“Oh, I will know quickly. I will now within a few minutes what is going to happen. The market is going to move very fast.”

“Wrong. It will actually be better for him. If I kill myself, he can get a job somewhere else for twice as much, maybe more.”

“They will survive. It’s the best resume bullet in the world. They will all find jobs.”

“You have spent the last hour trying to talk me out of killing myself and you have been doing a profoundly shitty job.”

“Because I have already thought of all the angles.”

“Sure.”

“Sure, I will agree to that. If you can poke a hole in my logic, I will listen to you. Maybe I will not kill myself.”

“No, I don’t believe in heaven.”

“No.”

“You want to know what I think happens when you die? Nothing.”

“You don’t have to believe in the afterlife to kill yourself.”

“Because this existence is horrible and I just want it to stop.”

“My impact on other people? I make them money.”

“They will not show up at my funeral. Probably nobody will.”

“I don’t care who shows up at my funeral! I will be dead.”

Weber: FYI COMS we are going to be selling upside

trdrbear is typing…

trdrbear: u sure?

Weber: yes

trdrbear is typing…

trdrbear: u trying to chinese the deal?

“Now listen. This is how it works. Do you know how options work? Not really? Okay. So I am the portfolio manager at a hedge fund. I want to sell 3,000 of the April 120 calls in 3Com when the spinoff happens. I will give the order to CN. He will call a sales trader at a bank who will execute it with a position trader. The position trader can buy some, all, half, or none of the order, or just give it to the floor in San Francisco, where a broker will walk into a pit and sell them to a crowd of market makers, who will then hedge the stock with their clerks. That is how it works. Nobody sees this part of the business. Each one of these people involved in the trade, each one of these people has a life. Maybe they are happy. Maybe they are unhappy. Maybe they are going through a divorce, like CN. But all of these people have one thing in common: they care very deeply about making money. Otherwise they wouldn’t be doing what they do, because the work is hard, and there are no psychic rewards. It is not like being a special ed teacher. It is not like being a Little League coach. It is not like working in Haiti. It is not even like being a journalist, TV personality, or entertainer, where you can have a positive effect on people’s lives. There are no psychic benefits to what we do. All it does is to put more money in our bank accounts. If you don’t have any use for the money, like me, then it is just a game. It is just a big fucking game without end. And then do you know what happens in the game? Level two of the game is trying to hang onto the money that you made. Because if you lose it, then you are back to square one, and not only are you back to square one, but people will know that you lost it, and there is shame. Some people aren’t very good at hanging onto the money. But everyone wants to make this kind of money, or at least wishes they had it, but they can’t. They can’t, because they can’t possibly understand how much work it is and how hard you have to work to get it and how smart you have to be and then you have to hang onto it. People want to win the lottery. Fuck winning the lottery. You make more money in this game than winning the fucking lottery. I have won the Powerball twenty times over. Fuck you and your lottery. But people sit around and buy a lottery ticket and dream about buying a solid gold fucking limousine. And that is the hallmark of a fucking piker, sitting around dreaming of a solid gold fucking limousine. That is what people do who don’t know the meaning of money. That is why I’m not giving money to you or anyone else. Because it would be fucking meaningless. It would have no fucking meaning to you. All you would do is waste it, and you know what? It would not make you fucking happy. Money does not make you happy. All it does is make your life a little easier. That is all it does. But people think it solves everything. If only I had this. If only I had that. People say, if only I had what Weber has. You fucking have no idea.