Trader Jack -The Story of Jack Miner (The Story of Jack Miner Series)

by Neil Behrmann

  'You're lucky Jack. You wouldn't have been able to walk around this place, nine months ago. A total mess. Debris and glass all over the place. See that makeshift walkway there. Used to be a concrete bridge with windows. Connected this place with the World Trade Centre.'

  'Amazing how quickly they restored it around here.'

  'Coffee, sugar and cocoa used to be traded at the World Trade Center,' Danny continued. 'We were in a nine-storey building at the foot of the twin towers. When the plane hit the Towers, the building collapsed and tonnes of concrete, steel and other debris fell on our offices. Luckily they evacuated everyone from the trading floor before it happened.'

  'Were you working there at the time?'

  'Yeah, but I managed to get out, unscathed. Could hardly see where I was going; had to struggle through a cloud of thick dust. It was so bad that I was almost choking; covered my mouth with a handkerchief. I was terrified as I thought that another building would fall. Thousands were trying to get out of the place. It was remarkable that less than 3,000 people died.'

  'How did you manage afterwards?'

  'Used to wake up in the night, sweating; disturbed my wife. She helped me calm down and eventually life went on. Blaby & Co and other firms found temporary accommodation. The Cocoa, Sugar and Coffee Exchange now has to share space at NYMEX.

  'We'll come back to the Winter Garden for lunch Jack. Lots of things happen here. Rock and jazz concerts, classical music that sort of stuff.'

  'Wish my firm had an office here.'

  'Ask them if you can open one.'

  'Me? Must be joking. I'm a junior.'

  'You must have a future if they sent you here.'

  We walked through the World Financial Centre to the building of The New York Mercantile Exchange alongside the waterfront.

  'The Exchange overlooks Hudson River. Over there you can see North Cove harbour and further down, Battery Park City,' said Danny, pointing. 'And there she is! The Statue of Liberty!'

  Danny took me on to the NYMEX trading floor. It was crowded and chaotic. Guys in yellow, blue and red coloured jackets were shouting and gesticulating and throwing pieces of paper into the air and on to the floor. Only days ago, I was talking to struggling farmers and wandering through beautiful groves of green coffee trees; holding handfuls of red coffee cherries and pulling out some green beans. Now this madhouse!

  'Do traders visit coffee or cocoa farms?'

  'Not these guys. They trade gold, silver, platinum and copper,' laughed Danny.

  'And those guys dealing like crazy?'

  'Energy trading. Oil, natural gas. Our biggest market.'

  'Where's the cocoa, sugar and coffee exchange?'

  'Over there.'

  He took me across to the coffee dealing section, which he called a 'trading pit'. Compared to energy and precious metals, very little was going on.

  'You asked whether coffee traders go and visit the farms to find out what they trade. Well the straight answer is very few. I've been there, but these guys? They're dealers in pieces of paper. Futures and options contracts. They know how the weather affects coffee prices. That sort of stuff. But if they go to Brazil, they spend their time on the beach and at the Carnival.

  'What about you Jack? How come you guys bought coffee on Friday? Think the market's bottoming out?'

  'I'm just here to learn about commodities,' I half lied.

  No way was I going to tell him where I had been the past week. I looked at the price on the screen. Coffee was trading at 61 cents a pound, slightly down from Friday's levels. I was still comfortable with that. To get a panoramic view of the exchange, Danny took me to the public gallery, grabbed hold of my camera and took some photos of me, with the market in the background.

  'NYMEX and the Chicago markets are the largest commodity trading arenas in the world,' said Danny when we looked down from the gallery. 'From here it doesn't seem that chaotic.'

  'See the gold and silver pit?' he said pointing. 'The guy sitting near the traders is inputting price changes. As he punches in the data, they are automatically visible on those big screens on the walls and are almost immediately sent to trading screens around the world. Gold and silver are taking off, but as you can see, hardly anything is happening in the cocoa, sugar and coffee pit.'

  'What do those hand signals mean?' I asked.

