The Last Hedge (3 page)

“I see,” Ray said, smiling. “Then why did you leave, Dylan?”

“Do you want an honest answer or a bullshit one?”

“I want both.”

“The truth is, my old firm asked me to do something unethical. When I declined, they had no basis to fire me, so they made me a pariah. Pretty soon, I was considered a cancer on the trading floor. After that, it was time to go.”

“Wow, that’s impressive. One could call you Dylan, Cash of Assisi.”

“I’m actually from Oregon.”

“That was a joke.”

“I know it was.”

“Still, to stand up for yourself in this business, a business full of unethical people, that’s admirable.”

“I wasn’t looking to impress anyone, Ray. I just didn’t want to go to jail. The only stripes I want to see are on my pajamas.”

“And what about money?”

“Money is good.”

“How much did you make last year?”

“575.”

“Not bad in a down year. How much are you looking for?”

“I’d like to round that off. Upward.”

“That’s reasonable, but you’ll have to earn it here.”

“ I didn’t expect it any other way.”

“Can you multiply 7,222,344 by 65,555,666?”

Dylan laughed. “Not without a calculator. Can you?”

“Yes, I can,” Ray Corbin said with a deadpan expression. “But only because I ask the same question every time.”

“Mr. Corbin—”

“Please, call me, Ray.”

“Your physicist put me through several math tests and trading scenarios.”

“I know. They showed me the results: 98th percentile on both.”

“I missed a decimal place.”

“You better not do that here.”

“Trust me, I won’t.”

“I just have one more question, Dylan.”

“Of course.”

“Say I made you an offer, then a month later you get a better offer. Would you leave?”

“ ‘Loyalty is my priority.’ I don’t tolerate fools, and I don’t bullshit, or put up with it. It’s that simple.”

“I see.”

“Excuse my language.”

“Oh, no. I find it very appropriate. Not to mention, refreshing.”

Ray Corbin got up from his desk and was on the move again. He turned his back to Dylan as he once again faced the river.

“As you may have guessed, it’s been a difficult time. Luke Patterson, our head trader, was killed recently in an accident.”

“What happened?”

“Perhaps a drunk driver, a hit and run, no one knows really. He was on his motorcycle. I told him to give that dammed thing up. He was far too important to this firm to die in such a trivial way, but he refused. He claimed riding helped him release some of the pent up aggression from the trading floor. Me? I run. Do you?”

“Run?”

“No.”

“Ride a motorcycle?”

“I don’t even own a skateboard,” Dylan said. Ray forced himself to laugh.

“But no,” Dylan said. “I’m not an adrenaline junkie, except for trading, and I stay away from dangerous sports.”

“That’s good.. I like that.” Ray seemed pensive, as if one thought flowing through his brain had suddenly wrestled another to the ground. Then, he continued. “Luke, he couldn’t resist it, this thing about living on the edge. They found him upstate in the middle of the road on a Sunday night. He was coming from his parents’ house. No one traveled that road. He could have been there for hours.”

“That’s a sad story.”

“And, of course, this all comes less than a decade after the towers. Luckily, we lost no one, but I lost a lot of friends. All I’m saying is, replacing Luke is a huge thing for me personally, and for this firm. I just hope you understand what I’m trying to say to you. ”

“I understand. And I’m up to the task.”

“Good, I’m glad to hear it. We’ll be in touch in the next 48 hours.”

“I look forward to hearing from you.” Ray Corbin stood up and extended his hand and Dylan did the same. The interview was over.

Dylan heard the phone begin to ring, but his brain had a difficult time forcing his body to react. He glanced at the clock radio next to his bed. It was 3:15 in the morning. The usual emergency scenarios ran through his head, and after nearly a minute of ringing, his body rose in the direction of the phone. He picked the receiver up with a voice full of trepidation.

“Hello?”

“Yes. Is this Dylan Cash?”

“Yes. It is. Who is this?” The voice was unfamiliar. He wondered if it was from a hospital, or from the police.

“This is Ray Corbin.”

“Ray who?”

“Ray Corbin. Of the Corbin Brothers. I interviewed you yesterday for a job with my firm.”

