Chapter 2 – Interpretations
The call from a private number came just as Jesse reached for his towel, wrapping up a set of flys and a grueling set of crunches. He had received very specific instructions in a text at 5:00 AM from an equally private number.
“Jesse Street…” The baritone voice paused. “You don’t know me. My name is Jack Sully with an equities investment banking firm, Harrington Ellis.”
“I know the firm,” Jesse answered.
Jesse knew the firm well. Probably traded against them in a whip-saw, orchestrated by hedge funds like Harrington exerting control in thinly traded markets.
“Well, Ben sends his regards. Says he finished backtesting your signals algorithm. Altogether without your consent, I gather.
Jesse sat quiet.
“But according to Ben, he did save your life.”
“Well, there is that,” Jesse conceded.
“And more than once?” Jack said.
Jack seemed to put a hedge on early in the trade. Albeit, to gain cooperation for something he wants. Jesse would wait for ‘the something’.
“A tireless over-achiever,” Jesse said. “For a damsel in distress.”
Ben Jolly was an undocumented genius. Cognitive insight, with an unprecedented ability to connect dots. Retention off the charts. He probably acquired much of my trader algorithm for interpreting market technical indicators over a couple of beers, followed by a couple of double scotches. And a couple of hangovers. On more than one occasion. At Cuts meat-house bar, as I recall.
Ben came to mind because this bore his signature. Ben had saved Jesse’s life on more that one occasion, and not only because he was VMAQ-3 Squadron Commander. Ben flew escort for the EA-6B Prowlers. When strafing runs went hot, Ben drew the 50-cal fire on himself. He did this on multiple air assaults, taking the heat to save his unit. When Jesse resigned service for the Moon Dogs after a final Navy deployment in 2017, Ben followed. He found his second love to flying from a repertoire of talents, he was a coder. He accepted a job writing proprietary code for Harrington Ellis.
“Well, you know Ben,” Jack said.
“All too well,” Jesse followed.
“Tireless, and still playing the field.”
“Like a fiddle, no doubt. How can I help you, Jack?”
“Jesse, Harrington possesses an unparalleled technical edge in the markets. We operate a highly secretive platform for very wealthy clients who rely on our firm’s exclusive trade-assets and security. ”
“One can never have too much…exclusivity.”
“Ben warned me you’re a bit of a smart-ass.”
“Compensates for my being frivolous,” Jesse said.
Jack almost let a chuckle. “Jesse, we want to make you an offer. But the partners need to know we can count on you to respect our clients’ right to privacy.”
“Cross my heart,” Jesse said. “My TS has expired.”
Jesse knew the prestigious firm for their unorthodox and controversial methods. But few really knew what these methods were except that their investment gains vastly surpassed their peers and fell well outside the statistical bell curve. Hedge funds and Investment banking firms typically used branded software like BackStop, PackHedge. Harrington’s code was none of these.
The principles prided themselves in exclusivity. Secrecy or just a severe lack of transparency, Jesse didn’t like them.
“Ben will be in touch. And Jesse, the partners would like to extend a retainer.”
“Good-will,” Jesse interrupted. Jack had unveiled ‘the something’. Prematurely extending good-will before an acquisition was also unorthodox.
The boys at Harrington expected a deal.
From his engineering days, goodwill is created when a company pays more for an acquisition than the fair market value of the net assets acquired. The difference between the purchase price and the fair market value of assets acquired represents a premium that the acquiring company offers to sweeten the deal.
“Terrific.” Jesse had no intention of selling his algorithm, which up until now was all manual analysis and application. All safely locked between his ears as Gramps used to say. Until now.
* * *
Lasciviousness at Cuts was six months ago. Tapping into his very mysterious and cluttered mind from a drunken soiree and then back-testing the acquired data without his consent, scraping private interpretations; one might consider this invasive. But this was altogether Ben’s specialty. Besides saving lives.
