Limitless

by Alan Glynn

  ‘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 …

  I put on the scherzo from Bruckner’s Ninth and marched around the apartment, like a one-man panzer division, muttering to myself, weighing up the options. How was I to move forward? How was I to get started? But I soon realized that I didn’t have too many options, because the money in the closet had dwindled to a few thousand dollars, which was about as much as there was in my bank account – and since, let’s face it, a few thousand dollars plus a few thousand dollars is still, for all intents and purposes, a few thousand dollars, all I had in the world, then, apart from a credit card, was a few thousand dollars.

  Taking what was left in the closet in any case, I went out shopping again. This time I headed for Forty-seventh Street and bought two fourteen-inch TV sets, a laptop computer and three software packages – two for investment-analysis and one for online trading. Disregarding Bob Holland’s idea that too much information led to conflicting signals, I bought the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post and the latest issues of The Economist, Barrons, Newsweek, The Nation, Harper’s, Atlantic Monthly, Fortune, Forbes, Wired, Variety and about ten other weekly and monthly titles. I also got a handful of foreign-language newspapers, ones I’d at least be able to take some kind of a stab at – Il Sole 24 Ore and Corriera della Sera, obviously – but also Le Figaro, El Pais and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

  Back in my apartment, I phoned a friend who was an electrical engineer and had him instruct me over the phone about how to splice the wires from the two new TV sets into my existing cable connection. He was very uncomfortable about it and wanted to come round and do it himself, but I insisted that he just explain it to me, goddammit – explain it to me over the phone and let me take notes. It was an entirely different matter, OK, from what I might have ventured to do under normal circumstances – change a plug, say, or replace a fuse – but I nevertheless managed to carry out his instructions, rapidly, and to the letter, and as a result I soon had the three TV sets operating side-by-side in the living-room. After that, I hooked up the new laptop to the computer on my desk, installed the software and went online. I did some research into Internet stockbrokers, and used my credit card and a bank transfer to open an account with one of the smaller companies. I then took the newspapers and magazines I’d bought and carefully spread them out around the apartment. I put reading material, open at relevant pages, on to every available surface – desk, table, chairs, shelves, couch, floor.

  *

  The next few hours flitted by in what felt like a couple of seconds. I spent them hovering anxiously in front of the five screens, absorbing information – and at a rate that made my previous efforts seem positively glacial. The three TV sets were beaming out different news and financial-service transmissions – CNN, CNNfn and CNBC – different tributaries into the one great global flood of information, analysis and opinion. The online broker I’d registered with – The Klondike Index – provided real-time quotes, expert commentary, news updates and hyperlinks to a variety of research tools and simulation games. On the other computer screen, I visited sites like Bloomberg, The Street.com., Quote.com, Raging Bull and The Motley Fool. I also occasionally took time out to dive-bomb over the acres of newsprint I’d accumulated, and read articles about anything and everything … Mexico, naturally, but also about genetically modified foods, peace talks in the Middle East, Britpop, the downturn in the steel industry, Nigerian crime statistics, e-commerce, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, Basque separatists, the international banana trade …

  Whatever.

  Of course, I had no real idea of what I was doing here, there was no coherent strategy, it was all random, but I’d gravitated to this notion that the more data there was stored in my brain – and wide-ranging data – the more confident I would be when the time actually came to take some of those fabled split-second decisions.

  And – come to that – what was I waiting for? I didn’t have much latitude, financially, but if I’d really wanted to, I could have been trading online within a matter of seconds. To place an order, all I had to do was select a stock, enter data about the type of transaction and number of shares required, and then click the Send Order button on the screen.

  I resolved to begin the following morning.

  *

  Turning around in my swivel-chair at 10 a.m., I paused to survey the apartment. It seemed to have mutated severely in the previous twenty-four hours. Less recognizable than before, less identifiable as a living space, it was now, to use Bob Holland’s word, like the lair of some deranged obsessive. Too far into this to be getting squeamish, however, I swivelled back around to the two computer screens on the desk and set about looking for some suitable stocks to buy. I waded through endless pick lists, insider lists, Street-beater lists, but eventually went with my gut instinct and fixed on a medium-sized software company in Palo Alto called Digicon that I figured to be well placed for some short-term action. It had just gone through a lengthy period of trading within a very narrow price range, but seemed now to be on the point of breaking out of that. In fact, in the space of time it took me to consider Digicon, and to run some
relevant data through the analysis programmes, the company’s share price went up by half a point. The account I’d opened with Klondike had steep brokerage fees and charged high interest rates, but they did allow up to 50 per cent leverage on opening deposits. So I sent off an order to buy 200 shares in Digicon, at $14 per share. Over the next half an hour I bought a total of 500 shares in six other companies, using up all my available funds, and then spent the rest of the day tracking these companies, looking for likely sell signals.

