Limitless

But the drawback with all of these ideas was that they were either too unoriginal or too quixotic. They’d each take a lot of time and capital to set up, and there was no guarantee in the end – regardless of how fucking smart I was – that any of them would work, or have enough appeal to be marketable. So the next thing I considered was the possibility of going back to school to do a post-graduate course. With a prudent use of MDT I could accumulate credits fairly quickly and shortcut my way to a belated career in … something, but the problem was – in what? Law? Architecture? Dentistry? Some branch of science? Even listing these options was enough to take me back twenty years and start my head spinning. And did I really want to get into all of that shit again – exams, term papers, dealing with professors? The mere thought of it was enough to make me throw up.

So what, then – I asked myself – was I left with?

Well, what do you think? Making money.

Making money … how?

By making telephone calls.

Hhn?

The stock market, stupid.

[ 10 ]

IT SEEMED LIKE THE obvious thing. I’d been reading the financial sections every day in the newspapers, having those chats with the old man, even spinning elaborate stories to strange women about being an investment analyst, so the next step was surely to get involved for real, and in some practical way – by day-trading on my PC at home maybe, in options, futures, derivatives, whatever. It would be better than any job I could find, and of course playing the markets had the added attraction of being the new rock-and-roll. The only problem was that I didn’t have a clear enough understanding of what options, futures and derivatives actually were – not enough, in any case, to start trading in them. I could bluff my way through a conversation, sure, but that wasn’t going to be much use when it came to putting some real money on the table.

What I needed was an hour or two with someone who could explain in detail how the markets worked and then show me the mechanics of day-trading. I thought of Kevin Doyle, that guy I’d had breakfast with a couple of Sundays back, the one who worked for Van Loon & Associates, but as I remembered he was fairly intense and the kind of Wall Street suit who’d probably scoff at the notion of day-trading on a PC. So I phoned around some business journalists I knew and put it out that I was doing a section for a new K & D book on the whole day-trading phenomenon. I got a call back from one of them saying he could set up an interview for me with a friend of his who’d been day-trading online for the past year and would be more than willing to talk about it. The arrangement was that I’d go to this person’s apartment, chat, take notes and watch him in action.

The guy’s name was Bob Holland and he lived on East Thirty-third and Second. He greeted me in boxer shorts, led me down a hallway into his living-room and asked if I wanted a hit of espresso. The room was dominated by a long, mahogany table that had three computer terminals on it and a Gaggia espresso machine. There was an exercise bike between the far end of the table and the wall. Bob Holland was about forty-five, lean and wiry, and had thinning grey hair. He stood in front of one of the terminals, staring at the screen.

‘This is the lair of the beast, Eddie, so you’ll have to, er …’ He pulled distractedly at his boxers with one hand, simultaneously keying something in to the computer with the other, ‘ … you’ll have to excuse the dress-code.’ Still distracted, he pointed to the Gaggia and half whispered the word espresso.

I busied myself with the coffee machine and looked around as I waited for him to speak again. Apart from the table and the immediate space around it, the room had a neglected feel. It was dark and musty and looked like it hadn’t been vacuumed in awhile. The furniture and décor, as well, were more than a little fussy – too fussy, I thought, for this Spartan and focused warrior of the Nasdaq.

I figured that he’d probably been divorced in the last three to six months.