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

by Neil Behrmann

  Spittlefields, who could see that I was down, asked if he could accompany me. It was dark and chilly outside. We walked along to Goodge Street tube station, passing some homeless guy with a dog. He brought back memories and I gave him £100.

  'How long have you been writing about the markets, John?'

  'About five years.'

  'Ever wanted to be in the game yourself? You make much more money.'

  'No . . . Brokers offered me jobs. But I like to chase stories. You become addicted to it. Gives you a kick. It's fun being on the outside, looking in.'

  'I suppose you know Issie McTavish.'

  'Issie the veteran? Good guy. Top-notch journalist. Been doing it for years. Very helpful. Taught me a lot.'

  'He certainly got the story out of us,' I said.

  'Great story. Zulu battle plan corners bears.'

  We continued to walk slowly and silently.

  'Do you know that you've made enemies Jack?'

  'My former boss warned me about that.'

  'Watch your back Jack! The hedge fund managers who lost, are out to get you.'

  'A friend of mine said the exact same thing. Who cares? If you play the markets, you have to lose sometimes. They know that.'

  'Someone told me that the Russian mafia controls the funds, but I haven't confirmed it,' said Spittlefields. He suddenly stopped and looked straight at me. 'Former boss?'

  Perhaps I was being indiscreet, but I liked John.

  'Yes, I've got a story for you,' I said.

  * * *

  A few days later LeashTrade Inc. came to town. Through the glass walls, I could see my new boss, Leash Grobnick. He was sitting in Ruffish's chair with his feet on the table. I knocked on the door politely and entered his office. Grobnick stood up and shook my hand briskly. He was about fifty five, medium height with a powerful build, a red face, a grey moustache and thick black hair, tinged with grey on the sides. He was dressed in a smart pinstripe suit. On the sofa were two guys who looked as if they were in their late twenties or early thirties.

  'Good to meet you Jack, we've heard a lot about you,' said Grobnick with his New Yorker accent. 'Let me introduce you to my sons, Cy and Max.'

  'I saw a picture of you in Hello! magazine with quite a girl,' grinned Cy. 'It must be fame, money or both. Certainly not your looks!'

  He laughed at his own joke and I decided that I had better join in. Cy was taller than his father. He looked like Leash, except that his face was softer. Leash showed me a photograph of his son's little daughters.

  'Cy has done me proud. Max I'm still waiting,' Leash scolded playfully.

  I felt sorry for Max, who was about five foot four with a large crooked nose and a face scarred by acne. Instead of a suit, Max was sloppily dressed in a creased pink shirt and brown corduroys. His father and brother seemed to dominate him.

  'We think that we have a good business here, Jack. Your fund has a lot of potential, so we have decided to merge it with the Eastern European and the Resources Fund.'

  I could understand why he was combining Aquarium with Maffie's Resources Fund, but why Aram Zabkian's Eastern European Fund?

  'We want Zabkian and you to be partners. We'll keep the name Aquarium and the merged fund will have $300 million under management,' said Leash. 'Our aim is to make Aquarium one of the biggest macro hedge funds, trading right across the spectrum - stocks, bonds, currencies and commodities.'

  His decision took me by surprise. I liked Krishna and Tong, but Aram had never been helpful. He was no friend of mine.

  'What about Krishna and Tong?'

  'They're joining Hastings & Murray in Edinburgh.'

  'What are you going to do with their funds?'

  'We'll merge them as well. Our own team will manage them. This business is going places, Jack. The New York and London funds now manage around $1 billion,' said Leash. 'Cy is director of marketing and Max is systems manager. What about a basic salary of $300,000 and a 7.5 per cent profit share in Aquarium?'

  The offer astounded me! For that sort of money I could work with anyone. Even Aram.

  'That's just the start, Jack. We want to build up the business to $10 billion in the next few years,' said Cy. 'Max, can you go and get some coffee for us?'

  'Where's Bess?' I asked.

  'She wanted to be a trainee fund manager, but it didn't suit us,' said Leash, abruptly. 'We let her go.'