“Oh, okay.” The grogginess was suddenly starting to dissipate, and some semblance of reality was starting to shape itself.

“What’s up?”

“I was wondering if you could come and see me.”

“Uh, sure. When?”

“How about right now?”

“Ray, excuse me, but it’s almost three-thirty in the morning.”

“So? If you had a hundred million dollar trade on the Nikkei futures, and a tsunami hit Japan, you’d have been here an hour ago with your pajamas and your teddy.”

“Er, right; I understand,” Dylan said. It was a test. Brilliant traders are often idiosyncratic individuals who put their underlings to extreme tests, to see if they are battle ready. Many cannot withstand the pressure and are forced to leave the trading floor, exiled to investment banking or quiet private equity. It was a form of financial hazing, survival of the fittest with the largest stakes imaginable.

After hanging up the phone, Dylan pulled on a pair of Levi’s and a Harvard sweatshirt. He wasn’t required to be well dressed; simply an appearance was necessary. Within moments, he was hailing a taxicab.

As the cab raced across town, he thought of the circuitous rout of his life that had taken him to this place. Neither of his parents had earned more than 30K. Now, he was mingling with billionaires and the upwardly mobile. The cab reached Corbin Brothers world headquarters. Dylan paid the driver and headed inside.

A lone security guard sat behind the security desk. Dylan approached him.

“He already called down,” the guard said, as he handed Dylan a plastic, laminated badge. Dylan took the badge and scanned it in the security scanner. He entered the elevator, pressed the button and made his way up towards the 60th floor.

The plastic badge gained him entry to the Corbin Brothers office. He made his way through the double glass doors that led towards the trading floor.

Walking through a trading floor at night was like walking through a ghost town. Dylan could feel the eerie glow of the lighted computer screens, Bloomberg monitors, and half-consumed cans of Pepsi. He saw Ray Corbin sitting at a computer screen directly in front of the large projection screen in the middle of the trading floor. Ray looked haggard, as if he hadn’t slept in days. As Dylan approached, Ray got up to greet him.

“So, you came.”

“Did you expect me not to?”

“I wasn’t sure.”

“Did you think that I didn’t want the job?”

“Of course not. No, I could tell you’re hungry. A lot of potential candidates would have been freaked out if I called them at home in the middle of the night like this.”

“Mr. Corbin, I don’t know you very well, but I’ve been in New York for over ten years. It takes a lot more than a phone call at 3 a.m. to freak me out.”

Ray laughed. It was the first time that Dylan had seen him let his guard down. “Come into my office,” Ray said, as he led Dylan towards his office down the hall.

Dylan followed behind him as they entered the room. The eastside of Manhattan was backlit behind Ray’s desk. Ray noticed Dylan taking in the skyline.

“Some view, huh?”

“It’s impressive during the day. At night, it’s spectacular.”

“I know. The view was what enchanted me about this place.”

“I see.” Dylan noticed that Ray was looking at him intently.

“Do you want to be rich, Dylan? I mean, really rich?”

“Why else would I be? A trader?”

“How badly do you want this job?”

“I want it badly.”

“How bad?”

“On a scale of one to ten, I’d say an eleven.”

“What would you do to get this job?”

“Everything is relative.”

“Would you kill to get it?”

Dylan began to chuckle. “I hope you don’t mean that literally. I mean, that’s a little bit of an extreme, isn’t it?”

“Is it, Dylan? Listen to me. I don’t know you, and you don’t know me. Who am I? A man who runs a fund, a man who has had some level of success. And who are you? A trader. Well, more than that. Intelligent? Obviously. Talented? Maybe. Rebellious? Well, probably. What other type of trader is there? I am forced to decide whether to bring you on board, and this is an enormous decision. It will cost me if it goes well, and it will cost me if it doesn’t. And my question to you is, how do I weigh this decision?”

“Ray, you’ve been in business for a long time. You know your stuff, from what I’ve seen and read about your operation, so obviously you have a successful decision making framework.”

“True.”

“So you factor all that in and you make an objective decision. It’s just like any other trade. You manage your risks.”

Ray got up and moved towards the window. Dylan could tell that it was his signature gesture. Ray turned and faced Dylan again.