  'That trader there, drawing the palm of his hand towards his face. He's buying. The other guy pushing his palm outwards is selling. Those quick finger movements. They're prices. Notice them touch their chins and foreheads? Those are quantities. Ten, twenty, hundred contracts. It's their sign language. They know exactly what's going on.'

  'Why are they throwing away bits of paper?'

  'They're completed orders,' said Danny. 'It's a big cleaning job afterwards. Piles and piles of paper.'

  'They tell me that computer dealing is going to replace these big exchanges,' I said when we were back in the Winter Garden having an early lunch. A band was playing Beatles numbers in the background.

  'Yeah seems to be going that way. Floor trading is very expensive for the brokers and investment banks, but it works well. Face to face dealing gives traders a good feel for the market - where the flow of money is going. You're not sure you're reading the market right when you're trading from a computer screen. It's much more difficult to gauge the direction of prices.'

  Later that day, I walked around Battery Park City watching kids run through the fountains, guessing when the water was going to spurt upwards. In some ways it was similar to the area surrounding the London Eye, the big wheel on the south bank of the Thames. Mime artists, painters, bands and buskers. People were having a great time in the park, alongside the waterfront. I had been on my own for almost ten days, but didn't feel lonely. Just felt that I was so lucky to be there as I drank a beer under a tree and listened to a jazz band. If only Dad and Mum had been alive. They never had the opportunity to travel. Just struggled to make a living and bring me up. With the money that I was making, I would have helped them. They could have been here in New York, with me.

  Later, I did the tourist thing and went on a ferry to the Statue of Liberty; climbed the winding staircase on to her crown and looked all around me. A shiver went down my spine. Here was I on the symbol of freedom; Manhattan skyscrapers in front and behind, the Atlantic and thousands of miles to Southampton. My friends at school would never have believed it.

  The tour went to Ellis Island, the first port of call for millions of immigrants to America. Hundreds of thousands of names were on a Wall of Honour. All had tried their luck in the American melting pot. To get the feel of New York, I got hold of a map and decided to walk all the way from Downtown to Broadway. The scale on the map indicated that it was about four and a half miles, but it took forever because of all the roads and traffic lights. On I went from Battery Park, through China Town to Greenwich Village. Then the Jewish garment and fashion district and finally Times Square. If only I could have told my parents about New York, New York, home to all nationalities and religions, the rich, average and poor. Descendants of those hopeful immigrants who patiently waited their turn on Ellis Island.

  On Broadway, I queued up to buy a half-price ticket for a show and got talking to a bubbly girl from out of town. Not that special to look at, but she did have lovely long black curly hair. May was from Chicago and was on holiday in New York.

  'I love English accents. Staying long here?'

  'Naw. Have to go baack to Loondon tomorrow,' I replied putting on a thick Yorkshire accent for fun.

  She couldn't tell the difference: 'The English are so cultured. What do you do, Jack?'

  'I'm a trader. What show do you recommend, May?'

  'Heard that "Annie Get Your Gun" is a must see. I'm on my own. Want to join me?'

  After we had bought our tickets we went to a restaurant nearby and had hamburgers. May was really into my accent, which I changed from well spoken English to thick Yorkshire dialect and back again. To her it was all the same. I
t was an amazing show, reminding me that I should make greater use of theatres in London. Mum would have loved me to do that. Afterwards we walked up 43rd Street towards May's hotel on 5th Avenue and went into a bar and had a couple of beers. She started to stroke my arms. If May was an example, American girls were much less inhibited than the English ones I knew. She was even more relaxed than Sandy, who was an easy-going Australian!

  On the way to her hotel, we passed the Princeton Club and we were about to say our goodbyes, when I decided to take a chance. Would she come in and have some coffee? No problem. Up we went to my room to put on the kettle for some instant coffee. There was no time for that. Before long we were kissing. The room was small but the bed was big. It was only my second time and almost a year since Maggie and the loch. We started kissing and rolling around. May shouted so loudly that the people in the room next to us banged on the wall.

  The next morning, I got up early, double-checked that my money, passport and other valuables were locked away in the safe-deposit box and went for a run in Central Park. When I got back, May was gone. She left me a note saying that she hoped to see me again and had to rush back to her hotel and get a taxi to the airport. On the notepaper were her email address and mobile number.

