Kapitoil Read online

  And Schrub can invest much more than $1,000.

  I rewrite my proposal to incorporate the new data, which takes a few hours. It is still not perfect English. I am about to shoot Jefferson an email again for help, but I stop. What if he did try to take responsibility before? This new idea is more secretive to boot. I could ask Rebecca, but I do not think she has access to the right people in quants.

  Therefore, I decide to contact George Ray myself, except I am still uncertain if the program works, and I may look foolish again. But now I see my first program was too safe and conventional, and even if my program does not function, it is an ambitious idea, and I would prefer to fail with a big-picture idea than succeed on a small scale.

  I email him:

  Sender: Karim Issar

  Recipient: George B. Ray

  Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 22:23:06

  Subject: 2nd proposal

  Mr. Ray, I understand the previous quants program I created that Jefferson Smithfield showed you as a favor for me was not robust enough to risk investment. I have a new program that I believe works more efficiently. It is yielding 1.30% daily profits in tests. My proposal is attached.

  Then I begin the copyright process for my program with the Library of Congress.

  I do not expect to hear from him for at least a few days, but one hour later I receive a reply:

  You mean 0.13% daily profits?

  I write:

  No, it is 1.30%.

  He replies once more:

  Meet me in the conference room on 89 tomorrow at 8:30.

  I reread that sentence five times. It is the happiest I have been so far in New York.

  have a hard time dealing = have difficulty managing life

  lifesaver = someone who helps another person in a significant mode

  slave away at = labor diligently for

  JOURNAL DATE RECORDED: OCTOBER 21

  The layout of floor 89 is equivalent to 88, and the receptionist who wears makeup that looks like mud on her cheeks guides me to the conference room. Then she exits, and I sit alone in the room, which has dark blue walls and a projection monitor that is powered off and a long rectangular black table that feels like ice from the air-conditioning even though it is the middle of fall.

  In a few minutes Mr. Ray enters. His hair is partially black and partially white and his skin is very pale. His fingernails have some dirt underneath and his armpits have small ovals of perspiration, but most people would not observe these things because he otherwise looks like an actor in an advertisement and his teeth are so white I can almost see myself mirrored in them, and I am also very aware of other people’s hygiene, e.g., Dan requires shaving twice daily and Jefferson’s ears contain wax. Rebecca veils the odor of cigarettes with perfume and gum, but she does not always succeed.

  After he introduces himself, he holds up a printout and says, “Your proposal was a little vague on how accurate the program will be in the future.”

  I intentionally did not include these data because I wanted to explain it in person, in case he thought it was too risky, and I also did not want to send any specific information about the algorithms over email.

  “It currently functions for historical data retrieving back six months. It utilizes a signal that was present in that time period. Signals can convert over time. Therefore, this algorithm will not work as efficiently in the future, although the programmer can continue modifying the algorithm,” I say.

  He scans the front page again. “I’ve read this three times over. These are absurd numbers—so absurd I can’t believe it’ll work. But if this program does even a quarter of what you say it will, we have something very special on our hands,” he says.

  “It is extremely difficult to 100% predict the future, but this is a new way that I do not believe anyone has thought of, and that is the critical idea, to do something no one else is doing so you have an advantage,” I say.

  “I want to get this going immediately, so I’ll green-light you for a trial run the rest of the week,” Mr. Ray says.

  My muscles relax for the first time all morning. I hope three days is enough time to prove its merit and that I have enough liquidity to make significant gains, even though the percentage gain is all that is important. The futures contracts trade at a minimum of 1,000 barrels, and the current price is approximately $22 per barrel, so I will need at least approximately $22,000.

  “Is $300,000 enough?” he asks.

  I pretend to be calm, although it is difficult, because I smile instinctively when I receive optimal news. “Yes, that should be sufficient,” I say.

  We discuss how to set up a fund for me to use, which will use legal offshore accounts so that Schrub remains anonymous and does not create market disturbances. “By the way, what do you call your program?” he asks.

  I had not considered this. Jackson Pollock did not name his paintings, but gave them numbers because he did not want people to have preformed thoughts before observing the painting. But my program is already about numbers, so it should have a title. I search my brain, and all I can think of is that my program capitalizes on oil prices, and it makes me think of the blended title of the song Dan was downloading.

  “Capitoil,” I say. But if I am not going to get public kudos for my program, I want others to remember that it is Karim-esque. “K-A-P-I-T-O-I-L.”

  “Kapitoil,” Mr. Ray says. “Nice play on words.”

  I believe it is the first time I have played on words in English.

  “Mr. Ray, may I request you do not reveal this to my podmates yet?” I ask before we leave.

  “Yes. It’s highly privileged information,” he says. I do not say that that is not the primary reason I do not want him to reveal it.

  In my pod I set Kapitoil to aggregate recent newspaper searches, and it predicts oil futures will rise 21 cents total by the end of the day. This is only a 0.95% change, but that is still a good amount, and it is more critical to show that the program works. I immediately enter an anonymous order for 5,000 barrels at the current price of $22.17.

