Trigger Point by Matthew Glass Page B

how well you knew them. They were in the market, and they were in it to make money. For every dime someone makes in the market, someone else loses the same amount. There was no one you could trust. If you gave a signal and someone thought it was pointed in the wrong direction, they’d be your biggest cheerleader and then bet against you to help the market cut your throat. The more of your blood was on the carpet, the more money they’d make.
    ‘Someone else is in,’ said Grey.
    Evangelou nodded. ‘Two hundred’s not going to move the sector like that.’
    ‘How much? A half billion?’
    ‘Depends. That could get it going.’
    ‘Who would it be?’ Grey thought through the likely participants in the game. How many was it likely to be? That made a difference. If there was one big player with a chunk in the game, the minute that player pulled the plug and started buying, prices would rebound and everyone else, including Red River, would get lost in the afterwash. If it was a number of players, no one individual had the power to do that. It might leave Red River, with two hundred in, as the lead player.
    ‘Ed, this is all froth.’
    ‘Maybe,’ said Grey. The received wisdom said that short sellers couldn’t move a market where investors didn’t want it to go, not for any length of time. It would rapidly rebound as investors came in to buy at levels they deemed to be attractive.
    ‘We’d have to go another two hundred minimum,’ said Tony.
    Grey nodded. Even that might not be enough. And if the market turned, you wouldn’t be able to buy the stocks at a sensible price to close out a position that big. Liquidity, as Evangelou would have been quick to point out, would drain away. Price would overshoot as people realized someone was looking to buy every stock they could find. You could take a bath damn quick. To put any more in now, you’d need to have a strong, strong reason to believe the market had further to fall. The very act of shorting that much more would help it down, but it wouldn’t stay down for long if the market as a whole didn’t believe the sector should be down there. People would start buying.
    He looked at Malevsky. ‘What do you think, Boris? Do you take your one point six and go home?’
    Malevsky shook his head.
    ‘Really? Get this wrong, I’m still going to sack your ass.’
    Boris grinned.
    ‘Give me a reason,’ said Grey. ‘Give me a reason not to give you one point six million dollars.’
    ‘I’ve got two. One, Strickland’s talking to the National Press Club tomorrow.’
    Evangelou rolled his eyes. ‘This again …’
    ‘Two, I was sixteen the day Lehman Brothers went bust.’
    ‘That was your birthday?’ said Evangelou. ‘Not like I can see what that’s got to do with anything.’
    ‘It wasn’t my birthday, but I remember it like it was.’
    ‘Who doesn’t?’
    ‘Exactly. And I wasn’t even interested in finance. Back then I was going to be a doctor. But Lehman went down and everybody knew about it, even me, Boris Malevsky the doctor-to-be. I saw an interesting headline this morning. Are we on the verge of finding the next Lehman? ’
    ‘That’s ridiculous.’
    ‘I agree. But I also think it’s the kind of talk Strickland is going to want to stop in its tracks. And I think the entire administration is going to want to make sure there’s no talk like that going around. So I think Strickland is going to come out very, very bullish on the banks. He’s going to say there’s nothing wrong, the regulation’s good, the system’s strong, etc., etc.’
    ‘Which, fundamentally, we believe it is,’ said Evangelou.
    ‘Correct. And when Strickland says that, and people are asking if we’ve got the next Lehman, I think Strickland’s going to have exactly the opposite effect of what he wants. People are going to say, hell, the Fed’s saying that, I’m getting out of banks!’
    Grey laughed.
    ‘I’m serious,’ said Malevsky.
    ‘I know you are. So why doesn’t