  * * *

  In the markets, decisiveness was the name of my game, but in life I procrastinated. At last I picked up courage to go and apologise to the Slimcops. It was better to see them face to face than to talk on the phone. On that cold, grey January day with Jazz alongside me, I struggled to think of the right words to say. The light drizzle turned into sleet, a contrast to that bright hot summer's day, when I first visited Constable's grave and walked down the pathway towards their home. This time I had to walk gingerly as the path was muddy and slippery and the dog was pulling on his lead.

  No one responded to the security button at first, but I waited and then rang again. A woman answered. It was difficult to speak to her on the intercom as it wasn't functioning properly. She eventually opened the gate and we made our way to the entrance past the lone sculpture of the Eagle. In the winter it looked fairly menacing without sunflowers and roses surrounding it.

  A middle-aged woman, in a blue nurse's uniform, opened the door.

  'I'm Jack. Can I see Stan and Leila?' I asked.

  'I told you they're not here.'

  'I couldn't hear you properly. When do you think they'll be back?'

  'You're wasting your time. They've gone away. I'm looking after the house.'

  Are they OK? How's Leila?'

  She wouldn't answer.

  'Can you tell me where they are? They're good friends, I want to talk to them about something.'

  'What?'

  'It's personal. Where can I reach them?'

  The woman looked at me closely.

  'You said you were Jack?'

  'Yes.'

  'They talked about you.'

  'Is she still mixing me up with Sean? Their son?'

  'You know about her problem?'

  'I think so. I feel very bad. I've let them down. I've come to say sorry,' I replied beginning to feel tearful.

  The woman softened: 'Come inside and have some tea.'

  'What about the dog?'

  'He seems friendly enough. Bring him in, but hold his lead. I don't want any mess.'

  The woman, whose name was Sara, brought in some tea and biscuits. Through the large glass window, on the far edge of the lawn, near the covered swimming pool, was the statue of Sean. She noticed me look in his direction.

  'Tragic for Mr Slimcop. Him dying so young and now her . . .'

  'Are you helping Leila?'

  'Yes. When they're here. They're in South Africa now. Mr Slimcop has rented a home in Fish Hoek, near Cape Town. They're going to stay there during the winter. He's got another carer for her.'

  'How bad is she?'

  'Deteriorating rapidly. Alzheimer's is a cruel sickness. Relentless.'

  'Can you tell them I came to visit? That I'm very sorry for what I've done. For not being there, when they needed me.'

  'Sure. When they next phone. Here's their address. He told me not to disclose his email.'

  * * *

  Winter came and went. Leash would alternate his working weeks between New York and London. Max was brilliant with systems. He asked me to explain my market strategy and spoke to Aram as well. Using our ideas, he built an automatic buy and sell trading program for us. As I got to know him, I began to like and trust Max, who was also in charge of risk controls and compliance, the internal regulation of traders and the business. I also got on with Cy. Leash, however, was very different from his sons. Beneath his charming veneer, he was a ruthless, nasty bit of work, who bullied the new secretary Matilda. She lasted a fortnight. Within six months he had four secretaries, until Maisie, a curvaceous, curly haired brunette, arrived. Leash
was always touching her, but she didn't seem to mind.

  Leash Grobnick seemed to thrive on conflict. Ruffish would have briefed him about his staff, before he sold the business. So Leash must have been aware that I wasn't exactly friendly with Aram. To make matters worse, Leash did away with the workspaces that gave us some privacy. He changed the office to open plan. So I constantly had to work alongside Aram with his dreadful halitosis, a mix of garlic and tobacco. Now that I was working in close quarters to Aram, I observed his yellow nicotine-stained teeth, some of which had turned black. To be fair, he did try and joke around a bit. But whenever he spoke, I had to turn my face away to avoid the full blast of his breath. I don't think that was very good for our relationship. We fought a lot and that amused Leash.

  'That's what I like. Strong arguments. They bring results,' said Leash after observing a sharp difference of opinion at a meeting.

  Aram enjoyed researching and getting tips from brokers. But I didn't want to put money in a stock or commodity, unless I was sure that the timing was right. We had Max's automatic system, why not just follow it?

  Gradually I lost patience and interest. After about six months, I let Aram control the daily trading. I would just discuss our general strategy each week. After I made that decision, we began to get on. The Aquarium fund was doing well and we were making a lot of money.

