Trigger Point by Matthew Glass Page A

he said, ‘you’re insane.’
    Ed Grey grinned. ‘So you’re telling me we close out now?’
    ‘Yes, I’m telling you we close out now. Let’s buy the stock, send it back, close out now and be thankful this blind fucking bet came good.’
    Grey looked at Evangelou in mock dismay. ‘Tony, I expected more from you.’
    ‘Sure you did.’
    Grey turned to Boris Malevsky. ‘How much do we take if we close out now?’
    ‘Thirty-one million.’
    ‘How much you going to get if we do?’
    ‘One point six,’ said Malevsky. ‘Five per cent, right?’
    ‘You’re rounding up!’ Grey laughed. ‘Why not? You ever had a one point six million bonus?’
    Malevsky shook his head.
    ‘What do you want to do? You want the one point six?’
    ‘Double or nothing,’ said Evangelou. ‘Goes the wrong way, you still lose your job, Malevsky.’
    ‘That’s true,’ said Grey. ‘Huh, Boris? What do you think?’
    Malevsky hesitated. ‘I think it’s got a way to go.’
    ‘Really,’ said Grey. ‘Why?’
    ‘There’s a cash call coming from Fidelian. The market still doesn’t know about it.’
    ‘The market’s marked them down twenty per cent for no apparent reason but Strickland’s speech and our own fine leadership,’ said Evangelou. ‘Twenty per cent. How much capital does that say Fidelian has to raise? Have you crunched those numbers, Boris?’
    ‘Nine billion.’
    ‘A twenty per cent fall says they have to raise nine billion?’
    ‘That’s right.’
    ‘That’s a ridiculous amount. They’re not coming to the market for that much.’
    Boris shrugged.
    ‘Ed, we have no real research behind this, we have no rationale, we have no–’
    ‘And Boris here has just made himself one point six million. This is just starting. I take your point about the nine billion, Tony. That’s way too much. But that’s the point. It’s not rational now. The whole sector’s moving. We’re on the tiger, Tony. We’re riding it. When you ride the tiger, you ride it to the end. You ride her to the fucking end. It is the biggest, biggest, biggest mistake you can make to get off too early.’
    ‘This tiger is falling flat right under us. This tiger is running out of steam. In another second it’s gonna turn around and bite the hell out of our ass for still being on its back.’
    ‘Well, that is a possibility.’ Grey grinned. He was definitely of the school that said you added to your trade when your trade was doing well. Evangelou was more conservative. He was all numbers, not feel. He was very disciplined, a take-your-profit-at-your-target kind of trader and always needed pushing to stake more on his trades. But Grey respected that. He was the opposite. It was what made them such a good team when it came to managing the really big-bet trades that came along only once or twice a year.
    He swung around and faced the screens on the wall of his office. One of them showed the price for the overall banking sector. The other showed Fidelian. The movement in the market over the past week had been more than he expected. ‘You think we’re doing that? I mean, Fidelian, maybe. But the sector, the whole fucking sector. Look at the sector. How much are we in now?’
    ‘Two hundred,’ said Evangelou.
    ‘Two hundred,’ murmured Grey. He took a slurp on his coffee. ‘That’s nothing.’
    ‘Who’d you talk to?’ said Evangelou knowingly.
    ‘A couple of guys.’
    You couldn’t expect a market to move without the odd shot of rumor to lubricate the rails. To help build momentum, Grey had spoken to a number of other Divvies he knew closely. He certainly hadn’t told them about Boris Malevsky’s piece of information. That particular nugget of gold was for Red River alone. But you didn’t have to reveal what you knew to start the rumors flying. You only had to be careful that those rumors – or the variants of them that were sure to develop – didn’t swing back to bite you. The guys you spoke to weren’t your friends, no matter