  For the first two hours the oil price rises slowly as Kapitoil predicted. I watch it, although I do not focus well on my work.

  Then at 11:45 a.m. the price drops. I hope this is temporary turbulence, and monitor the prices more closely.

  At lunch Dan and Jefferson make a wager for $200 that Dan cannot eat 12 donuts in five minutes. The rules are he may have one glass of milk and may not eject the donuts during the consumption, although he may afterward. He eats six ASAP, then slows down. He eats the tenth donut very slowly, and he has one minute to finish the final two.

  “Dan, you don’t have to do this,” Rebecca says.

  “Yeah, let’s call it even,” says Jefferson, who looks slightly nervous.

  Dan shakes his head and eats his 11th donut. “30 seconds left,” Jefferson says. Dan shifts back and holds his desk for stability. He eats half the donut, then looks at the remaining half. With 15 seconds left, he puts the donut in his mouth and intakes it. His throat broadens as if it is a snake consuming a bird. Then he runs to the restroom and remains there for 20 minutes.

  I review my monitor. Oil futures are now lower than the original $22.17.

  The price continues falling through the afternoon, and at the end of open outcry at 2:30 p.m. it is 23 cents below the original price. I am interested exclusively in short-term gains and do not want to invest more money in this contract, so I sell it to someone at $21.94 and lose $1,150 on the sale.

  Mr. Ray emails me:

  We’ll try it out again tomorrow. These things don’t always work right away. Am withdrawing 100K from your account.

  Except I believed it would work right away, and now I am afraid I have already trashed my one opportunity here and I will never come up with an idea that works and I will be a nonentity in finance my whole life.

  On the subway after work I do not feel like immediately returning home, so I transfer trains
and ride uptown until I reach Central Park. It is already dark at 6:00 p.m. and getting colder. I enter the park and walk without knowing where I am directed, and find a bench on a wide pedestrian road underneath leaves that blend red and orange and yellow.

  A female walks by pushing a stroller with a baby inside. She is Middle Eastern, possibly Iranian, and looks like my mother when she was younger, with the same nose I also have, thin with a small angle in the middle, which some people might evaluate as ugly on a female but I think is elegant on the correct face. I stand up, but she is already beyond me, so I walk behind her and to the side to observe her features.

  She turns her head and looks back at me, then accelerates the stroller.

  “Miss, please do not run away,” I say as I also accelerate. “I notice that you look very similar—”

  “Leave me alone,” she says, and she turns the stroller to where other people are. I stop following her and turn back.

  In my apartment, I retrieve from my top desk drawer a small photograph of my mother. I am approximately seven years old and sitting on her lap. Her eyes are bright holes against her dark burqa as she laughs.

  It is my solitary photograph of her, and I wish I had additional ones, but by the time we knew we should take more, her body had lost much mass and her skin was gray and her hair was voided in partitions and the corners of her forehead angled in because she had no muscles. But she never complained about her health. The only subject she complained about was one time when I heard her crying on the telephone and telling my aunt that she would not get to see Zahira grow up. In some ways that is better, since Zahira was not old enough to 100% understand what was happening, but in most ways it was not, because now she says she has few memories of her, and memories are the only way for someone who is dead to continue approximately living.

  And although I am glad I possess this photograph, it also frustrates me, because I have no idea now what happened before it to make her laugh, or what happened after, and it captures an infinitely small moment out of her entire life, and although I have other memories of her, they are slowly being deleted, e.g., when I was young and had difficulty falling asleep she used to sing Beatles songs in English to me. I can remember with accuracy the sound of her cream of the cream voice, and if she had been born in the U.S., I predict she would have been a musician.

  But I do not remember what her preferred song was that she frequently sang ultimately, just before she kissed my forehead. I have played nearly every song of theirs for years to launch my memory, but I am never certain which one it is. My father would not remember, and even if he did, we do not discuss her.

  green-light = permit a project to continue

  highly privileged information = private data

  play on words = create a secondary or tertiary meaning via original usage of language

  JOURNAL DATE RECORDED: OCTOBER 22

  On Thursday Kapitoil predicts that prices will drop 15 cents, so I short a contract for 5,000 barrels. Before I make the transaction, I review Kapitoil’s prediction and the data that support it, in case I can decipher why it has been erroneous. But I do not detect any glitches: It is using the most recent newspaper articles in the U.S. from this morning and should be accurate.

  The prices drop at first, as the program predicted, but then they fluctuate during the day, and by the end of open outcry it is up 17 cents and we again lose money.

  Mr. Ray emails me:

  One more chance tomorrow, or we’ll have to kill it.

  I strike my desk hard, and Rebecca looks at me. “I am having a technical issue,” I say.

  Several minutes later, Jefferson disconnects his telephone. “Scored two tickets, mezzanine, game three of the World Series,” he says. “Check the weather for the 26th.”