  I was anxious to get away from the office and jumped at the opportunity to join Cy on his marketing trips in Europe and the US. Our 'road shows' were informal seminars and gatherings where Cy would try and persuade investors to place money in LeashTrade funds. The road shows were gruelling. We would get the Eurostar to Paris, have two meetings there, sleep overnight and then travel to Luxembourg and Brussels. The following day we would fly to Geneva and then to Zurich. After that we would go to Frankfurt, Milan or Madrid.

  Same with America; New York, Boston, Chicago, Houston, San Francisco, Los Angeles to Miami and then home. I didn't have any time to enjoy the cities, meet girls and go clubbing. All I saw were planes, airports, trains and stations, taxis, banks, offices, hotel rooms and conference halls. I enjoyed good restaurants, but on these trips, they were business lunches and dinners. I began to put on weight, as I was too tired to wake up early and go for a run. I found the gyms in hotels boring and their swimming pools, too small.

  Cy Grobnick was a super salesman. He sold the Aquarium fund as a mix of youthful daring and experience. Before we went on the road shows, he asked me about my adventures in the gold and coffee markets. That helped him amuse our audiences with anecdotes.

  'In one corner Jack the Yorkshire Youth had a sling full of coffee beans. In the other corner the City giants,' he boomed. 'You know how schoolboys and girls can beat the pros. Well here is an example. A young trader who has performed consistently.' The audiences tended to be sceptical at first, but Cy would continue: 'Yes, you can laugh. But how did a tiny island beat the Nazis in the Battle of Britain? Their fighter pilots were so young that they didn't know fear. That's what you need in today's markets, in today's battlegrounds -naked courage. The courage of youth.'

  Cy knew how to embellish the facts. When we travelled, I read many books. One of them was about the Battle of Waterloo after I had visited the site near Brussels. On a trip to Pennsylvania, I found time to read Gore Vidal's Lincoln and over the weekend visited the Gettysburg battlefields. Cy told the audience that I was fascinated with military history. That Napoleon and Wellington were my heroes; that I had spent time at Waterloo and Gettysburg and was a fan of Abraham Lincoln.

  Cy would then take out a copy of Lincoln's Gettysburg speech and solemnly pronounce that I strongly believed that emerging nations should be free from dictators. That 'government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth'.

  It was remarkable. They really seemed to love that stuff and became all the more interested in our fund. Cy also showed potential investors slides of Issie McTavish's Wall Street Journal article. Conveniently ignoring Maffie's role, he said that I had defeated the coffee bears with Shaka Zulu battle tactics.

  'Shaka was known as the "Black Napoleon",' boomed Cy. 'He was brilliant in the art of war. Modern day markets are a war zone and only the best strategies become winners.'

  By then, Cy had his audiences in the palm of his hand.

  'Just in case you think this young trader is totally on his own, we have the hand of experience behind him.

  Jack's partner is a fund manager who's been through bull and bear markets,' Cy would say. 'Yes, Aram Zabkian is the wise old General who steadies Captain Jack. Makes sure that the fund trades relatively conservatively. My brother Max, our compliance officer, is a PHD in computer science. He has set up a trading programme that seeks opportunities but applies strict stop loss limits to control risk.'

  He would then pause to allow his speech to sink in. Normally the ploy was to have a sip of water.

  'Jack is a young man who knows about charity,' Cy would then continue. 'He helped poverty stricken coffee farmers obtain a decent price for their crop. His fund made a big donation to Brazilian farmers.'

  To close the sales pitch, I would follow Cy's talks with power point presentations. They had neat graphs showing the performance of Aquarium and the mix of its investments. I was nervous at first, but soon enjoyed it, learning from Cy how to gain the trust of investors by underplaying large gains. The trick was not to boast about performance. If you did, investors wouldn't take you seriously. Let the statistics speak for themselves. I explained that we had devised our own system to trade the markets. It wasn't infallible, but it had an excellent track record over time. I couldn't divulge details, otherwise our competitors would copy us, I stressed. In this way I added to Aquarium's mystique. Money poured into the fund.

