The Last Trade Read Online Free Page A

the masses and walked into my office one day with the numbers to prove it. This is the man who is getting it right all over again, readying us for another major event, guiding us to zig while the rest of the street zags: the Nostradamus of Numbers, the King of the Quants, and my pal, give it up for Mister Personality, Andrew Havens!”
    Havens raises his glass, fakes a sip, and grimaces more than grins along with the applause. As he bends to sit back down, he knocks over his drink and the others laugh at his social ineptitude. While he reaches for a napkin to clean up his mess, his phone buzzes again.
    This text reads:
    Â 
    Murder @ Hang Seng

4
    Hong Kong
    T he financial world does not like Mondays.
    Especially in the autumn. See Monday, October 28, 1929, October 19, 1987, and, of course, September 29, 2008.
    No one is more aware of this than Patrick Lau, a twenty-nine-year-old trader who lost everything and then some in the fall of 2008. He lost his client’s money, his employer’s money, and, of course, his own. There had been warnings, but as is the case with so many people who have only enjoyed success, even in 2008 Lau felt that he was immune to failure. After the crash, he downsized his lifestyle, sold what he could, started over, and tried to hang on.
    Up until a few hours ago even that was in question. When he left for work this morning, he was fairly sure that he’d have to move out of his apartment and perhaps leave Hong Kong and the financial services industry altogether. But now that all seems to be changing for the better.
    Autumn Mondays and overwhelming personal debt be damned.
    It’s amazing how a random phone call from a complete stranger can change everything. Lau can’t move beyond this thought as he walks through the door of a seventeenth-floor condominium in the Wanchai District of Hong Kong, a condo that he will not have to abandon after all. Amazing how one call from someone whose name he still doesn’t and may never know can change a life, a career, and, in Lau’s case, save the ass of a broker on the precipice of bankruptcy.
    He glances out the living room window and thinks of the prospect of a born-again, amazing life as dusk falls upon the city. In the distance he can still make out the silhouette of Victoria Peak, and in every direction the rooftop lights of the towers that rim the harbor have begun flashing, illuminating the world beneath in a neon, Technicolor rainbow.
    After so many bad ones, this has been a good day for Lau. Indeed, after a brutal couple of years it seems as if things are finally beginning to turn around. Of course, nothing like the millennial boom times with the coke and the raves and the spontaneous junkets to Bali and Phuket. But definitely better, especially on his small piece of real estate on the U.S. trading desk. Especially today.
    Just after noon Lau received a phone call from a man at a firm called Siren Securities in Berlin, representing an American investor interested in taking a short position on a series of American-based tech stocks. Lau didn’t typically take this kind of call seriously. Every day, especially since the crash, he’s received similar inquiries from eccentrics and loons and amateurs without the funds or credentials to back up their claims. But there was something about this caller, the authority of the man’s voice and the specificity of his intentions, that piqued Lau’s curiosity.
    That and the 1.1-billion-dollar price tag on the deal.
    Lau fixes himself a martini, Hendrick’s with a splash of olive juice, and plops down on his white leather sofa to take in the view and revel in his accomplishment. And why not? It’s only Monday. Just last night he was thinking he might have to move to a more affordable apartment at a less desirable address, perhaps share something with a roommate for the first time since he graduated college, and now he’s just completed the biggest deal of his