* * * *

The trading floor comes to life; the spinoff is only minutes away. I pull up PALM on the Bloomberg and on Nasdaq Level 3. The spinoff price is supposed to be $60 but already the stock is bid up to $70 in the box. That means that COMS should start trading higher, and it is, but not enough. There is a mathematical relationship between the two stocks; COMS will retain a partial ownership of PALM, so if PALM goes up, COMS should go up by a proportional amount. There aren’t any options trading on PALM, so that’s not my concern. My concern is options on 3Com, because certainly people are going to want to trade COMS options as a cheap way to get leverage on PALM.

Already Tod is starting to get the occasional odd-lot order—salespeople are shouting them in from across the floor–and I’m pleased that the spinoff is going to coincide perfectly with my special time of day. You know that feeling when you get to the top of the first hill of a roller coaster and you look down for the first time? The tightness you get in your groin? Or when you go to the World Trade Center exhibition deck, walk up to the windows, and look down? That’s what it’s like. That’s the feeling of danger. When a single trade could make my entire year—or ruin it. Prices of options could change by as much as 50 percent in a matter of seconds. Trading in these conditions has less to do with having a view on the stock market and a lot more to do with just being able to execute cleanly and professionally, without errors. If the New Girl happened to mix up “buy” with “sell” or “calls” with “puts,” it could take out half the firm.

I was worried about Weber. The portfolio manager and head trader of one of the biggest tech funds are having a complete meltdown. They paid us 20 percent of our commissions last year. They were responsible for a proportional amount of our P&L. I didn’t particularly care about either of them personally, but if something happens to that fund, I get paid a bonus of $3.25 million instead of $3.75 million—a half a million dollar difference. Ashley and I would really have to economize.

I pull up vanguard.com where I can see the total value of my portfolio of stocks and funds. The number reads:

$19,553,541

The stocks update real time but the funds only update at the end of the day. With the market up about 1 percent, and with half of the money in stock mutual funds, that should add about $100,000 to the total. I am going to need all of it. There is a bear market soon, and in a bear market, the goal is just to preserve wealth. I am going to need all of it when the shit hits the fan and this entire country collapses in social chaos. Of course, by then, money in the bank will be worthless, so I will have to have converted it all to physical gold and silver. I have converted some, but I still have a long way to go. I’m probably just weeks away from liquidating the whole thing and turning it into cash and gold; I don’t like the way stocks have been acting. The economic data is starting to roll over and the volatility is insane. I’ve been trading for eleven years, more than just about anyone on the floor, and I know when we’re about to reach the end of a trend.