Speculative Trading.

[victorhadin]

I wrote this quite some time ago, but why not share:




Speculative Trading.




Garth Jackson lay back quietly in his powerchair and peered, his vision fuzzy and blurred, at the man in front of him. The man spoke.

"And can you sign here, here and here, sir, if you would be so good." Said the grey-suited figure, proffering a sheet of paper, the print small and hard to read. The minder reached out and took it, handing it in turn to Garth, who gripped it in trembling hands.

-Not trembling from any emotional upset or trauma, it must be understood. It was merely, if such a thing can ever be described as ‘merely’, the effects of great age. His hands were wrinkled and the skin hard and brittle, balancing on the end of impossibly fragile wrists and stick-like arms. It hurt to keep them held up for any length of time, and so he gratefully let them sink, paper in hand, to the small, flat desk on the right arm of his chair. With shaking digits, he placed his hand flat over the paper, suspended an inch above it, and allowed his identity-waveform to flash down to the sensitive coatings on three shining spots on the paper. Raising his hand back to face him with the palm, he noticed the fading, barely visible, glow in the centre of his palm as the device within cooled and radiated into the infrared, broadcasting to what retinal augmentations he had managed to acquire over the years.

More machinery. He thought. More machinery which succeeds in aging better than I.

Around him the room was darker than it should be, perhaps. The window in front of him should have cast more illumination, possibly. Ah well.

It was certainly a window with a view though, however blurred. In front of him the skyscrapers stretched upwards, their heights grazing fragile cumulus. The metropolis glittered and shone in the sunlight as thousands of other windows glinted and threw their goodbyes to him. Further down, out of sight, would be the mist sea of the city bowels, formed around the mighty condensers which ran the heat to the very heights of the tallest buildings to radiate away, spinning unseen turbines en route. -Something which his augmented retina appreciated in every blurred and fuzzy detail. It was magnificent; a crowning mark of the achievement and glory of the human race and it’s outright contempt for nature. He smiled weakly.

He would miss this.

He sighed, chest sunken and defeated, yet resolute, and picked up the pen to sign by hand and ink, to seal the ceremony and cast the deal.


-----------------------------


The evolution of trade had been slow but noticeable nevertheless. For many hundreds of years of recorded history, it had been chiefly localized, comprised of essential materials and basic goods moving from one settlement to another, or more likely within one such settlement.

For a long period in history this was to remain the same way, on the whole. Trade was a thing to be carried out in a strictly localized and short-ranged sense, save for the most ostensibly valuable or desired commodities, to be collected and flaunted by Emperors and officialdom.

And yet trade grew, albeit slowly, alongside developments in transportation and infrastructure. The dark ages showed a decline back towards the original limited facets of trade and exchange, but this would not be a permanent thing.

The first known stock exchange, the French stock exchange, the agent de change, came into being in the 12th century. Before its time and elitist, it appealed to the aristocracy around which it had developed but remained a thing aloof and separated from the common public.

And yet change continued to step up its progress. Advances in infrastructure and overseas trade stepped forward boldly and with authority, and the boundaries of trade were gradually extended further and further outwards as the relative cost and relative profit to be made sank and rose respectively. Trade and transportation began to be seen more as a business in and of itself, rather than a necessary evil for those wishing to build their own wealth and influence.

Indeed it was stepping, slowly but unstoppably, into a central theme of government, nationality and empire-building.

The great European trading empires saw the flowering of the great age of trade with a contemptuous flourish. The Netherlands, Great Britain, Denmark, Germany. All became centres of world trade, thrust into the spotlight from the fire of their own imperial ambitions.

The growth of trade and wealth demanded new and heightened needs for banks and insurance companies. Political developments forced governments to acquire new sources of funds. This expansion of activity, trade coupled with intermittent capital shortages caused the first issuers of securities to arise; governments, banks, insurance companies, the great trading companies. The door was open.

And so in the 18th and 19th centuries, the first modern stock exchanges came into their own, their doors open to the general public.



----------------------------------------------


Garth woke up with a start. Around him was whiteness, clean and sanitized. The interior of a hospital? Yes. It must be.

Ceiling panels leached quiet, unobtrusive bright light into the room and into his eyes. The air smelled clean and fresh, though the faint whiff of antiseptic and other, more miscellaneous odours, could be sensed in the distance. He lay on a bed, anonymous and stark in its lime green bedding against the equally stark and vividly defined surroundings. Machines to his left beeped, connected to him by-

Ah.