  During the course of the late morning and early afternoon, all but one of the seven stocks I’d chosen went up in price, and by widely varying degrees. I made quick decisions about which ones to offload. Digicon, for instance, went to 17, but I didn’t think it was going to go any higher, so I sold it and cleared a profit of more than $600 – less the commission and transaction fee, of course. Another stock rose from 18½ points to 24¾, and another from 31 to 36. By offloading each of these stocks at the right time, I managed to increase my basic fund from about $7,000 to nearly $12,000, and in the last two hours of trading I sold off everything except US-Cova. This was the one stock that hadn’t moved all day, despite signals that an uptrend was imminent. I felt irritated by this, because when I’d been choosing these stocks something almost physical had happened to me … a vague, tingling sensation in the pit of my stomach – or so it had seemed at the time. In any case, all of the other stocks had shifted, and I didn’t understand why this one wasn’t complying.

  Undeterred, I placed an order for an extra 650 shares in US-Cova, at $22 per share. About twenty minutes later there was a blip on the screen and US-Cova started moving. It went up by two points, then by another three points. I watched as the share price just kept climbing upwards. When it reached $36 I typed in a sell order, but still held out for another increase, and only sent in the order when the share price had hit $39, an increase of $17 in little over an hour.

  At close of trading on that first day, therefore, I had more than $20,000 in my account. Take away the initial $7,000 and fees, and that meant I had made somewhere in the region of $12,000 profit in a single day. It was small potatoes on the stock market, obviously, but it was still more than I’d often made in half a year as a freelance copywriter. This was of course amazing, but it also hit me what an incredible run of luck I’d had: seven picks and seven winners, and on an average day of trading where the market had closed only twelve points up. It was extraordinary. So how had I done it? Had it been luck? I tried to go back over the whole thing, to retrace my steps and see if I could identify what signals I’d picked up on, what prompts had led me to these relatively obscure, low-profile stocks in the first place, but it proved an impossibly labyrinthine task. I checked through dozens of trend-lines again, re-ran analysis programmes and at one point found myself crawling across the floor of the apartment over the open pages of broadsheet newspapers and glossy magazines, in search of some article I vaguely remembered reading and that may have suggested something – or sparked off an idea, or led in some other direction, or not. I simply didn’t know. Perhaps I’d heard something on TV, an off-the-cuff remark made by any one of a hundred investment analysts. Or come across something in a chat-room, or on a message-board, or in a webzine.

  Trying to reconfigure my mental co-ordinates at the exact moments I’d chosen those stocks was like trying to stuff toothpaste back into a tube, and I soon gave up. But the one conclusion I could draw from this was that I’d probably used fundamental and quantitative analysis in about equal measure, and even though I might not get the proportions exactly the same on the next occasion, and could never recreate the conditions of that particular day, I was certainly on the right track. Unless, of course – intolerable thought – it had all been some kind of a fluke, an epic stroke of beginner’s luck. I didn’t believe that it had been, really, but I still needed to know for sure and was therefore anxious to get trading again the next day. Which meant keeping up the preparatory in-take of data, and – naturally – of MDT-48.

  *

  I got three or four hours’ sleep that night, and when I woke up – which was pretty suddenly, thanks to a car-alarm going off – it took me quite a while to work out where, and indeed who, I was. Before the alarm jolted me awake, I’d been in the middle of a particularly vivid dream set in Melissa’s old apartment on Union Street in Brooklyn. Nothing much happened in the dream, really, but it had a guided, virtual-reality feel to it, with tracking shots and detailed close-ups, and even sounds … the evocative whine of the radiators, for example, doors slamming down the hall, kids’ voices rising up from the street below.

