front-and-back quartered red and silver of Özer. Simple, direct, unaffected; what a man should have on his back. His single affectation is his tag; it reads DRK . Draksor: once an Ultralord of the Universe, always an Ultralord of the Universe.
Adnan reaches up and flicks open a screen from the cloak of display panels wrapped around him. Ten minutes to the closing bell at the Baku Commodity Exchange, the big central Asian gas market. In that rush to close, price differences open between Baku and Istanbul. In those few seconds while the market reacts, dealers like Adnan Sarioğlu can make money. It’s all about arbitrage. Özer’s man in Baku is Fat Ali. Adnan met him on an Özer away-day trail-biking in Cappadocia. Adnan wasn’t a very good trail-biker. Neither was Fat Ali. They both preferred cars. They left the corporate boys to their leathers and dust and spent the afternoon drinking wine on the hotel’s rooftop terrace and speculating if buying the winery might be a sound investment. They drank a lot of wine. As well as car and wine enthusiasts they were both Cimbom fans. They work well together. But Fat Ali isn’t an Ultralord.
Adnan’s eyes flick from screen to screen to screen. Every two seconds Adnan checks the prices on Baku June delivery. The nano blowing in gales through his head makes this level of concentration sustainable.
‘Four forty-six and trading small,’ Adnan says. ‘Someone out there long? Come on Ali, one of your camel-fuckers has to be going long.’
The angel of arbitrage is the angel of the gaps. The AI agents can react to a market more quickly than any human but when they attempt to push that market any real intelligence can see them coming like a train. Some of the dealers rely heavily on their agents. Adnan trusts his own wit and his ability to see patterns those value-adding few seconds before they appear on the screens. Come to me , angel of the gaps .
‘Four forty-seven and pretty thin stuff,’ Fat Ali says in Baku. But at some point as the clock ticks down to the bell there will be some local trader buying in Baku who does not have a seat in Istanbul’s central ITB and so cannot trade there. The price will move in Baku and for the few seconds before the market shifts in Istanbul, Adnan Sarioğlu and Fat Ali can make money.
‘What’s Branobel doing?’
‘Sitting long.’
The Baku screen swoops to a halt in front of Adnan. ‘We’re at four forty-five.’ And there is the gap. Now all he needs is a way to exploit it. Adnan whirls screens around him. ‘Someone wants to sell fat. Come on you bastard, I can feel you.’
‘Flush him out and we’ll shoot him down.’
Adnan moves his hands, a dance, a code. A new offer of four hundred and forty-five dollars flows out from him across the many screens of the Money Tree like a wind rippling leaves. Instantly the AIs swarm. This’ll rattle you out , Adnan thinks. There will be a seller out there with a limit on the daily downward movement of his contracts. Adnan’s scare-price is designed to look as if the market is headed down further yet. Faced with the possibility of unlimited loss, that trader will be forced to sell. And there. One star, burning bright in laser light on the back of Adnan’s retina. The stop-loss seller. Adnan buys two hundred. In the same instant Fat Ali sells those same two hundred across the price gap in Baku. Buy Istanbul at four forty-five, sell Baku at four forty seven. Forty thousand euro profit for two seconds’ work. Another two seconds later the market adjusts and closes the differential. The angel of the gaps moves on. At no time does anyone sniff the gas that Adnan has arbitraged. That would be a grievous error. This is the secret of Özer Gas and Commodities: never carry any gas, never inventory any commodities, never get left holding. Promises and options of future prices are the currency.
Adnan’s AIs book the sale and throw it to Kemal in the back office. Forty thousand euro.
Adnan reaches up and flicks open a screen from the cloak of display panels wrapped around him. Ten minutes to the closing bell at the Baku Commodity Exchange, the big central Asian gas market. In that rush to close, price differences open between Baku and Istanbul. In those few seconds while the market reacts, dealers like Adnan Sarioğlu can make money. It’s all about arbitrage. Özer’s man in Baku is Fat Ali. Adnan met him on an Özer away-day trail-biking in Cappadocia. Adnan wasn’t a very good trail-biker. Neither was Fat Ali. They both preferred cars. They left the corporate boys to their leathers and dust and spent the afternoon drinking wine on the hotel’s rooftop terrace and speculating if buying the winery might be a sound investment. They drank a lot of wine. As well as car and wine enthusiasts they were both Cimbom fans. They work well together. But Fat Ali isn’t an Ultralord.
Adnan’s eyes flick from screen to screen to screen. Every two seconds Adnan checks the prices on Baku June delivery. The nano blowing in gales through his head makes this level of concentration sustainable.
‘Four forty-six and trading small,’ Adnan says. ‘Someone out there long? Come on Ali, one of your camel-fuckers has to be going long.’
The angel of arbitrage is the angel of the gaps. The AI agents can react to a market more quickly than any human but when they attempt to push that market any real intelligence can see them coming like a train. Some of the dealers rely heavily on their agents. Adnan trusts his own wit and his ability to see patterns those value-adding few seconds before they appear on the screens. Come to me , angel of the gaps .
‘Four forty-seven and pretty thin stuff,’ Fat Ali says in Baku. But at some point as the clock ticks down to the bell there will be some local trader buying in Baku who does not have a seat in Istanbul’s central ITB and so cannot trade there. The price will move in Baku and for the few seconds before the market shifts in Istanbul, Adnan Sarioğlu and Fat Ali can make money.
‘What’s Branobel doing?’
‘Sitting long.’
The Baku screen swoops to a halt in front of Adnan. ‘We’re at four forty-five.’ And there is the gap. Now all he needs is a way to exploit it. Adnan whirls screens around him. ‘Someone wants to sell fat. Come on you bastard, I can feel you.’
‘Flush him out and we’ll shoot him down.’
Adnan moves his hands, a dance, a code. A new offer of four hundred and forty-five dollars flows out from him across the many screens of the Money Tree like a wind rippling leaves. Instantly the AIs swarm. This’ll rattle you out , Adnan thinks. There will be a seller out there with a limit on the daily downward movement of his contracts. Adnan’s scare-price is designed to look as if the market is headed down further yet. Faced with the possibility of unlimited loss, that trader will be forced to sell. And there. One star, burning bright in laser light on the back of Adnan’s retina. The stop-loss seller. Adnan buys two hundred. In the same instant Fat Ali sells those same two hundred across the price gap in Baku. Buy Istanbul at four forty-five, sell Baku at four forty seven. Forty thousand euro profit for two seconds’ work. Another two seconds later the market adjusts and closes the differential. The angel of the gaps moves on. At no time does anyone sniff the gas that Adnan has arbitraged. That would be a grievous error. This is the secret of Özer Gas and Commodities: never carry any gas, never inventory any commodities, never get left holding. Promises and options of future prices are the currency.
Adnan’s AIs book the sale and throw it to Kemal in the back office. Forty thousand euro.
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