Darke Mission by Scott Caladon Read Free Book Online Page A

programs in their entirety,” said the French man awaiting confirmation from JJ that the time needed was alright.
    â€œThat’s fine,” said JJ. “It’s 3am now. If all hell breaks loose before our target markets are open then we’re stuffed anyway. We may as well try to do it right. As a starter, Yves-Jacques, make sure you include S&P 500 futures, gold, the yen and one other liquid equity market that we can short. Don’t include any bonds. While there may be a flow into Euro Bunds or US Treasuries out of Greek bonds, the markets will worry about the break-up of the euro, and if the US jobs numbers are good, Treasuries will drop. We should be set up to short the S&P 500 and buy gold and the yen. Once you’ve got the bare numbers let me see them. Toby, you’ll have a bit more to do then, though at least with the target list programme you can involve one or two of the guys on the trading desk.”
    So that was the plan. It wasn’t perfect. You can never match the profit/loss on trying to hedge one asset against a selection of other assets. In the financial crash of 2008, risk management tools like VAR (value at risk) and optimisation programs just blew up, they were worthless, as Lehman Brothers discovered. The key to success of JJ’s plan was stealth. The less chatter generated by their selling and buying programmes, the more chance the calculated hedges would hold up, the more chance the targeted assets would remain liquid and, critically, the more chance that Greek bonds wouldn’t go prematurely terminal. The structure of JJ’s plan needed to be robust, Yves-Jacques financial programs needed to be efficient and accurate and Toby’s trading skills needed to be honed to perfection. Black Friday or Golden Friday – who knew? Well, the world would in a few hours one way or the other.

    * * *
    It was 8am, on Friday, 13 th December. The first floor of MAM’s offices was buzzing. This was the trading floor. If you weren’t at your desk by 8am you weren’t important in the scheme of things. The first floor accommodated around a hundred people, about fifty traders, twenty-five or so quants and the balance made up of support staff. It was open plan, with a gazillion screens, moderately less desks, all wooden beige with metallic legs, and lumbar supporting modern chairs. Off in the far corner, Thomas Meltzer, MAM’s chief economist, was giving an early morning interview for CNBC Europe. US jobs data was the main topic. Meltzer was German, about 5ft 11in, with straight blond hair and vivid blue eyes, only partially hidden by his gold rimmed specs. His English was so good he could tell jokes in it.
    JJ nodded to Thomas as he sauntered by. He liked the German, his work was more thoughtful than most and he had manfully resisted the modern day temptation to have a view on everything and a ‘sound-bite’ for everybody. JJ was glad Thomas was pontificating on the upcoming US non-farm payroll numbers because that meant that there was no Greek news of note. JJ had already had a brief chat with David Sutherland, the head and founder of MAM. He was well into his sixties now but was still very sharp. His skill was in delegating, a skill never underestimated by Ronald Reagan, in JJ’s view America’s second most effective President of the post World War II era. Sutherland was a little shorter than JJ, less hair, more body mass, but better teeth and clothes. He was old Etonian and Oxford with good political contacts. JJ liked him mainly because he just let him get on with his job. They had little in common apart from a desire to grow MAM from strength to strength. Sutherland was concerned by JJ’s news on Greece but a lot calmer when the Scot had outlined his plan. Now JJ had to discover whether his plan was up and running or not.
    Toby’s desk was at the far end of the trading floor, near the quants. He liked it there mainly because he had a good