One-On-One

Christine Gardiner on Haji Salleh Abdullah (Thomas Cartwright)

Programme one of three

Awaiting transmission

Final text

[Standard title sequence and credits; cut to specific caption for this edition, as above; fade to continuity shot of host and subject sitting in bamboo chairs, host on the right, subject left; both two-thirds facing the camera but looking at each other; host holds clipboard and pen; cut to host full face for introduction]

C Hello and welcome to a special edition of One-On-One, the programme that examines contemporary issues with those directly involved. In this first programme of a One-On-One special, a trilogy, in fact, we meet Tom Cartwright, or Haji Salleh Abdullah, as he now prefers to be known. Haji Abdullah has hit the news in the last year after he emerged from nowhere to become the world’s richest man, number one on the list. What is so interesting about Haji Abdullah’s wealth is that it has been amassed solely via trading on international markets. Two years ago, Haji Abdullah was just another retired academic. And today he is top of the tree. He has been described as either the luckiest man in the world, or the trickiest. And Haji Abdullah, as you may know, has thus far declined to give any interviews, has published no articles, has shunned radio and the internet alike, and, until now, has refused all requests to appear on television. But One-On-One has managed to persuade this reluctant, reclusive billionaire to speak and so here we are in Haji Abdullah’s remarkably simple and isolated home for the first of three programmes, where I intend to find out how he has engineered his quite remarkable fortune and his incredible rise to fame. So Haji Abdullah, which is it, luckiest or trickiest?

T Neither. [pauses and smiles impatiently] And, for the record, I have also given up beating my wife.

C [laughs] We will come to that later, if we may... I must press you to answer. Let me quote from the Wall Street Journal. Last April they ran an interview with Lindon Barnes - himself the owner and administrator of a leading hedge fund for decades, so he speaks with both authority and experience - they quoted Lindon Barnes as saying, “What Cartwright has done has been incredible, and I use that word literally. To have risen from a few thousand dollars to billions in a year means he is either the luckiest man alive or, more likely, the trickiest. Perhaps he has routine access to information that is denied the rest of us.” Can I ask again, Haji Abdullah, are you luckiest or trickiest?

T Why do you keep blaming my father?

C [pauses] I don’t understand...

T My name is Salleh, not Abdullah. If I had been born a Muslim, then Abdullah would be my father’s name. I would be Salleh, son of Abdullah. Since I am a convert to Islam, I have taken the name of Abdullah ibn Salim as my father’s name, as is usual in this part of the world. Really, you should call me Haji Salleh bin Abdullah Trevor, in honour of my own father, but it does sound a tad incongruous. I usually leave off the Trevor, since I reckon my dad probably wouldn’t have altogether appreciated the association. But Abdullah is not a surname, it’s a father’s name, so thus far in the interview, you have addressed my father, and not me. If you ask me, I may condescend to answer. My father, unfortunately, cannot be here to contribute on his own behalf.

C How about I just call you Tom?

T Haji Salleh will do, since it’s my name.

C All right, I’ll do as you ask, or we will go nowhere in the half an hour. [impatiently] Haji Salleh it is. So I will ask you again, Haji Salleh, are you the luckiest or trickiest man alive?

T [pauses and smiles] I recommend you review the framework of your question. There may be other possibilities.

C Such as?

T [pauses] The brightest?

C So, in all humility, you claim to be the brightest man alive?

T I have been successfully led up the garden path you laid with your superlatives. Let’s compromise and say one of the brightest.

C I want to pressure you on these two words, luckiest or trickiest, if I may. What role - if any - has good fortune, Lady Luck, if you like, played in your commercial success?

T [sighing and dismissive] It’s self-evident - and a platitude - that I could have achieved nothing without luck. For instance, there are thunder storms around here every day. It’s probably pure chance that one of their lightning bolts has never hit my house, so without my share of luck I would not even be sitting here with you. For heaven’s sake, Christine, this applies to the two of us - both of us - in particular. [raised voice]

C [dismissive gesture with pen, prodded in direction of interviewee, hand raised from clipboard on her lap] We will leave all of that until a later programme, if we may...

T [interrupts] So without luck I would have achieved nothing...

C [interrupts] But my question asks about any specific role luck has played in the amassing of your fortune. Is your trading success just down to luck?

T Not at all. But without luck, there would have been no trading.

C So let’s finally be clear. Your trading success is not just a result of your repeatedly getting lucky?

T Accepted.

C Well we got there in the end! [smiles dismissively and impatiently] Now let’s examine the tricky option. Have you achieved your position by being tricky?

T [hesitates] Tricks. Magic tricks. [hesitates] There’s no magic in the universe, only mechanisms.

C [interrupts] Before you obfuscate again, you know what Lindon Barnes was referring to. You know he was talking about insider information and the like. You understand, of course, why I have to pursue this? There have been accusations that you have used insider knowledge, and insider trading, we know, is illegal...

