Darke Mission by Scott Caladon Read Free Book Online Page B

view over St. James’s Square from the floor to ceiling windows, one of the few non-original aspects of the building’s fascia. JJ walked slowly towards him, hoping to create an atmosphere of casual intent rather than alarm if he had rushed up to the head FX and commodities trader.
    â€œHow’s it going, Fathead?” asked JJ. He thought it would further add to the casualness if he called Toby by his nickname.
    Toby looked up. He wasn’t surprised to see JJ there. He was on the phone to one of the dealers so put up his arm with one finger raised, not the middle one of course, to signal that he’d be with JJ in a moment. Phone call over. “It’s going well,” said Toby in a voice low enough that neighbours could not hear any detail above the office hubbub. JJ had a small smile as he sipped on his take-away Starbucks double espresso macchiato.
    â€œI’ve sold more than two-thirds of the €120 million bonds, but I need to pause for a bit. A couple of the more alert dealers asked me if anything was up. I just said we were doing a bit of portfolio rebalancing before year end but that we were maintaining our core holding.” The truth in fact but not spirit thought JJ. “There is one thing, though,” Toby said. “I haven’t seen Yves-Jacques or his list of assets to buy. Have you got it?”
    JJ’s smile was a tad smaller now. He had seen Yves-Jacques about an hour ago and they had agreed the target buy list. Toby should have had it by now. “Give him a ring, Toby, and ask him to hotfoot it down here no matter what he’s doing. It’s 8.30am and the clock’s ticking. We’d better be too.”
    Within two or three minutes, Yves-Jacques could be seen scuttling across the trading floor heading for JJ and Toby. Without being obvious about it JJ signalled to the young Frenchman to slow down. Stealth was still the order of the day.
    â€œYves-Jacques, where’s our list, Toby needs to get cracking?” asked JJ without too much urgency in case it freaked out the young analyst.
    â€œI’ve got it here,” he replied, clutching a few pages of hand written instructions. “I was delayed because I decided to re-run your optimisation model program JJ as it might not have been properly set up for relative value trades.”
    JJ nodded, he was a good mathematician and econometrician but it’s possible that analytics had progressed since he designed MAM’s portfolio optimisation program three short years ago. “Go on,” said JJ.
    â€œWell, last night or early this morning you mentioned that we should include one other liquid equity market to short as well as the S&P 500. If we had done that in the size we needed to do it, it would have breached the fund’s internal risk rules.”
    JJ realised they didn’t have time to get down to the nitty gritty of the program’s details now so it was whether or not he trusted Yves-Jacques and whether or not he had a solution to this glitch. “I take it from the fact that you’ve not disintegrated into a greasy spot Yves-Jacques that you’re confident you’re right and that you have a recommendation to keep us on track,” said JJ.
    â€œYes, JJ, I do,” replied Yves-Jacques, confidently, seemingly comfortable enough with no more ‘Mr Darke’ as he addressed JJ. “If we put on a relative value equity trade, in particular we go long the SMI (Swiss Market Index) and short the MIB (Milano Italia Borsa) we reduce our overall risk, break no rules and we can do it in the same size as before.”
    JJ contemplated this recommendation for a few seconds. Switzerland wasn’t in the EU or the euro. As such its equities tended to fare a lot better when Eurozone troubles popped up. Italy, by contrast, was in the euro, albeit crying a lot about being in it now and the shares on their stock market, the MIB, would get hammered if the Greek drama