"Sharpe Ratio" by John Kaufmann
At my twelve, a bank of clocks is suspended from the ceiling. New York 0730, London 1230, Frankfurt 1330, Delhi 1530, Hong Kong 0830. I massage my neck, adjust my lumbar pillow and think, Most men live lives of quiet sleep deprivation. Next to me is Kumar, plump, trained as an engineer, no sense of personal space. I open an email in the Outlook tab, type “Eyes on your own screen, fuckface,” and he explodes in laughter.
Some idiot has launched a drone. It lifts off near the southwest corner of the floor, near Risk Management, buzzes the sad sacks in Merger Arb and hovers for a moment over Mary, the head of the Convertible Arb desk. She is thirty-five or so, large, asocial, a math PhD. She doesn’t seem to notice it as it hovers six inches above her head for a minute. It cuts left over Volatility and Agencies and touches down on a three-by-six-by-four pile of Whitecastles sitting on a credenza overlooking the Harbor. I see it pause next to the silhouette of the Statue and think, Give me your tired, your poor, your yak-yak-yak. When it stops outside the glass wall of the Capo di Tutti’s office, he waves it away. This morning, as all mornings, the Capo di Tutti looks like Toto Riina, with black eyes, black hair, bags below the eyes, short bangs and short, strong hands. He is in his office with the door closed. His feet are on the desk, his shoes are off and he is talking to the blond, blue-eyed, ex Princeton, ex football head trader, Jimmy Fitz, laughing. Behind him, framed, is a page from the New York Times listing the manifest of the ship that brought his grandfather, Salvatore Bisaquino, to Ellis Island. The Capo wrestled in high school and college and now coaches a local high school team. I can easily picture him on the mat.
When the drone approaches the Asset Backed desk, I pull an AirZooka out from under my desk, pull back the flap and release. Before I can reload, the drone pilot executes an evasive maneuver and banks right, toward ETF Arb. Kumar says:
“Guruji. You need tracer bullets.”
I do a head-wag and say “Uuuuh?” I am never sure whether that is offensive or funny. That’s the point, you see. I say:
“I need rates to fucking come in line.”
“You need to hedge better.”
“I need ten sticks in the bank.”
The trading floor looks like a football field. At the thirty-yard line, one of the lacrosse players on the Volatility desk is shouting at Sam, the tax lawyer, on the forty-five, “Hey – Doctor No! Whaddya say?”
The Asian quants in Risk Management, in the end zone, are huddled over their computers, quiet.
At the twenty-five, McCarthy and Schneider in Index Arb are talking about a sports bet. McCarthy is tall, broad and balding, wrestled and played football in college, everyone’s friend. Schneider is a head shorter, pudgy with a stringy voice and three days’ growth of beard.
After the drone disappears, I notice that a small group of traders has gathered by the picture window next to the stack of Whitecastle boxes. A bunch of guys from FX and Crypto. The token woman and the soccer player from Agencies. The head of Volatility, son and grandson of a famous writer. The Capo di Tutti’s belly leaves his office, strolls over and joins the group. I squint and see, through the window, hanging off the building across the plaza, a window washer stranded outside the fortieth floor. One of the two cables that suspends his platform has snapped and the platform is hanging at a seventy-five degree angle. He is just a speck, but the speck is clinging to the platform’s railing, and appears to be waving its hands. A helicopter is hovering near the speck, unable to get close enough to rescue it.
The Capo shouts, “Give me an over-under!”
“He’ll be dead in forty-five.”
“Thirty, tops.”
“Make me a market!”
I see instant messages pop up on Kumar’s screen. “Guruji. You going to get in on this?” he asks. I shake my head, and hear ping, ping, ping. The gaggle of traders by the window has grown. An open-outcry market begins to supplement the on-line market. Wu, Chesney and Mary hand hundred-dollar bills to Cesar, acting as stake-holder. Kumar says, to no one in particular, “I need to hedge my gamma risk, man.” The sun has just struck the top of the new high-rises on the Jersey side of the harbor and the Statue is where she has always been, holding her torch and her scroll and welcoming the tired, the poor and the huddled masses to the City.
John Kaufmann is a mobile home park owner who lives in southern New York State. His writing has been published in Off Assignment, The High Plains Register, Litro, The Journal of the Taxation of Financial Products, The Journal of Taxation of Investments and Tax Notes.
