarin.”
    Drew laughed. “Here.” He pointed to the first figure on the grid: 99–28. “The 99 part of the price is called the handle. If you booked this trade at 98–28, the trader will tell you that you have a ‘bad handle.’ It’s clear at all times which handle bonds trade at, so a lot of times people won’t refer to them. There’s just no need and the less time you take relaying prices, the better. So if a trader gave me a price on this bond, he’d just say, twenty-eight. When I said to check for bad handles, I meant that if most of the bonds are trading around par–100, and you see a price that’s say, in the seventies, the handle is probably bad.”
    â€œOhh, okay, that makes sense.” I pointed to the twenty-eight part of the price. “So then that’s in thirty-seconds?”
    â€œRight. Bond prices are quoted in thirty-seconds, so in order to change that to a decimal, you just divide 28 by 32.”
    I typed the numbers in my calculator. This was sixth-grade math; I had no problem with that. I entered 28, hit the divide sign, punched in 32, then pressed the equal button on my calculator. The screen flashed ERROR.
    That didn’t seem right. “Shoot, I think my calculator’s broken.” I showed Drew my screen.
    â€œI take it you’ve never used a financial calculator before?”
    â€œNo, we used regular ones in school,” I said.
    â€œThese don’t work like normal calculators. After every input, you have to hit the enter button, and then the function at the end. So you type in 28, then enter. Then you input 32, hit enter again, and the divide key at the end. It’s always that way. For example, if you needed to add two plus two, it’s two, enter, two, enter, plus.”
    â€œWhy couldn’t the financial calculator people just leave it the same as every other calculator in the free world and not make things harder than