  The low point of my visit to the Americas was the futures and options derivatives course at NYMEX. It sure was boring and took most of the morning. When I managed to keep my eyes open, I learned about complex trading things such as straddles and butterflies. It was better to follow Manson and keep it simple. Trading was common sense. On a screen, coffee was trading around 61.50 cents. Indications were that the price was firmly underpinned.

  There were only a few hours before my plane left for London. The New York Public Library, a huge building that looked about a hundred years old, was near the Princeton Club, so I went in there to do some research. What a place! The Swiss Cottage library was a closet compared to it. Sergio, who was knowledgeable about climate change, had told me that melting ice blocks in the Antarctic were cooling the Gulf Stream. The change was causing unpredictable weather; sometimes heat waves and drought; other times hurricanes. 'El Nino' also caused climatic havoc. El Nino originates near the equator when the Pacific Ocean becomes much warmer than normal. Hot humid air rises and the winds despatch El Nino to North and South America, Asia and other places, causing anything from terrible storms and floods to tornadoes and other climatic disasters.

  Global warming would bring about all sorts of changes. There were going to be agricultural crop failures and violent moves in prices of sugar, cocoa, wheat, corn and soya beans. Insurance companies would incur huge losses.

  * * *

  Ruffish was still away when I returned to work on Wednesday. Prices on the London coffee market were rising, but I decided to stick to the New York exchange, where Brazilian and other Arabica coffees were traded. The market opened higher and I bought more coffee futures through Blaby and two other brokers. Aquarium now held 40 futures contracts, equal to 1.5 million pounds of coffee worth about $1 million. That coffee would be delivered in three months from the date of the contracts, unless we sold before then. They were 'three month futures'.

  I also used the remaining $900,000 in the fund to buy shares in commodity and agricultural companies, which tended to rise and fall in line with cocoa, sugar, corn, wheat and soyabean quotes. Aquarium had gold shares too. If food prices rose, inflation would increase and gold would follow.

  The charts of some insurance shares showed that they had risen to high levels. Insurance companies would incur large claims during any climatic disaster. Aquarium sold the shares short, aiming to profit by buying back the shares when they fell.

  While I was doing all this, Ruffish was at a funeral in Ireland. When I arrived at the office on Friday morning, he was pacing up and down in his office furiously. He called me in. He was so agitated that he didn't even ask me about my trip.

  'What do you think you're doing?' he said softly, in an attempt to disguise his anger.

  Ruffish was one of those calm people. He was there to stop his fund managers from getting carried away and soothe them when they were losing. He seemed agitated and sloppier than usual. His striped pink shirt was creased and a bulging tissue was in his pocket. He couldn't stop sneezing.

  He wiped his nose, glared at me, picked up the phone and asked Maffie to come in.

  She walked in looking amazing in a coffee coloured designer suit.

  'See what I've got with my winnings, Jack,' she laughed, mimicking a model catwalk. 'Note the colour. It's in honour of our coup.'

  I started to laugh, but Ruffish didn't appreciate the joke.

  'I put you in a position of trust and you allowed him to place almost $100,000 on margin for coffee speculation?' he snapped at Maffie. 'Are you out of your mind?'

  'You told him to go to Brazil. Well, he's found out something Ruff,' said Maffie, holding up her hands in an effort to calm him down. 'So far he's right. Our position is already profitable.'

  'Come off it Maffie! You know very well what can happen,' retorted Ruffish.

  'I've stuck to the rules Ruff, I haven't invested more than $100,000 of the fund in coffee futures,' I ventured.

  Ruffish had a sneezing fit and scrambled for the tissues on his desk. Maffie gave him one.

  'Invested! You mean gambled! Coffee can fall by ten per cent and your entire margin will be wiped out,' he shouted, snapping his fingers: 'Just like that!'

  'And a ten per cent rise will do the opposite,' said Maffie quietly. 'Take it easy Ruff, Jack knows what he's doing.'

  'And what about the grain and other agricultural shares in the fund? Selling insurance companies short? Expecting a climatic apocalypse are you?'

