The Last Trade Read Online Free PDF Page B

thanks.”
    â€œYour boss,” she says, “last week he was in there for three hours with three of them. I had the privilege of replenishing the champagne and politely declining to be number four.”
    Havens groans. Tommy Rourke approaches. Despite Havens’s re-nown as a quant, Rourke is still Salvado’s most valued employee, a bona fide rainmaker with a gift for bringing high-value clients, such as the Texans, into the fund and converting them into Believers. Rourke is also the person most responsible for discovering Havens, based upon the recommendation of a friend of a friend, and bringing him to Salvado’s attention.
    â€œWhat’s wrong with the King of Quants?”
    Havens smiles. Despite the fact that Rourke is all about image and has little understanding of numbers, he likes him, and sometimes wishes he had some of Rourke’s social skills. In the beginning, whenever someone made a comment about Havens’s antisocial, obsessive behavior, Rourke was always the first to stick up for him. Plus, during Havens’s darkest time, Rourke proved to be his most loyal and caring friend.
    â€œYou know me, Rourkey.”
    Rourke smiles. “Good with the numbers . . . not so much with people.”
    Havens lifts his chin toward the room into which the Texan just vanished. “And even less so with whores.”
    Rourke tilts his head. “Oh, come on. I throw up in my mouth a little every time Rick pulls this shit, but you know you’re a rock star to these clients. They respect you.”
    â€œThey respect an old story. An as told by legend that you and your boy Rick tell especially well. This new stuff, this so-called investment strategy that they’re being sold right now, you and I know it isn’t mine, isn’t close to true, and makes no sense.”
    Now Rourke’s smile slackens. “Jesus, Drew. This again?” For the last twelve months Salvado has been loading the Rising Fund with a disproportionate amount of pro-American investment positions. Although his fund made its name shorting sub-prime real estate, he’s now gone on record as being long on a broad array of American securities, specifically tech, advertising, old and new media stocks, commodities, and real estate. Almost exclusively American. Even the U.S. dollar.
    Of course, on the heels of a recession, with the country’s leaders at one another’s throat, it’s been a popular position. And why not? Salvado was one of the few, thanks to Havens, to have gotten it right in 2008. And this time it doesn’t hurt that he’s betting big on American success rather than widespread collapse. It was an easy story for Rourke to use while prospecting, at least at first.
    One would think that Havens would be comfortable with his boss’s populist long position on the American economy. If anything, it would alleviate some of the guilt that has plagued him ever since they reaped fortunes off of economic ruin and the widespread woes of millions of Americans. But Salvado has been making less and less sense to Havens. As he’s been telling Rourke with increased passion and frequency, he believes that Salvado’s pro-American position is, at best, more of an investment philosophy than a strategy, let alone a numbers-based financial model.
    When Havens continued to question the increasingly one-dimensional position of the fund that had made him and so many others rich, he was gradually pushed aside during key internal meetings, relegated in recent months to less strategically important tasks. Ultimately he was moved up, replaced by other analysts who were more prone to see things Salvado’s way, more willing to bend their data to accommodate and promote their boss’s sketchy philosophy.
    If he hadn’t been so instrumental in the Rising Fund’s sub-prime legend, and featured so prominently in a number of bestselling books and articles about “The