Free On the Floor by Aifric Campbell Page B

Thisis not as difficult as it might sound, though most of the pink-lidded rookies do not make it. Once a boy cried. He’d been despatched on a simple errand, to get a fresh stack of tickets but failed to return before Rob had actually run out. He ambled back to the desk with an insouciant grin and asked Rob where he could get a sandwich.
This is not fucking Treetops where we show you the toilet and give you a packed lunch
. Last summer when an intern showed up one morning sporting braces with dollar signs Rob picked up a marker and wrote
I am a cunt
on the kid’s cheek. It turned out to be indelible ink so he had to go and get some stain remover from a hair salon and he was allergic so he went around for a week with a rash.
    â€˜Now listen up, Bud,’ Rob points to the screen and reads aloud: ‘07:13 Pentagon confirms 680,000 allied forces in Kuwaiti theatre of operations – White House. Lesson number two thousand three hundred and four: War is opportunity. And Geri is going to demonstrate exactly what that means any minute now, aren’t you, G?’ Bud Light looks from Rob to me, he is soaking it all up, learning the banter protocols of head trader to top producer.
    â€˜Five million lovely Claxin Falls on special offer,’ Rob dangles the receiver.
    I flick my speed-dial, thinking that I
could
just do what I’m paid to and work some client up to pre-war fever pitch, make him believe that the
worst
thing to do right now would be to sell and that the
best
course of action would, in fact, be to pre-empt a victory rally and buy some quality merchandise while everybody else is sucking wind. And what could be safer than rubbish? The perfect target is, of course, Arthur at Bishopsgate Asset Management whose ulcerous paranoia about the chronic underperformance of his fund is directly correlated to his inability to resist sales chat. I signal to Rob who clicks onto my line, presses the mute button and hands the receiver to Bud Light to listen in to my call.
    After a little grumbling about how I haven’t been around for a couple of days and my soothing apology that I was away in Hong Kong (seeing a much more important client than him), I find Arthur at exactly the right point of frantic indecision. A few days listening to the news and staring at the screen has tipped him into a pre-war tailspin and he is borderline hysterical about some analyst from Merrill’s who’s just come across the tape saying that oil could drop to twenty-five bucks.
    â€˜Forget oil, Arthur,’ I say. ‘Number one, you haven’t got any in your portfolio. Number two, it’s a total red herring. As we were saying last week, you’re cash rich going into this war so you’re way ahead of the pack. Now what you really want to be worrying about is that you might be too
light
.’
    â€˜Light? Too light?’ he mutters in a subdued scream.
    â€˜That’s right, Arthur. Remember our strategist who predicted the fall of the Berlin wall? Well, I’ve just come out of a meeting and he’s saying that the war is already in the price, it’s all discounted, so what you
really
should be worrying about is the risk to performance when the war is over.’
    There’s a moment’s silence while Arthur considers this. ‘I don’t know, Geri.’
    â€˜That’s exactly what I’m saying, Arthur. Forget all this short-termism. I mean, you’re not a day trader, are you?’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜And you
are
running an income fund right?’
    â€˜Uh huh, but—’
    â€˜Arthur, listen. What you need to be thinking about is what your boss is going to be saying about your performance at the
end
of the year, when we’re all looking back at the mother of all rallies that happens
after
the war has been won. I’m talking dollar exposure, high credit ratings, big fat coupons. You know as well as I do that there’s not a lot of stuff like that around.