He remembered now. The operation was evidently over. Reaching up with feeble limbs, he felt his head tentatively, fingers questing eagerly. He found what was expected; dry, paper-like skin, occasional outcroppings of white hair that just refused to give up, and the remains of old, partially-healed sores.

And a machine.

It stuck out prominently from his skull, and it hadn’t been present before the operation. Angular and invasive, it was planted into his left hemisphere, through the bone and into his brain. Its surface was cold, trailing wires and antennae.

“I really advise you do not touch that.” Came a voice. His head snapped round to the door, to see the grey-suited man from earlier. His expression was neutral, his features slick and well-managed as with the rest of him, radiating cool prosperity. “Your eyes we did for free.” He added.

And indeed it was true. He no longer viewed the world through an indistinct film. He opened his mouth to speak but nothing came out save a weak croak. That, at least, was as usual.

“We will need to prepare you for upcoming operations.” Spoke the suit, pulling out another of the ubiquitous pieces of paper that had become so associated with his presence. “We have provided a chit for you to sign for official purposes, allowing them to go forth with your consent.”

Garth made to motion a question. The suit responded pre-emptively. “If you feel this is beyond your abilities then I rather hope you have the capital needed for those new eyes. They do not come cheap.”

He nodded and so signed the chit. What was the point in improved vision and youthful eyes, after all, if the rest of him was left to fall apart soon, decrepit and failing? Peering down at the chit, he noted the name of the company he had been contacted and offered a deal by. Speculative Trading Inc. He handed the paper back to the suit, who smiled thinly and left the room.

It sounded promising. A trader on the markets he had been many decades before now, before his age went well in excess of one century, and a trader he would yet be. Speculative trading he would once again be involved with, by the aid of the cunning device in his head; a long-lasting and indeed very permanent connection to the Exchange.

A knock sounded on the door. He croaked a welcome and the minder entered, eyebrows raised and inquisitive. Garth smiled and raised a hand in greeting.

The minder handed him his Voice, an elaborate device to be attached to his neck. He did so and spoke, his tone now synthetic and intermittent, but at least now present. “Am I now to have my life extended as agreed?”

The minder nodded, no expression showing. “Good. This I appreciate.” It was a procedure he had endured many times before, before his money ran out. Normally that would also have meant the running-out of his life, but here there were special circumstances. Speculative Trading Inc. had agreed to extend it another twenty five years for his services, an offer absolutely impossible to resist or turn down.

It was only a pity that extended youth, rather than life, was not an option for one of his means.

“And the device in my head? Is it now ready to connect me to the Exchange?” The minder winced somewhat, almost unnoticeably, but nodded.

“Good.” He croaked. “Then let us proceed.” He lay back and smiled faintly as the minder stepped forward with the hypodermic needle.



---------------------------------------


The stock markets grew in importance.

Around the world, even outside the great trading nations, they grew and flourished. Whether they thrived on trade and commerce, as with the European markets, mining as with the Canadian or South African markets or government development, as with the early United States stock exchanges, they thrived, and more were spawned.

As the 19th century proceeded into the 20th, speculative trading grew in importance significantly. From the days where investors were strongly influenced by the state of the economy, the opposite could now often be the case, as stock market crashes set off economic depression and rampant speculation encouraged booms. Certainly now, the populous was becoming far more ‘in control’ of the economy than was ever the case previously.

And so matters proceeded. The great depression of the 1930s lay largely on the back of a massive stock market crash in the New York stock exchange. The bull market of the 1990s was highly influenced by speculation on the high-tech market.

And that could have been when it ended. The collapse of industrialized civilization in the mid-21st century looked to have ended it all.

But it didn’t. The rise of Allenian capitalism and the empire it was to become changed matters. We lie here on the boundary between the 22nd and 23rd century, with the calendar ticking inexorably towards zero-hour, and the situation is as it has never been.

We live in an age of the free market unleashed.

The Exchange is the market for all. Within its doors, both real and virtual, lies a free market indeed. A person may trade merely at the price of the securities bought and sold; easy, rapid, cheap.

And with this exuberance in trade by the populous rose the ethos that now prevails in The State; that a person’s wealth is theirs alone, that to take from that pool of wealth is to steal and that to steal is something to be kept to a bare minimum. In this age where one’s social status is more and more a matter of wealth and financial power, and the government itself has become a mere avatar of the big business that runs it, this attitude is here to stay.