  'You must admit, the weather has been erratic,' I said. 'Fulvio, a wise old guy in Brazil told me that there's going to be a frost. He forecast droughts, hurricanes and crop failures. They call it El Nino. I found out what happens after doing some research in the New York Public Library.'

  'Tragedy for others, but luck for you Jack. Is that what you're saying?' growled Ruffish. 'Now get out you two before I . . .'

  Whether it was luck or not, coffee prices almost doubled to 120 cents a pound by the end of the month, raising the value of our coffee contracts to $1.8 million. The profit on the $100,000 margin deposit was $700,000! Aquarium's other investments also rose, raising the fund's value to around $2 million, twice the capital we had originally invested. The normal policy of fund managers is to take profits, especially in the dangerous, volatile commodity futures market. If Ruffish had been around, he would have insisted that I bank at least half the gains. But he and Maffie went off to an investment conference in Brighton and were away on Thursday and Friday.

  I was studying my charts and price tables when the phone rang. Danny Dovetail, my new broker friend, was on the phone.

  'Hi Jack, you guys seem to have turned the market around. It's looking good here. Wanna buy more coffee?'

  'No thanks, Danny, I'm up to my limit.'

  'No you're not. You're well into profit. That raises your collateral limit. You can use that collateral to put down more margin and buy more coffee. Anyone can see coffee's going up. You would be crazy to miss out.'

  'I'll think about it. Speak to you later.'

  I put down the phone, wrote down the latest quote on my price table and looked at my charts. Then I took out my coloured aquarium drawing. Sure enough, my coffee coloured fish were ready to swim into a higher level of the tank. I was excited. It was now the beginning of the Brazilian winter. There was already talk about a possible frost. Coffee prices could easily rise to $2 a pound. Nestle, Sarah Lee, Kraft, Lavazza, Illy and other manufacturers that purchase green coffee from farmers and roast them, were worried. They could well decide to buy ahead of a further potential price rise. Commodity funds and other speculators were also jumping on the coffee wagon. The phone rang again. It was Danny on the phone. Forget Ruff. Coffee looked an easy winner. I had to go for it.

&nbs
p; 'OK Danny, buy another 60,' I whispered, sweating with excitement. Within minutes, he was back to me. Aquarium Fund now had 100 coffee futures contracts, controlling 3.75 million pounds of coffee worth $4.5 million. By then the word was out that Hastings Ruffish had taken sizeable positions and was making big profits in the coffee market. After I had bought more coffee, other people in the market followed. The price jumped.

  'You're moving the coffee market, Jack,' said Danny. 'I underestimated you. Thought you were just a junior.'

  Prices gyrated wildly on Friday. Profits up one minute and down the next.

  The following Monday I told Ruffish what I had done. He went ballistic. Maffie was angry too.

  'You promised us that you would not increase the position, Jack,' scolded Maffie. 'How can we trust you now?'

  'Apologies, Maff. I got carried away. Danny said that the market looked good, so I bought.'

  'Brokers always encourage you to trade, you idiot. Makes no difference to them. Win or lose they get their commission.'

  'Danny's a good guy. He wouldn't give me a bum steer.'

  'Maybe not intentionally, but brokers also get carried away. It's not only your money, Jack. Krishna, Tong and Bess also have a stake in the fund. Ruff's now under pressure.'

  'The charts look OK, Maffie. The price action feels good. We're into the Brazilian winter. Give me a chance. Promise you, I'll get out fast if the market turns.'

  Ruffish and Maffie decided to take a calculated risk and leave me alone for a week or so. They were angry, but it was also a test to see how I could cope with stress. Some days when coffee was rising, the value of the margin deposit doubled or trebled. When the price fell, profits almost vanished and losses threatened. Despite the roller coaster, I followed Manson's advice and focused on the big picture. Watched what the coffee price was doing. Did my best to ignore the large profit and loss swings on the tiny margin deposit.

  I guess I was lucky. More and more buyers were entering the market and were pushing prices up. Within a few weeks, coffee hit $2 even though the Brazilian coffee plantation was still intact.