Even the swiping of Jesse’s personal trade history, however Ben managed to get it though troubling, was not offensive. Knowing Ben, he hacked the IRS files and grabbed the 8949s. Ten of them; the other ten years were not yet digitalized. In all of that, Jesse never questioned Ben’s integrity. Although motives needed explaining. The real trouble was that no one was asking the right questions. For Whom? and Why?
Jesse knew the value of what he had. The lion’s share of Jesse’s cognitive ability believed his compilation of interpretations for signaling equity swings should not be disclosed and certainly not published. For what likely followed could only be characterized as complete disruption. Like an orchestrated GameStop only worse.
Between the haves and have nots, there was a balance. Jesse’s trade-signals adaptations posed incontrovertible, irreversible disturbance of this balance. Undisturbed, a player knew his or her place. Although unfortunate for the have-nots, the differential between big boy and retail trades created a normalcy.
Ben had a slightly different take. He knew about unintended consequences of this type, how a disturbance of balance and order can be catastrophic! But Jesse suspected nobody at Harrington was looking at this. Or, he surmised there was “something else.” Some other reason, other than leverage or technological edge motivated Harrington-Ellis which he preferred not to think about. He intuitively knew what. And this kept Jesse up at night.
* * *
Ben was categorically punctual wherever he went, meetings, dates, even Home Depot. In khaki shorts and docksides, at a sidewalk cafe, affectionately renamed La Fiesta, Jesse waited and chatted on his cell. Kat was the only girl who held him captive.
Jesse hung up with his unofficially official girl friend. He and Kat had a date. He could barely contain the smile. Now, Ben was one minute away. Jesse scavenged his brain to think of something sad and gloomy in a feeble attempt to keep girl news out of plain sight.
It wasn’t working.
“So, you’re back in love,” Said a voice from 20 feet away. — “There’s nothing like quicksand, in the middle of a gala.”
The two ex-jet jocks had settled on the only sidewalk cafe resembling Palma Mayorca, a place where they had partaken of unenumerated libations, Latin tunes, and Spanish girls’ affinity for Marine aviators.
All facets of La Fiesta were authentic but the sangria mix. So, they agreed on a strategy: Couplecouple Ole Fashioned’s in between sangrias. Then monitor, assess, and revise.
“You think perhaps that my getting rich in a negotiated release of trade criteria like this to Harrington may not be best?” Jesse said
“That genius dies with you, I’ll never forgive myself.” Ben said. “And then nobody gets rich.”
“Gee, your unselfishness is touching.”
Sarcasm. Ben wasn’t thinking of himself, or a rainbow and pot-o-gold, Jesse knew him.
“What if – you fall so deeply in love with Kat, the neurons securing a memory path to these products of genius and Interpretations die, and the genius is locked in there forever?” Ben proposed, half serious.
Jesse and Ben had bantered like this before. They were both aware of the countless reasons that codifying Jesse’s interpretations was a bad idea. Information Brokers, Competitive Intelligence bordering on Espionage to name a few. In a more serious setting Ben and Jesse had explored all of them. But a couple cases for publishing the Jesse’s intel.
“Unintended consequences. Anti-trust. And the odd unintended criminal,” Jesse said. “These things don’t worry you just a bit?”
Corporate Desire with no foresight into what markets might become should Jesse’s Signals be acquired by an unsavory type.
“The software, my man, would be written on the back of Regime. That framework accommodates updates, and the updates will contain a worm-surprise. Insurance for when Harrington breaks a promise.”
“When?” Jesse Asked. “And you can write this insurance code?” Jesse asked
Ben smiled like Tom Selleck.
* * *
But there was one skillful CI broker who wanted Jesse’s Suite of Interpretations. He was well financed and willing to do anything to intercept the intel or the package bearer!
Across the street, anonymous to anyone but himself, was a man with a camera. He was invisible. He could be flicking pictures of anything. An enthusiast of architecture, fashion, or Lamborghini’s. A novice for all anybody knew. But to a veteran, he was none of these. He was good with a camera and he already knew his subject better than he knew himself.
Jesse Street.
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