To trade is to risk. To risk was to accept the consequences of failure. And so it was decided.

Those who risked all and lost were to gain no pity. One who sticks the revolver in his own mouth, spins the chambers and pulls the trigger has fully accepted the consequences and should need nor want no charity.

And none was now to be given.

For those who lost, they had their wits, their friends and their family to call upon. In the absence of these fallback assets, there was nothing else. There was a class for these individuals, the forgotten.

He who gambles all and loses must be prepared to accept the reality of labour, for it will become his life. In the bowels of the cities, in the hearts of the industrial sectors, in the core of the production zones will be his new home.

In the glare of the manufacturing zones, under the sweat-inducing arc lighting of the factory complexes or in the productive mists of the lower city levels, this is the heart of recompense for failure in our society. Where all one has to offer is effort, it will become their lifeline.

It is possible for one to escape from these levels of society, but as ever, getting out is immeasurably harder than sliding in.

And so it is and it is accepted, but for one other, quite separate class of unfortunates.

For what is to be the penance for one who has lost all but is too frail to contribute labour in recompense?



-----------------------------------------


Garth closed his eyes and his consciousness withdrew into a quite different world. The dark shifted and he felt his awareness, his self, being drawn out. He was taken from the real world into the virtual one, to interact with the markets of the Exchange. To do his new job.

He opened new, metaphorical eyes to behold the new world visible through the device implanted in himself. It took several moments for his mind to grow accustomed to what he was experiencing, but it then imploded upon him in a sudden rush.

-There were waves. Beautiful waves, rising, falling and shimmering with tiny wavelets of their own. On the wavelets were more wavelets still; he got the feeling that it was a fractal which would simply keep going on down through the scales.

And on the horizon, against the blackened featureless sky-

-Twisters, fountains, highways of liquid, reaching upwards and faintly illuminated from within. They floated upwards to giant globules, hanging in the dark. Globules swelled and receded slowly, waving at him, and were themselves interconnected by tiny shining threads.

Floating above the ocean, he dodged a wave which came up to smash him and marveled at the scene; truly symbolic and truly magnificent. In here his vision and senses were as perfect as they had ever been; more so, in fact. He peered outwards to view the tiny shimmering fractal wavelets merging into the vertical streamers in the far distance.

A voice reached out to touch him.

"Join us." He was taken aback. This was his reality, surely?

"Join us." He was disturbed. The waves rose and fell, flowed and shimmered unpredictably as before. He could see nobody.

"Minder!" He called, expecting no response and getting none. A particularly large streamer flowed nearby, blue luminous liquid flowing both up and down, pulsing in bursts of colour. It bulged and rippled unnaturally at its surface.

He looked around himself anew. All was stable, relatively. There was nothing out of the ordinary. His delusions were obviously the result of disorientation in this new reality. Obviously.

He floated onwards, observing the streamer nearest him; the large one. He was not sure how this correlated with the goings-on in the exchange but he was determined to fathom it out and decode this virtual representation. He swooped in close to the streamer and dipped a hand in.

It stuck. For a second, it was held by some grip within before it was pulled free. Curling his ‘arm’ up protectively, he peered, fascinated at the spot on the streamer where he had touched it. A bulge had developed and was stretching out towards him, almost like a stubby tentacle. He wondered what this facet represented.

"Join us!" The voice didn’t just grate this time, it razored his mind in two. He curled up, pounding his head, his eyes closed and his tone disbelieving. "What is this?" He inquired. "Where is this?"

Looking forwards anew, his eyes widened in horror. The stubby tentacle was joined by more liquid apparitions stretching and growing visibly. Towards him!

"Join us now!" One darted out and grabbed his exposed left arm, causing a shocked scream to escape from his throat, but the nightmare continued. The other tentacles, or whatever they were, buoyed by the success of their partner, lurched forward, twisting themselves around his body. They constricted and slowly robbed the air, or what passed for it, from his lungs. His body turned cold, icy cold, from the feet up and he tilted his head down to discover why.

He was being drawn slowly into the streamer. His lower body was losing coherence as it went; turning into the same liquid that made up the rest of this continuum. It was all too strange, why this was happening to him. Why?

