We shall Fight on the Beaches

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On the trading floor, a young guy shouted, ‘Clayton at the figure! Fill or kill!  Clayton at the figure, Fill or Kill!’

The head of a heavy Indian trader with a double chin popped up above the warren of monitors.  ‘Whose buying man’, he shouted.

‘Paper’, the first guy said.

‘Fuck off’, the second trader explained.

The head of Vol said to the quant who sat next to him without turning his head, ‘Esterson’s long North Carolina’.

‘Esterson’s always long the south’, the quant said.  He has been since the first Disruption.’

‘How old is the guy?’

‘Fuck if I know.  A hundred fifty?  Two hundred?  He has a beard the length of a football field.’

‘Commodore at the market’, a hoot and holler intoned.

‘Fuck Commodore, fuck the market’, the quant explained.

‘Fudge is risk off New York and Massachusetts’, the head of Vol said.  He’s risk off the whole Northeast.’

‘I got a position’, the quant said.

‘And I have an asshole’, the head of Vol explained.

CNBC showed a fat, blond-haired, short-fingered vulgarian speaking to a crowd of people on the West Front of the Capitol.  People crowded the space in front of him and lined the levees that protected the buildings that housed the executive branch and the museums that commemorated the former legislative and judicial branches.

‘Drill, baby, drill’, the vulgarian said.  The crowd went wild.  Then, in the here-and-now, the Founder walked onto the trading floor and killed CNBC.

‘Awww!’, a cry went up.

‘Does he really drink the blood of teenaged boys and girls’, the quant asked Vol, about the Founder.

‘I don’t know’, Vol said.  ‘But he looks pretty good for a hundred ninety-five.’

‘He says it is all HIIT.’

‘And twenty-five year old women.’

‘That would age you’, the quant said.

‘It would age a normal person’, Vol said.  ‘He says it keeps him young.’  The Founder had the look that he had when he was about to deliver a sermon.  The traders breathed in, relaxed their chests, and settled in their seats.

In the long series of very fierce battles’, the Founder said, ‘now on this front, now on that, fighting on three fronts at once, battles fought by two or three divisions against an equal or somewhat larger number of the enemy, and fought fiercely on some of the old grounds that so many of us knew so well-in these battles our losses in men have exceeded 30,000 killed, wounded and missing. I take occasion to express the sympathy of the House to all who have suffered bereavement or who are still anxious.

‘What the hell is he on about’, the Quant said.

‘Fuck if I know’, Vol explained.  What’s your position?’

‘I’m long New York, New England and the northern Midwest.’

‘You’re crazy.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘I’m listening.’

Against this loss of over 30,000 men, the Founder continued, we can set a far heavier loss certainly inflicted upon the enemy. But our losses in material are enormous. We have perhaps lost one-third of the men we lost in the opening days of the battle of 21st March, 1918, but we have lost nearly as many guns — nearly one thousand-and all our transport, all the armoured vehicles that were with the Army in the north. This loss will impose a further delay on the expansion of our military strength. That expansion had not been proceeding as far as we had hoped.

‘I’m a contrarian, the quant said.  I zag when the herd zigs.’

‘The Baker brothers tried to do that in 2027.  They got their faces ripped off.’

‘That was 2027.  Now is 2110.’

‘Plus ca change.’

‘Fuck off.’

‘If you look at options on New York parks, you can see that the market sees risk to the upside.’

‘If you evict a non-payer in New York, you have to put them in an Air BNB and give them a foot massage.’

‘Men, too?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Eeeeeeew!’

From Vol’s monitor, the short-fingered vulgarian intoned, ‘The golden age of America begins right now.  From this day forward, our country will flourish and be respected again all over the world.’

‘He says this every year’, the quant said.  ‘It’s the golden age of corruption, is what it is.’

‘It looks like he has learned to read short words off the teleprompter’, Vol said.  ‘Baby steps.’

‘You mean they used to show him pictures?’

‘Where the hell have you been?’

The Founder continued, Our thankfulness at the escape of our Army and so many men, whose loved ones have passed through an agonizing week, must not blind us to the fact that what has happened in France and Belgium is a colossal military disaster. The French Army has been weakened, the Belgian Army has been lost, a large part of those fortified lines upon which so much faith had been reposed is gone, many valuable mining districts and factories have passed into the enemy’s possession, the whole of the Channel ports are in his hands, with all the tragic consequences that follow from that, and we must expect another blow to be struck almost immediately at us or at France.

