Trading Day 3

Relative Strength Indication

They were headed to a bar called 'Employers Only', which was exclusively for job creators. Nikolai was unsure if he'd be let in - he wondered if he'd have to convince the bouncer that his trading commissions, let alone his personal expenditures, were indirectly responsible for the creation of dozens of jobs, but Molly shrugged off his concerns.

"It's all about who you know, ya know?"

She was not wrong. They went down a small staircase on St. Marks that Nikolai had never known existed and were waved in by a doorman she called 'The Macedonian'. What he had expected to be a dive bar was actually a refined Victorian-esque cocktail bar, though some of the patrons were surreptitiously making their way to the bathroom a little too often. There was a chess table next to a red plush couch and a bookshelf that immediately caught his attention, but alas, he was with Molly – he knew what he was supposed to be focused on. He turned to ask her what she wanted but found her holding two shots of Jameo. Who would have known his upbringing in an Irish pub would have paid off so well?

He gagged a bit as he threw back the shot, hoping that she hadn't noticed him do so. He wasn't much of a drinker, given its propensity to stir up iceberg emotions, which he had always been careful to avoid exposing just in case he traded through them in a high-BAC regime, but he knew his way around a bar well enough to know that shots were about mentality. As long as there was sufficient liquidity in your stomach space, you could steel your mind to eat the drawdown on your gag reflex. Liquidity, after all, was everything. Today's pace certainly was out of his norm. The bar was too dimly lit (why was every bar always so fucking dark?) for him to fully make out the time from a quick glance, but he was pretty sure it couldn't be later than noon. The taste of a nutty sort of cleaning fluid was just leaving the back of his throat when he noticed the bartender talking to him.

"We don't get a lot of newcomers here, you know?"

"I mean... wouldn't that be bad for business?"

"This is Nikolai," Molly interjected. "He works right by McNulty's, and I've seen him in there a few times. I figured he'd enjoy our crowd."

"Hmm, well, the name's Kevin. I suppose I could answer your question, but you'd be better off observing a little bit to see how things work here. On another day, of course – you have company right now. Are you any good at observing?"

Finally, a question Nikolai could answer immediately.

"The best."

"Well then, Mr. Observant, what are you two going to be drinking next?"

Nikolai was used to being judged by the market, not men who poured Malbec, but, oddly enough, he was enjoying the exchange. Impending judgment was just the opportunity to impress presenting itself. He knew he had been a bit impulsive with his first question to the bartender, so he wouldn't make a laughingstock of himself by asking what liquors and liqueurs they had. Beer was obviously not an option, and he didn't know enough about wine to pick a bottle, though, of course, he had pretended on many occasions otherwise, as everyone who 'knows wine' secretly does. He also knew time was of the essence – any longer than 20 seconds, of which 14 had passed, and any chance of impressing would be squashed.

"Monkey 47, Creme de Cassis, Carpano dry"

Kevin nodded ever so slightly approvingly.

Their drinks arrived.

She asked him, “Do you think it's fair to these people that you're trading against? That their monetary loss is your gain?"

"Market goes up, market goes down. It's going to do that regardless of me. If I can make money predicting it, what's wrong with that?"

"I don't know. Haven't you ever felt that the people who this entire profit and loss system is based off of deserve a slice of the winnings?"

“I feel like I hear about transaction taxes so much, you might as well call it a conversation tax”

She laughed.

Nikolai continued, "There is one thing I wanted to ask you though. What the hell do you do?”

“Guess!”

Nikolai took stock of her. He glanced at her left wrist, at what appeared to be a classic Cartier Tank, though he couldn't be sure from the angle. A tried and true look, but nothing cutting edge about it. The classic Louis Vuitton handbag she carried was a piece of info that could be discarded, given that you could chuck a rock in any direction in Manhattan and the odds would be equal that you would hit a car or one of those godforsaken bags. He thought about her earlier comment that "he'd enjoy their crowd", and how she had so wantonly attacked his profession. It had to be.

“It’s obvious. You’re a trader as well.”

"Very good," she replied in a teacher-like fashion. "Of course, I knew who you were long before we came here. This isn't a Murakami novel. Women don't just make themselves available to men out of the blue. Do you really expect to run around in Midtown and not get recognized?"

They clinked glasses.

"Now, much like a prop shop, this bar comes with a poker table, a chess set, and an amalgam of multicolored, various-sided dice. So which one of the stereotypical trading-adjacent hobbies do you think you’re better than me at?”

Nikolai was flabbergasted. Apparently he had never considered the fact that those who do the predicting are quite predictable themselves.