Voices were entering his head as the liquid drew up to neck height. No. Not just voices; presence’s, conscious and self-aware. They entered him, muttering and discussing, and read his memories and inclinations as if reading a book through glass. Their violation grew as his awareness was fractured and drawn out, dispersed into the mass.

His mind was slowly being torn apart! Torn into fragments and diverted into different channels, his individuality gave one last gasp before he was subsumed into the multiplicity.

He opened his mouth to scream, but nothing would emerge before it too was submerged.

The horror continued.


--------------------------------------


And so the goalposts moved into new areas.

Prediction of the markets was never to be easy. They were inherently unpredictable; neither totally random nor underwritten with iron laws, they were almost true enigmas in the science of prediction.

In the 1930s, academics decided to assess whether traders really could predict the markets. With analyses of completely random and carefully selected portfolios, they came to a conclusion.

The stock market was totally random.

This was not quite true, of course. Yet this assumption of random behaviour was what would trip them up in the search for the Midas touch.

The solution was there, it was possible and reachable. Totally random events could be used for predictable gain. A roulette wheel of infinite complexity was how they perceived the markets; something random but exploitable in its predictable randomness. A person may reliably achieve gains on a roulette wheel by scaling up the amount placed on each bet for each failure that occurs. If done correctly, this can almost ensure significant gains.

Unless, that is, the improbable occurs and you continue to fail until your cash runs out completely. Random events do, after all, occasionally throw up the bizarre, and the bizarre can never be easily predicted by any formula.

The Black and Scholes formula for dynamic hedging was one such attempt, made in the latter half of the 20th century to produce solid gains out of a random market, assuming, of course, a predictably unpredictable market.

It failed. The company that shouldered the dynamic hedging concept, LTCM, required rescuing after events against all probability threw the market into chaos. Almost one thousand billion dollars was put at risk by the super-company. It was a stark demonstration of the hazards of systematic analysis and over-reliance upon it.

In the age of Allenia and the Empire attempts continued. Again, the assumption of random behaviour was given and utilized, for the most part. Again, they failed. Supercomputers would run elaborate simulations, modeling traders as molecules in a gust, almost. A weather system of finance, and even harder to predict than the weather itself.

Attempts continued.

Analysts constructed networks of supercomputers, representing markets, exchanges, regions. They calculated and simulated and communicated between each other, the instabilities of one setting off the other. Like weather simulators they would run the same process over and over and over and over before finally, after many thousands of simulations, plucking out the average results.

Again, they failed.

Attempts continued.


---------------------------------------


He woke, gasping and clawing feebly at the air, his breath harsh as it hammered against the walls of his throat. In his head was the echoes of what had happened; the remnants of acting as a gestalt with all individuality stripped from him. He stayed still and breathed steadily, slowly absorbing his surroundings.

Around him, the room was different from before. No longer in the hospital, he resided in a small cube of a room, the walls wooden and covered in damp.

Where was he?

Outside the single high window was gloom, only faint illumination seeping through. Checking his watch on tattered and dry arms he verified the time. Early morning then, no light should be visible. The room smelt musty and old. Noises came in from the outside; loud mechanical noises that he could never have heard in his former lush abode.

There was a creak to his right and the door opened, revealing the suit from before. A great rage built inside him as he saw this figure standing self-importantly in front of him. He touched his Voice to ensure its presence before shouting.

“You bastard! You utter bastard! Have you any idea how long I was in there?” His hands trembled with pent-up fury at this con-man he could see before him.

The suit nodded, quite calmly. “Yes.” He said.

“Yes? Yes? Is that all you can say!? I was in that virtual for months, you dry, rotten thief! I shall have you for this, you know. I will call the authorities-” He was cut off.

“Read this.” Said the suit, bending down to his level. Another piece of paper was presented. Garth scanned it carefully for several minutes.

“But surely this means-”

“Yes.” Nodded the suit. “Look at your arms, Mr. Jackson.”

He did so and was appalled. Inserted into his veins were narrow transparent tubes, within which fluids were flowing, connected eventually to machines and devices on the back of his chair. Intravenous drips? It must be. He asked.

“Not at all, Mr. Jackson. You required no intravenous drips at all. These are part of our agreement; twenty-five years of extended life. For you.”

He frowned, his rage forgotten. Twenty-five years? The sheer enormity of such a figure to a man who yesterday had little hope of living another one was immense. “You mean this? No, silly question. I have a better one; where are we?”