  * * *

  About six months after the Grobnicks had taken over the business, Cy and I were in Switzerland, enjoying the Zurich spring sunshine. We were eating a light lunch outside a brasserie on Bahnhofstrasse, near Paradeplatz, the historic Swiss banking area.

  'I want to introduce you to a potential new investor,' said Cy. 'Some of his biggest clients have already placed money in our US funds. He's considering investing in Aquarium.'

  A tall man in a smart light brown summer suit walked towards us. Cy stood up and rushed towards him. He brought the man to the table and introduced me. I was taken aback. It was Hal Humford, who I had last seen in Edinburgh, two years previously. Humford looked at me casually. He didn't remember me.

  'Hal Humford, Banque Discretione,' he said shaking my hand. I decided not to let on that I had met him and his wife Maggie.

  'Jack Miner, LeashTrade,' I said.

  'Sit down Hal and have something to eat.'

  'No thanks Mr Grobnick. I'm on my way to a meeting. I look forward to hearing your presentation later.'

  'Please call me Cy. Hal is investment chief at Banque Discretione, Jack.

  Humford looked me straight in the eye and nodded. I was amazed that there was no recognition. What an irony. A fling with his wife and now he might advise his clients to invest in my fund!

  17 - PUMPING PRICES

  Trader Jacks girl elopes with Boss, By Sheila Shellhoff.

  The headline in the News on Sunday startled me. I picked up the newspaper and read the story:

  Maffie Mafuta, who made millions in coffee trading with Jack Miner, has run away with his former boss.

  'Jack is furious with Ronald "Ruff" Ruffish,' a friend revealed.

  The love nest is in the dense forest of Knysna, in the middle of South Africa's beautiful Garden Route.

  'They keep to themselves,' said Tokkie Van der Merwe, who owns a curio shop on the waterfront. 'Knysna is a good place for secrets.' Ruffish's wife, Sandra, is seeking a multi million pound divorce settlement from her super rich spouse. 'He made £20 million as hedge fund boss of Jack and Maffie,' a source says. Sandra and their two children are living in their £2 million Surrey country house, but she deserves a lot more, the friend belie
ves.

  'I'm used to Ruff having a bit of rough on the side,' complained Sandra. 'But he's left me without a fair settlement.'

  Ruff fled to South Africa to escape his wife's lawyers, a friend confided. Maffie, also a former hedge fund manager, is a descendant of Shaka, a ruthless Zulu chieftain. She's now a family lawyer who acts for abused women and children.

  Jack insists that he and Maffie are 'just friends', our source said, but he's clearly angry with Miss Mafuta, which means 'fat' in Zulu.

  The story had a picture of Maffie towering over me at an International Coffee Organisation function. The caption for the picture was Jack and his Giant Ex. There was also a picture of Ruff and his family and a sketch of Shaka with his shield and 'Ikiwa', a short sharp spear.

  It was Sunday and I phoned Bloomberg to speak to John Spittlefields. When I had tipped him off that LeashTrade had bought the Hastings & Ruffish hedge fund business, I had disclosed that Ruff and Maffie had eloped. He was supposed to keep that snippet confidential. I wanted to find out whether he had sold the story to the News on Sunday. Spittlefields wasn't on duty, but a colleague said that he would pass on the message.

  My mobile rang. It was Spittlefields.

  'Hi, Jack, what's up?'

  'John, have you seen the News on Sunday Story? How did they get all that stuff? They made out that Maffie was my girlfriend. That's a load of rubbish!'

  'I've never met Sheila Shellhoff,' insisted Spittlefield. 'I played the story straight, Jack. I just wrote that Ruffish left for personal reasons . . . Maybe . . .'

  'Maybe what?'

  'Pearl's the source. She phoned me after she saw my piece. Tried to find out more. I think she's still spinning against you, Jack. Yes, it must be Pearl.'

  It was Sunday, after a long week on the road. We had pitched Aquarium in three European cities. After breakfast, lunch and dinner meetings and presentations around the clock, I wasn't in the mood for this. Needed to wind down. Take the dog for a walk. I hadn't seen Jazz for weeks. Martha's place had virtually become his home.