Trading Day 1

Welcome to the NYSE Marketics division

My morning ritual always began with running my eyes back-and-forth across words - news, for lack of a better term. It was 90% bullshit, at the minimum, and it wasn't entertaining, but those bullshit words would morph into bullshit prices which would morph into bullshit trades, so it provided some sort of variance. It was like flipping the channels between different colors of television static.

In this world, the only thing that mattered was whether you made money at the end of the day, profit and loss dissociating one from the overarching ennui composed of green and red chromatids.

My eyes flickered to the television one foot above my rotunda of monitors. It looked like a few potentially violent protesters were gathering outside of a Blackrock building. I took a sip of my piping hot cherry green tea (with no milk and sugar, of course, for how else were you supposed to drink tea?) and took a glance at my left wrist. On it was a Grand Seiko Spring seasonal edition, the movement of which required a similar amount of research and precision to construct as a Bugatti engine, which resulted in it being accurate to underneath 1 second lossy per month.

6:29:31...32...33...

I checked my right wrist, upon which a Casio F-91W sat, for even the cheapest digital watch was more accurate than any expensive mechanical watch.

6:29:35...36...37...

Perfect, 20 seconds until market open. Just enough time to pile into the various gun makers' stocks and front-run the people who weren't paying exorbitant fees for a news-and-chat terminal.

I hit a few asks on open, making sure not to cross too many spreads, and left the charts running on the monitor 48 degrees to my right as someone walked into the office. I spun my Herman Miller Aeron to greet them.

"You're late, Ivan"

"I'm sorry, JC, I know how traders are about market open, so I waited a few minutes."

I pointed to the clock on the wall.

"You see that right there? That's a $40000 Patek Phillippe wall clock.

Now, it's a battery powered piece of shit, but I bought it with profit made in five minutes. So I'll give you five minutes to explain why you want to trade for me. See if you can impress me more than this branded garbage that isn't worth even looking at."

Ivan glanced over at the monitor with open positions and pulled out his phone.

I was shocked at the audacity. "What are you doing with your phone?"

"Checking Apple Stocks"

I turned to my desk and got ready to call security to escort him out.

Ivan tapped me on the shoulder.

"You see those naked long delta positions you have? I'd close em out in the next 3 minutes, because that's about to be blown out."

"Well, I suppose this is an interview. Currently, I'm up about 30 grand on this position. If what you say is true, then I'd expect the loss to be about 100 grand. If I was right to hold this open for another hour, like I intended to do, my expected profit would probably be around 80 grand, which will be the signing bonus I give to the next person I interview who will actually get the position. But if you're right - and you have approximately 3 minutes before you're out of my office either way - that 100 grand you saved me will be your signing bonus and you'll start tomorrow. How does that sound?"

But by the time I had finished saying my little diatribe, the market's mood ring had already turned deeply red. Flabbergasted, I snapped a few keystrokes and checked the mark-to-market of the position I had closed out just 2 minutes prior.

"I suppose that I have 3 minutes left of my interview time - no need to continue, just know that I'll be leaving 3 minutes early tomorrow as a result."

And with that, Ivan walked out the door.