“I wasn’t going to hire you, you know that? There are dozens of great traders out there walking the street; hungry for work. But there was something you said. You know what it was? Loyalty is my priority. That meant something to me. You see, after 9/11 there was a paradigm shift, at least in my thinking. The business has never been quite the same.”

“I agree.”

“And then when Luke died.. It was a disaster, both on a business and a personal level. Let me show you something,” Ray sat down. He reached into the top drawer of his desk and removed a manila folder. He placed the folder on the desk, and removed several printouts from inside. The printouts were spreadsheets and graphs. Ray spread two sets of them on the desk in front of Dylan, one on the left one on the right. Ray pointed to the stack of papers on the left.

“This is before Luke died.”

Dylan looked at the numbers and the graphical representation. Trading revenue had risen steadily from the inception of the fund to the weeks preceding Luke's death. Even in choppy markets, the traders had been making money. Ray then reached forward and slid the other set forward.

“This is post Luke.”

Dylan then glanced at the alternate set that Ray had placed on his desk. Those sets of graphs showed a steep and precipitous line downward, as trading revenues had quickly plummeted. Ray gathered up the reports and put them back in the folder.

“Now, I find it hard to yield control to anyone.”

“You have your brother.”

“Yeah, when he’s not eating potato chips. Listen, Dylan, I need a solid second guy on the floor. My brother and I, it’s hard for him, because he can never seem to get himself out of my shadow. Like he’s proving something. So no matter how strong he is, he can’t seem to handle it.”

“What about your other traders? Have any of them stepped up?”

“They depended on Luke too much. It’s like they all have tunnel vision. But, they believe in me, Dylan, and that’s one thing I treasure over everything else. When I asked you if you would kill for this firm, I was joking, but not too much. Because most people here would give their life for me. They would try and walk through this wall if I asked them too. And in return I give the same back. Do you know what the irony is?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Probably the only one not like this is my brother.”

Dylan noticed that Ray's face was substantially redder. Dylan hesitated for a few seconds before looking Ray directly in the eyes.

“My brother wants to be me so bad, that sometimes I think he hates me. When Luke was here, he helped diffuse that. Now, I don’t know.”

“I’m a trader, not a psychologist. I’m also not a mind reader;.The only thing I can do is make money. That’s what I bring to the table.”

“And I think you can do it. You can be that solid second guy.”

“Well, if you think that guy is me, I’m ready for the task.”

“Are you?”

“I know I am.”

“Then I think we have a deal.”

“Great, but there is one thing,” Dylan said. “Of course, we haven’t spoken about compensation.”

“Of course. We all want to get paid.”

“I understand. What I was wondering about was a signing bonus.”

“You want a signing bonus?
In this environment?”

“Well, Ray, things have been a little tight financially: I’ve been hit pretty hard by the markets. I’m reworking some investments, and I need a little cushion.”

“We all do. Dylan, I’m not in a position to go around making large financial promises in these market conditions.”

“I realize that. But, I have the track record and the experience, so a signing bonus is not out of the question.”

“How much are you looking for?”

Dylan was working through the calculation in his mind. Fifty thousand in cash might buy time for him and the gallery.

“100K.”

Ray smirked.

“Based on your performance and what we project you to do, we could put an advance in an escrow account, and have your compensation rewritten to include that. Would that help?”

“Would some of that be available up front?”

“You’re pushing it. When I do an advance like this, it’s conditional. You have one year. If you don’t meet the revenue goals stipulated in the contract, you’re out. No severance, no unemployment, no bonus. That’s the deal. You want money up front, you gotta’ work for it.”

“Okay, Ray. I can accept that.”

“Then you’re our man. Congratulations and welcome aboard!” They shook hands.

“Thank you,” Dylan said. “But there is one last question.”

Ray looked at him quizzically. He wasn’t the type of man who responded well to frequent demands.

“I’d like to bring my trading assistant with me. His name is Binky.”

“Binky?”

“It’s a prep school thing.”

“Is he good?”

“He’s a borderline mathematical and computer genius. I’m not sure if I can get him, but I’d like to try.”