He turned around to me and explained what he’d done. Using that new trading programme, he’d discovered that there were three marketmakers on ATRX’s bid and two on the offer. Reckoning that ATRX would rebound, he took advantage of the wide spread by bidding 59 for 2,000 shares, which was over the best market-maker bid. Having topped this bid, Holland then got first in line to execute an order. The first 2,000 shares for sale at market went to him at 59. Very soon after this he offered to sell for 59, which was still lower than the ask price posted by the big market-makers. Holland had guessed right, and the stock was taken off his hands almost immediately. In just fifteen seconds and a few strokes of the keyboard he had netted over $500 and cut the spread by of a point.
I asked him how many trades like this he made every day.
Holland smiled for the first time. He said he made about thirty trades each day, mostly in lots of 1,000 or 2,000 shares, and rarely held a stock for more than ten minutes.
He smiled again and said, ‘OK, they’re not all like that one, but a lot of them are.’ He paused. ‘It’s about identifying ripples in the charts and then reacting quickly.’
‘You mean, it’s not just about who has the most information?’
‘Shit no. With all the indicators that are available these days, you just end up with conflicting signals. Shit no.’
Now that I had his attention, I bombarded him with more questions. How much preparation did he do for each trading day? How many positions did he keep open at any one time? What kind of commissions did he pay?
As Holland answered each of my questions, he gradually pulled himself away from the computer screens on the table. Then he started making himself an espresso, but by the time it was ready and he was drinking it, he seemed to have become sufficiently detached from his work to notice again that he was wearing nothing but boxer shorts, and to be self-conscious about it. He knocked back the remainder of the espresso, excused himself and wandered off down the hall into what I assumed was a bedroom.
In his absence, I went over to look at the computer screens again. It was amazing… he had made $500 – the price of one hit of MDT – in just fifteen seconds! I definitely wanted to learn how to do this, because if Bob Holland could execute thirty orders in a day, I was sure that I could manage a hundred, or more. When he came back, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, I asked him how I should go about learning. He told me that the best way to get into day-trading was to just do it – trade, and that most of the online brokers facilitated this by giving free access to simulated trading games and by conducting live tutorials.
‘Simulation games’, he said, in a tone that was becoming increasingly stilted, ‘are an excellent way of developing your skills, Eddie, and of gaining confidence in placing trades but without actually having to take any risks.’
I got him to recommend some online brokers and software trading packages, and as I wrote this stuff down I kept firing questions at him. Holland answered everything I asked him, and comprehensively, but I could see that he was becoming slightly alarmed, as if the rate and nature of my questions was perhaps more than he’d bargained for – as if he felt that by answering them, by passing on this information, he might be unleashing some kind of Frankenstein monster into cyberspace, some desperate, hungry individual capable of who-knew-what financial atrocities.
It had taken a while, but Holland was completely focused on me now. In fact, he appeared more concerned with each new question and started introducing a cautionary note into his answers.
‘So look, start small, start by trading hundred-share lots for the first month or so, or at least until you find your feet…’
‘Hhm.’
‘… and don’t get too excited if you have a good day – one good day’s trading doesn’t mean you’re Warren Buffet. The next trade you make could just as easily blow your account out…’
‘Hhm.’
‘… and when you enter a trade, make sure you have an idea of how you expect it to behave, because if it acts counter to that – get out!’
My impulse was to go Yeah, yeah, yeah to all of this, and Holland could see that. But the reason he wasn’t getting through to me was because the more he warned me about the potential dangers of day-trading, the more excited I could feel myself becoming at the prospect of actually getting home and doing it.
As I was slipping my notebook into my jacket pocket, and then putting the jacket on to go, Holland upped the pace a little.
‘Trading can get pretty intense, you know.’ He paused, and then said all at a rush, ‘Don’t ever borrow money from family or friends, Eddie – I mean to trade, or to get yourself out of a trading crisis.’ I looked at him, slightly alarmed myself now. ‘And don’t start lying to hide your losses either.’
There was a hint of desperation in his voice. I got the impression that he wasn’t so much talking to me as about himself. I also got the impression that he didn’t want me to leave.
I did, however, and badly – but I hesitated. I stood in the middle of the room and listened as he told me how he’d left his job as a marketing director to start day-trading and how within six months his wife had left him. He told me that he got restless and irritable whenever he couldn’t trade – like on Sundays, for example, or in the middle of the night – and that trading had effectively become his entire life. He went on to say that he was incapable of accumulating cash in his account and often didn’t even bother to open his brokerage statements.
‘Because you don’t want to face up to the extent of your losses?’ I said.
He nodded.
Then he went deeper into confessional mode and started talking about his addictive personality and how if it hadn’t been one thing in his life it had been another…
During all of this, the only thing I could think of was how sublime, how like a brief but intricate jazz solo that little fifteen-second passage of electronic commerce had been. Pretty soon, I couldn’t even make out what Holland was saying any more, not clearly, because I was gone, lost in a sudden, intoxicating reverie of possibilities. Holland, I realized, had been stumbling around in the dark, shaving off the occasional sixteenth of a point here or there, quite obviously getting it wrong more often than he was getting it right. But this wasn’t going to be the case with me. I would know what to do instinctively. I would know what stocks to buy, and when to buy them, and why.
I would be good at this.
When I eventually got away and returned to Tenth Street, my head was still reeling. But then, when I opened the door of the apartment and stepped into the living-room, I immediately felt oppressed, felt outsized – like Alice, like I’d soon be curling an arm round my head and sticking an elbow out of the window, just to fit in the place. I began to feel somewhat aggrieved, too, as though impatient that I hadn’t already made lots of money from day-trading – aggrieved and in desperate visceral need of things… another new suit, a couple of new suits, and shoes, several pairs of them, as well as new shirts and ties, and maybe other new stuff, a better hi-fi system, a DVD player, a laptop, proper air-conditioning, and just more rooms, more corridor space, higher ceilings. I had the nagging sense that unless I was moving forward, moving up, unless I was transmuting, transmogrifying, morphing into something else, I was probably going to, I don’t know, explode…