The Upgrade Series Omnibus by Wesley Cross

Author:Wesley Cross [Cross, Wesley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cerberus Prints
Published: 2019-12-11T22:00:00+00:00

27

September 2007

New York

“You said that there was a reason you wanted to do it on this Friday?” Hiroko asked.

It was a quarter to nine in the morning, and the markets were going to be open in the next forty-five minutes. Chen set up a battle station of two powerful laptops on her kitchen table the night before and now was on her third cup of coffee, reading the news.

She was up since four o’clock in the morning, not as much because she needed to do anything that early, but mostly because she was too anxious to sleep. The Asian markets closed with steep losses earlier after a volatile session, and their major European counterparts weren’t having a good day either.

“Yes,” she said. “For two reasons. First off—any extra volatility helps, and Fridays are more volatile as you have a lot going on. Short-term traders will implement exit strategies so they don’t have any positions open over the weekend when the exchange is closed and they can’t react to the news cycle. You also have options expiring this weekend, so whoever holds those contracts will have to make some moves before that happens.”

“What’s the second reason?”

“The actual news cycle,” Chen said. “I want to amplify the effect as much as I can. The fact that it wasn’t a normal trading pattern will be obvious before the end of the day. Everybody’s going to be talking about the hack of one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world. But I want everybody to continue talking about it over the weekend, so it doesn’t get buried by some celebrity break-up gossip mid-week.”

“To maximize the damage,” Hiroko said thoughtfully.

“Exactly. The markets will be closed, no one will be able to step in and buy a perceived bargain—it’ll get just worse and worse. We can’t stop the actual merger, but if we bring enough scrutiny, we can stave it off indefinitely.”

“Where did you learn all that stuff?”

“I took a few courses back in college,” Chen said, “but mostly I learned this from the ramblings of my father. The markets always fascinated him, and he made some savvy investment moves that helped our family in the long run. It also made him insufferable every time the conversation touched upon the greatness of American capitalism. He always preached that this was the best system in the world and refuted the mere notion that it could be improved in any way, shape, or form.”

“Oh, I know the type,” Hiroko smiled, “but let’s do the rundown one more time, to make sure we’re on the same page.”

“All right,” Chen said and looked at her notes. “Let’s talk about Guardian first. First, we let the markets run their course for thirty, forty-five minutes. It looks like the market’s going to open down, so if Guardian’s shares fall on their own that would help us, but at the end of the day, it’s irrelevant. Then, at some time after ten, I get in. Once I’m inside, I send you the paths to establish the mirror terminal.

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