“The junction of 33rd and 12th, Delta industrial sector, ground level.”

“The lower levels!”

“Indeed. Worry not, Mr. Jackson. Your security is assured by the company.”

The mention of the company again raised Garth’s hackles. “Very well, but I want this explaining; why was I in there, in your little virtual zoo, for several months? This is flagrantly illegal use of employee labour!"

“I did no such thing, Mr. Jackson.”

His fury started to ebb back. In the corner of his eye he saw the minder entering the room with the two of them. “You most certainly did, mate. I will see you in court for this. And you can count me out of this little arrangement.”

The suit actually smirked! The gall of it! “You want to know how long you were in there, Mr. Jackson? I shall tell you. Seven hours, as agreed. No more, no less.”

“But-”

“A virtual world, Mr. Jackson, need not hold the same timescales in your own perceptions as this one. You were there seven hours and shall remain so once a day for the duration of our deal; the duration of your life, Mr. Jackson.”

The finality dawned. It was all too clear now. This contract was binding and inescapable. They had provided him with the extended life he needed, and they could remove it at a glance if need be. He was now enslaved to these timescales. Seven days a week, seven hours a day, with each hour made as if a month in his head. He had got extended life, that much he would concede. Extended awareness, certainly. A single tear started to form in one eye.

He picked his head up with an effort, one hope remaining. “But wait a minute there. I had signed up as a speculative trader. You made me nothing of the sort.”

Again the smile. “Oh but I did.” Exclaimed the suit. “You were once a trader in speculation, Mr. Jackson, and a trader in speculation you remain. The difference is no more than semantic.” He stood up and motioned to the minder, who took out the hypodermic needle anew. “Make sure Mr. Jackson gets some rest now. He has work tomorrow.”

Garth struggled weakly against the harnesses of his seat, but to no avail. The expressionless minder strode forward and, unable to resist him, Garth succumbed, feeling a cold needle diving into his upper arm. As his consciousness faded away, he saw only the suit, smart and prosperous as ever, standing in the doorway.

“Read the small print, Mr. Jackson. Read the small print.”


-----------------------------------------


Attempts continued.
And now, in this very day we
see something new. The lessons learned by the last experiment; computers acting collectively in a gestalt intellect, proved a failure for one good reason.

They could only ever be as good as their programming.

For the gestalt to work efficiently in prediction of the markets, something else was needed to run over the simulations many thousands of times a day; things with all the instructions hardwired in from the start.

Things which had been pre-programmed to behave correctly in the markets even before inclusion.

And so we see a day when one company, Speculative Trading Inc. has started making it’s riches by using the only viable component that could possibly work in such a situation.

The human brain.

After all, there were thousands of old and decrepit ex-traders out there, wealthy enough to have had their life extended this far but no further and unable to pay for the youth treatments which could make them productive anew. It was an untapped resource.

Somebody, sooner or later, had to use it.


------------------------------------


High up in the city, in a reclaimed apartment, the grey suited man leaned back in the ample chair of his new office. Leaning forward to the old-style microphone in front of him, he called to his contacts down in the Exchange and gave his instructions in what to buy and what to sell, in exact quantities.

Ninety-four years old if he was a day, he looked no more senior than thirty-five. The appallingly expensive youth treatments forsaken by the old fool he had been dealing with in exchange for simple extendible life had been used to their full capacity on him. No doubt the old fool had used the cash saved to buy himself icons of his former success; large cars, fleets of yachts, this office.

The suited man shook his head and stood up from his chair, before turning to face the window and the glittering scene it displayed, as boldly as ever.

But what the hell. The old man had the near-immortality he wanted, or had thought he had wanted. He, meanwhile, got this office and another addition to the gestalt market simulator.

What was capitalism, after all, but an opportunity for exploitation of the foolish by the shrewd?

He strode up to the glass, admiringly. It was a nice view.

[SeebianWurm]

Fascinating.

[victorhadin]

*Unscrupulous bump.*

[HemlockGrey]

I just read this, and all I can really say is that it is some of the best stuff I've read on this board, ever.

[Singular Quartet]

DAMMMIT, VICTOR! Stop putting out good stuff. It makes the rest of us look bad.

[darthdavid]

So....Evil.

[speaker-to-trolls]

Wow... just wow.

[LadyTevar]

Very nice. I enjoyed this alot