  Dan clicks on his computer. “Damn. 70% chance of rain.”

  Jefferson says, “Don’t be so pessimistic, baby. That’s your problem. October weather goes through volatile ch-ch-ch-changes,” and he sings this last word as he intentionally stutters.

  And then I have a positive short circuit about why my program is malfunctioning, or instead why it functions at first and then stops: because it is processing articles written the previous night and published in the morning. But by the afternoon it is obsolete news, which is why Kapitoil performs poorly then. The Internet is a constant source of data, like a spacious bin the entire world is depositing trash inside, and my program is calibrated so precisely that it must process the most recent data: the trash on top. The trash underneath is less valuable.

  The solitary way to profit with it, I hypothesize, is to make transactions and run Kapitoil every hour, although this poses great risk for major losses.

  “Karim, check us out on TV Tuesday night,” Jefferson says.

  I am frustrated that he is interrupting me when I am in the middle of an important thought, so I say, “I will, if you are not obstructed by the people sitting in front of you.” He does not understand this is a reference to his height, and resumes working.

  I shoot Mr. Ray my idea. He agrees it is high risk, but green-lights me to try this new hourly strategy tomorrow.

  I receive an email from Rebecca at 5:45 p.m.:

  Interested in seeing the movie “Three Kings” tonight? (Short notice, I know, but I figure you’re busy next week trying to spot Jefferson on TV in vain--the camera only adds ten pounds, not ten inches.)

  I know it is customary in the U.S. for a female to invite a man to socialize, but it still makes me uncomfortable. Although of course I would not have the confidence to invite her to socialize, so in some ways I am relieved. But then I have another source of confusion: I am uncertain if this is a romantic date or if it is just two friends partnering for a movie.

  I reply that I would like to see the movie, which I have seen advertisements for although I do not know what it is about. She responds immediately that a theater nearby is playing it directly after work. I was hoping her writing would suggest whether she believes it is a date or friends partnering, but nothing in her email is a strong indicator, or possibly my skill at reading English is not advanced enough to analyze her words.

  A few minutes after Jefferson and Dan leave, Rebecca asks if I want to go now. We get in the elevator, and it is similar to the time we went to coffee together and did not speak. She touches the material of her white shirt sleeve and gray pants as we descend.

  “I’ve read really good things about this movie,” she says finally.

  “I have not.”

  “You heard it was bad?”

  “No,” I say. “I have not read anything about it.”

  She laughs, although when she laughs after I make a conversational error (she explains the error to me) it does not make me feel humiliated as it does when Dan laughs, and it becomes slightly easier to converse as we walk to the movie theater.

  She tells the vendor we want two tickets, and I take out my credit card. She pushes it away.

  “How about I’ll get the tickets and you can get the popcorn and soda?” she says, and she pays before I have the opportunity to reject the idea.

  The popcorn and soda is less than 50% of the ticket price, and I offer to pay Rebecca some money to compensate. “You can get me back another time,” she says.

  The movie is entertaining and intriguing. At four points during it I rotate my eyes to observe Rebecca. The monitor is mirrored on her glasses and behind them her eyes are very wide. Although I am a more experienced programmer, I am certain her ideas on the movie are more complex than mine.

  But halfway through I worry that Rebecca invited me because it is about the Gulf War in Iraq and she thinks of me as merely a Middle Easterner, and so I do not try to discuss it with her when we exit the theater. The only person I see movies with is Zahira, and typically she launches her analysis of the movie immediately, so it is strange to be with someone else and for us both to be silent as we transition from the world of the movie to the real world outside.

  “You feel like grabbi
ng a bite?” she says as we exit into the cold air, and I say yes. We stop in a street near an Afghani restaurant, and I am afraid Rebecca again thinks I exclusively enjoy Middle Eastern things. “This place okay?” she asks.

  Then I relax because she is pointing at a bar named Flannigan’s.

  It is the first American bar I have entered, and it is more casual than the hotel bars I have been to in Doha. We sit in a cushioned area, and a waitress with her brown hair tied up but some parts descending gives us menus. “Something to drink?” she asks.

  “You want to split a—just two waters for now, please,” Rebecca says.

  The waitress leaves. “I have had alcohol, if that is why you did not want to order it. I do not want any now, but if you want to drink some, you should,” I say.

  “I don’t really want to. It’s sort of a reflex.”

  “Why?”

  “You go out socially, you usually end up drinking,” she says. “It makes things flow easier.”

  “If things do not flow easily without alcohol, why do you go out socially at all?”

  “I don’t know.” She examines the reverse side of the menu. “Maybe I shouldn’t.”

  We’re mute for a few moments while we decide what to order. I crave the stir-fried vegetable dish, but it costs $12.95, and I already spent nearly that amount on the popcorn and soda.

  The waitress asks Rebecca what she would like. “You go first, Karim,” she says.

  I order a veggie burger, which is still nutritious and halal and costs $7.95, and a Coke. “Anything else?” the waitress asks.