The First Billion

Perched on the edge of his secondhand office chair inside his four-by-four-foot cubicle on the floor of Cornerstone Trading in downtown Delray Beach, Luca was a model of concentration. All of him- his eyes, his ears, his mind, his square, compact hands with the nicely buffed fingernails, even the downy black hairs on the back of his neck- was dialed into the cascade of information spewing from the twin columns stacked on the desk in front of him.

Ten inches from his all-seeing brown eyes, the wall of color super-VGA displays broadcast a blinking, stuttering, ever-changing array of graphs, bar charts, and streaming price quotations advertising real-time fluctuations of the twenty-seven stocks he was currently following. The setup was called a Level II quotation system, and it allowed him not only to see markets being made in each of these stocks but to directly place a buy or sell an order via an electronic communications network, or ECN. One hour after he'd glued his bottom to the chair, he was finally where he needed to be: deep in "the zone," the Zen-like fusion of focus, mental agility, and intuition necessary to master the godless art of day trading.

It was in this church of unbiased information that Raymond J. Luca, five-foot-five-inch native of Worcester, Massachusetts, and Florida transplant, one-hundred-forty-pound washout from the United States Marine Corps and the Catholic faith, chronic sufferer of duodenal ulcers and incurable myopic, divorced father of three wonderful daughters and Ph.D. from M.I.T., ex-altar boy, ex-tycoon, ex-con, and soon to be ex-day trader, also known as the Private Eye-PO, took his daily communion, a high mass beginning at 9:30 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time and ending at 4 in the afternoon, every day of the year save weekends, holidays, and the running of the Flamingo Stakes at Hialeah.

Luca had five open positions at the moment, all buys: Nokia, Solectron, Merck, Juniper, and Amgen. He didn't care what they marketed, manufactured, or sold, who ran them or whether they had a chance in hell of making a decent return over the long run. It didn't matter where they traded- Nasdaq, Amex, or the Big Board- only that they were high-volume stocks that bounced around like a kid on a pogo stick. Volatility was the name of the game.

At the moment he was concentrating on Solectron (symbol SLR), a box maker that after years of double-digit growth and the accompanying rise in share price had suffered a violent tumble to earth. He'd bought eight thousand shares of the stock a few minutes earlier, just after it had made a "double bottom," meaning that twice in the last thirty minutes it had tested its lows and rebounded. Classically, a stock exhibiting this behavior goes on to break through its earlier intraday high. Watching the market makers enter their orders, he noted a couple of things: One, buyers were pouring into the market (also reacting to the double bottom). And two, sellers were few and far between. The stock was set to pop.

Sellers inched into the market, eager to accept the quickly appreciating bids. Luca held on as the stock advanced an eighth, a quarter, a half. An eye flicked to the volume chart and a sixth sense told him the stock was running out of steam. Spotting a bid for eighty round lots, or eight thousand shares, that would lock in his half-point profit, he dashed off an order to sell. Bingo! Four grand in the plus column. In and out in twenty minutes.

"Trade, don't invest." The diligent day trader's motto.

Luca turned his attention to his position in Merck as a gaggle of male voices burst out shouting down the aisle. One raucous laugh stood apart from the others. It was Mazursky- or "the Wizard of Warsaw," as he called himself- and he was crowing about taking down three points on a position inside an hour.

"Thirty grand, baby. Thirty fuggin' large! Oh, yeah! The beers are on me tonight, fellas. And whoever wants to buy me the first shot of Jagermeister will be the recipient of my daily tip. Ooh-yeah!"

Luca shuddered at the Pole's shameless bragging. He didn't need to look to know that Mazursky was doing his victory dance, the revolting little number where he clasped his hands behind his head and rotated his hips and potbelly in ever-widening circles.

Luca felt himself being dragged from the zone, his cerebral connection to the ether evaporating. Annoyed, he leaned even closer to his precious screens, clenching his jaw and grinding his molars in a desperate attempt to lock out the distraction. But it was too late. His connection was severed. He was free-falling back to earth and his place among mortals. Ducking a head outside the cubicle, he saw the regulars crowded around Mazursky's hangout- Krumins, Nevins, Gregorio- all giggling like teenagers.

"Hey, Ray, that goes for you, too," said Mazursky, spotting him and waving him over. "First beer's on me."