At the mention of the French defeats, A tall man with narrow shoulders, a big nose and no sense of humor stood up like a jack-in-the-box.  ‘Who’s he’, the quant asked.

‘Head of the viticulture and tyromancy desk.’

‘Funny looking guy.’

‘Fudge likes him.’

The tall man intoned loudly to the room, La France a perdu une bataille!  Mais la France n’a pas perdu la guerre !

Des gouvernants de rencontre ont pu capituler, the guy continued, cédant à la panique, oubliant l’honneur, livrant le pays à la servitude. Cependant, rien n’est perdu ! Rien n’est perdu, parce que cette guerre est une guerre mondiale. Dans l’univers libre, des forces immenses n’ont pas encore donné. Un jour ces forces écraseront l’ennemi. Il faut que la France ce jour là soit présente à la victoire. Alors, elle retrouvera sa liberté et sa grandeur. Tel est mon but, mon seul but !

Voilà pourquoi je convie tous les Français, où qu’ils se trouvent, à s’unir à moi dans l’action, dans le sacrifice et dans l’espérance. Notre patrie est en péril de mort.

Luttons tous pour la sauver !

VIVE LA FRANCE !

‘Quiet, Vinny’, the Founder said.  The funny-looking man sat down.  ‘As I was saying, the Founder continued, When Napoleon lay at Boulogne for a year with his flat-bottomed boats and his Grand Army, he was told by someone. ‘There are bitter weeds in England.’ There are certainly a great many more of them since the British Expeditionary Force returned.

‘Yeah!  Tell it!’, a young trader shouted.

‘He’s kissing ass’, the quant said.

‘And you don’t do that’, Vol asked.

The Founder continued, The whole question of home defense against invasion is, of course, powerfully affected by the fact that we have for the time being in this Island incomparably more powerful military forces than we have ever had at any moment in this war or the last. But this will not continue. We shall not be content with a defensive war. We have our duty to our Ally.

‘Tell me more about your trade’, Vol said.

‘The easiest thing to do is sell a put’, the quant said.

‘For this, we paid you ten million last year?’

‘There are some parts of the country where park options are trading rich, because nobody wants to buy in that regulatory environment.  They might be candidates for credit spreads.’

‘Our sovereignty will be reclaimed’, the short-fingered vulgarian said from the computer screen.

‘Could you turn that off, please’, Vol said.

‘Sorry.  If you look at, say, at-the-money park options in New York, you can collect twenty points for an ATM straddle thirty-five days out.’

‘What is the underlying trading at?’

The quant pulled up an option screen for a seventy-five lot park in Jefferson County.  ‘This one closed at sixty-eight and a teeny.’

‘Have they gotten rid of the Orangeburg?’

‘Maybe next century.’

‘How do you hedge?’

‘Buy a ratio out of the money.  When you get twenty points out, they’re cheap.’

‘Vertical skew.’

‘Yup.’

‘So, Vol said, ‘If the market stays where it is, you make money.  If there is a black swan event, you clean up.  If it moves one standard deviation, you lose, but your risk is limited.’

‘I believe you mean, ‘if the market stays where it’s at.’’

‘Nope.  I mean, ‘If the market stays where it is.’’

The Founder continued, I have, myself, full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, and if the best arrangements are made, as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our Island home, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone. At any rate, that is what we are going to try to do. That is the resolve of His Majesty’s Government-every man of them. That is the will of Parliament and the nation.

‘Another way to do it’, the quant said, ‘Instead of buying OTM calls would be to buy the underlying and write a strangle.  Buy three OTM puts to hedge the risk of a loss in value.  You win seventy-five percent of the time, your risk is limited, and if prices get whacked, the long put pays out.  You won’t hit a home run, but you can grind out singles, doubles and the occasional triple.’

‘What about the capital outlay, if you buy the parks?’

‘Significant, but the premia make it worth it.’

The Founder reached the crescendo.  We shall fight in France, he said, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall NEVER surrender.

‘Yeah’, the young guy said and clapped.

‘He does this every year’, Vol said.  ‘The historic resistance spiel.  He never changes it up.  And it’s just performative.  He has the short-fingered vulgarian in his pocket.’

‘Really?’

‘Oh, yeah.  He funds the federal government.  Not through the company.  Through a special purpose vehicle that he funds personally.  He just likes channeling Churchill.  It gets worse the older he gets.’

‘So the short-fingered vulgarian is really –‘

‘Vice President Short Fingered Vulgarian.  Dirtlease pulls the strings.’