There is a moment of silence.

Nick starts in. “So you’re saying that trading made $210 million and sales made $40 million?”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

“Well, that’s bullshit.”

“It’s actually not, you can look at each individual trade. There are over two thousand of them. We can go through them one by one if you want.”

“Well, if you fucking guys were such geniuses, why don’t you just trade prop? Why do you need us?”

I finish off the Diet Coke, slurping it, tipping my head back, and underhanding it into the trash can. “I don’t know, why do we?”

“Okay, that’s enough,” says Dave. Look, I see what you’re trying to do here, but the customer franchise is worth a lot.”

“I just showed you what it is worth. It is worth $40 million.”

“There is no fucking way we’re having your guys get paid five times as much as my guys,” says Nick.

“Why not? We add five times as much value.”

“You wouldn’t have made the $210 million if we hadn’t put you in those trades to begin with.”

“Arguably, we would have made more, because the trades we got from you were due to adverse selection. We only get the bad trades from you. Our customers have edge, so taking the other side of their trades is usually a losing proposition. It actually costs money to dynamically hedge a position. My guys are good.”

“My guys are good.”

“So they are. They are good at bringing in trades, and now, for the first time, we can quantify what that is worth.”

“How did you do this, anyway?” asks Dave.

“Just a little programming in VBA. Some basic stuff. Took me about an hour and a half.”

Dave shakes his head. “Look. I understand what you are saying. But you have to keep in mind that this is a bull market. Are you guys going to be able to maintain these results in a bear market?”

“I have complete confidence in all my guys.”

“We’re not going to stand for this,” says Nick.

“Okay. If you can come up with a different formula based on the same data, give it a shot. Program up something which shows that there was no adverse selection, that you guys actually brought in great trades, that anybody could have made money off of those positions.”

“Come on. You know I don’t have the ability to do that.”

“I’m serious. Get one of the analytics guys to help you out. If you can show that there’s no adverse selection, you will have refuted my argument.”

“Okay,” Dave says, “I think we’ve heard about enough for today. We have a full eight months to get this worked out. Thanks for putting this together. Nick, let’s chat about this next week sometime, I have to be on a plane in two hours.”

“Which airport?” I ask.

“JFK.”

“Better get moving.”

* * * *

I return to my desk on the trading floor, at the end of the aisle, and crack open another Diet Coke.