  The eye of the dream – the POV, the camera – glided low along the pitch-pine floorboards, through the different rooms of this railway apartment, taking in everything, the grain of the wood, each swirling line and knot of it … clumps of dust, a copy of The Nation, an empty bottle of Grolsch, an ashtray. Then, moving slowly upwards, it took in Melissa’s right foot, which was bare, and her crossed legs, which were bare, and the navy silk slip she was wearing, which crumpled as she leant forward, half revealing her breasts. Her long shiny black hair was draped on her shoulders and arms, and partially covered her face. She was sitting in a chair, smoking a cigarette, brooding. She looked fabulous. I was sitting on the floor, looking – I imagined – slightly less fabulous. Then, after what might have been a few seconds, I rose up to my feet, and the point-of-view – dizzyingly – rose up with me. As I turned, everything turned, and in a kind of hand-held pan of the room I took in the mounted black-and-white photographs on the wall, the photographs of old New York that Melissa had always liked so much; I took in the stone mantelpiece of the disused fireplace, and above it, the mirror, and in the mirror – fleetingly – me, wearing that old corduroy jacket I’d had, and looking so thin, so young. Still moving round, I saw the open doors that connected this room to the bedroom at the front, and then, standing framed between the doors I saw Vernon, all hair and smooth skin and in a leather jacket he’d always worn. I got a really good look at him, at his bright green eyes and high cheekbones, and for a couple of seconds he seemed to be talking to me. His lips were moving, though I couldn’t hear anything he was saying …

  But then suddenly it was all over, the car-alarm was wailing plaintively down on Tenth Street and I was swinging my legs out of bed – taking deep breaths, feeling as though I’d seen a ghost.

  Inevitably, the next image to take up residence inside my head was another one of Vernon, but it was a Vernon of ten or eleven years later – a Vernon with hardly any hair, and with facial features that were disfigured and bruised, a Vernon splayed out on the couch of another apartment, in another part of town …

  I stared down at the rug on the floor beside my bed, at its intricate, endlessly replicating patterns, and shook my head very slowly from side to side. Since I’d starting taking the MDT pills a few weeks before, I had hardly given any real thought to Vernon Gant – even though, by any standards, my behaviour towards him had been appalling. After finding him dead I’d as good as ransacked his bedroom for God’s sake, and then stolen cash and property belonging to him. I hadn’t even gone to his funeral service – convincing myself, on no evidence whatsoever, that that was the way Melissa had wanted it.

  I stood up from the edge of the bed and quickly walked into the living-room. I took two pills from the ceramic bowl on the wooden shelf above the computer – which I’d been refilling every day – and swallowed them. It was surely the case, too, that the stuff I’d taken rightly belonged to Vernon’s sister now – and whatever about the drugs, Melissa probably could have used that nine grand.

  With a knot in my stomach, I reached behind the computers to switch them on. Then I glanced at my watch.

  It was 4.58 a.m.

  I’d easily be able to give her double that amount now, though – and maybe even a lot more if my second day of trading went well – but wouldn’t that be like paying her off in some way?

  All of a sudden I felt sick.

  Th
is certainly wasn’t how I’d ever envisaged renewing my acquaintance with Melissa. I rushed into the bathroom and slammed the door behind me. I lowered myself to the floor and into position over the rim of the toilet bowl. But nothing happened, I couldn’t throw up. I remained there for about twenty minutes, breathing heavily, holding my cheek against the cold, white porcelain, until eventually the feeling passed – or, rather, feelings … because the weird thing was, when I stood up again to go back into the living-room and start work at my desk, I no longer felt sick – but I no longer felt guilty either.

  *

  Trading that day was brisk. I chose myself another little portfolio of stocks to work on, five middle-sized companies plucked from obscurity, and more or less cleaned up. Earlier on, over coffee, I’d seen references in several newspaper articles – and later, innumerable references on innumerable websites – to US-Cova and its extraordinary performance in the markets the previous day. Digicon and one or two others also got brief mentions, but no coherent picture emerged that could explain what had gone on, or that could link, in any way at all, the various companies concerned. A resounding Go figure appeared to be the general consensus of opinion, so even though the odds against someone randomly picking seven straight winners in a row were truly astronomical, it was still possible at that point, and in the absence of any other evidence, that my initial flush of success had just been a question of luck.

  It soon became apparent, however, that something else was at work here. Because – just as on the previous day – whenever I came upon an interesting stock, something happened to me, something physical. I felt what I can only describe as an electric charge, usually just below the sternum, a little surge of energy that quickly rippled through my body and then seemed to spill out into the room’s atmosphere, sharpening colour definition and sound resolution. I felt as though I were connected to some vast system, wired in, a minute but active fibre, pulsating on a circuit board. The first stock I picked, for instance – let’s call it V – started moving up five minutes after I’d sent off the buy-order. I tracked it, while at the same time nosing around the various websites for other things to buy. With growing confidence, therefore, I found myself surfing stocks throughout the early part of the morning, leap-frogging from one to another, selling V at a profit and immediately sinking all of the proceeds from it into W, which in turn got sold off at just the right moment to finance a foray into X.