T [laughs] I do think you need again to reconsider the entire framework of your question. It may be the style of the Western media to presume an editorial position and then embed it in the viewers’ consciousness by repeatedly hammering it in, despite its denial and contradiction, but that does not make the position either credible or correct. You can repeat ‘insider trading’ as much as you like, but it is self-evident rubbish.

C Why self-evident? Should not the burden of proof be upon you to disprove the allegations?

T Absolutely not. They are not based on evidence. I could claim that my decisions are always based on divinations from the happenstance angle between the balls of slaughtered tomcats, if it would make you happy and create good copy. But there is no factual basis for that either.

C The allegations come from people such as Lindon Barnes, and he should know what he is talking about.

T Do me a favour, Christine. [gestures with both hands] It is not credible. Insider trading almost inevitably applies to single deals. There’s a takeover brewing, for example, or a move to refinance via the market, a boardroom putsch perhaps - but always inside one organisation or corporation, a sector at the most. Before the information becomes public, there’s an opportunity for someone in the know to place deals one way or the other before the change takes place. But, I repeat, the opportunity comes about as a result of a specific, single, unpublished event. Now my company makes many trades every day. They vary from a few tens to thousands each day, and every one deals in a highly traded equity, commodity or currency on one of the world’s major markets. Do you think I have insiders everywhere, in every company boardroom? And do you think that such opportunities come falling out of the sky every minute of every day? Christine, if I did not know you well, I would have described your line of questioning as inane.

C [angrily] Thank you...

T Nothing personal...

C But the comment was made by Lindon Barnes. He’s been a top player in world finance for twenty-five years...

T [interrupts] Chris...

C I would prefer Christine, if you don’t mind.

T Touché. [there is a short pause and a smile] I am not about to divulge anything about how I make my money, but rest assured I give nothing away if I say that Lindon Barnes, despite his excellent track record and years of beating markets, is simply not in my league. What I do is fundamentally different from anything that Lindon Barnes understands. That renders his comments at best irrelevant and at worst libellous. They are not just wide of the mark: the mark is not even in sight.

C He has merely commented that he does not trust your methods.

T He doesn’t understand my methods.

C Who does?

T I do.

C And you alone?

T Precisely.

C How many people are there in your company? How many people do you employ?

T I employ no-one. I do everything myself.

C But, Haji Salleh, with due respect, that is simply impossible. You have just said that your company can carry out thousands of trades a day. You can’t possibly make them all yourself. You surely need people to press buttons on your behalf?

T I can’t make them myself? That is quite true. In fact, I don’t place any of the trades. And you know that already. My systems are completely automated. I don’t even intervene. And you know that already as well. Why are you pursuing this line of questioning? Are you trying to demonise, by any chance?

C What I know and what I understand are quite separate things. You are correct. I did already know that all of your trades are carried out automatically. That much we do know. But, like everyone else, I don’t know how they are carried out.

T Yes you do. The trades are all online, through personal computers.

C And it’s all automated?

T That is part of my system, a crucial part. If the system were not automated, it would not work. Human intervention would reduce it to what other humans already achieve, being inconsistency and mediocrity.

C But you do not trade via your own computers, and that’s the point. Your business seems to be conducted, as far as we know, via the computers of perfectly innocent people, without even their knowledge.

T My system hunts around for spare machine time, that’s all.

C ...and then takes it without the person’s knowledge...

T They don’t even notice.

C Haji Salleh, I put it to you that you are stealing people’s computer time. One case that came to light recently showed that a child using a games console had, and completely unbeknown to him, initiated and then confirmed the sale of several million dollars worth of mining shares, and all in the space of a few seconds. And these transactions, as far as the recipient of the instructions was concerned, appeared to have been initiated by your company and your account was credited with the proceeds. You made three million dollars on the deal, as far as we can tell, of course, and all from a private games console, without even interrupting the teenager’s fun. How on earth is it done? And doesn’t the teenager deserve a share of the profits?

T I can’t answer a specific question like that because I did not initiate the deal.

C But it was made on your behalf.

T I don’t deny that, but I did not initiate it.

C Then who did? A twelve year old communing via the internet with his fellow gamers?

T No-one initiated the deal.

C So it just happened?

T In essence, yes.

[There is silence for approximately eight seconds. The final edit cuts between Christine Grainger and Thomas Cartwright. Neither speaks until...]

C [mumbles, looks down at notes]

T You are so far away from the mark, so far from grasping even the concept of what is going on, that it makes it impossible for me even to engage in the discussion. You simply do not have the knowledge to be specific or the context within which you might frame something sensible. You can’t ask any question that would elicit anything useful about my methods, because the system is utterly unlike anything previously devised and thus it is beyond your comprehension.

C And you don’t feel like volunteering the detail?

T Spot on this time.

C Is there nothing you can say by way of explanation? Because if there isn’t, you will surely accept that someone is going to accuse you of criminal behaviour...

T Criminal? Isn’t that a bit of a jump from where we were? What on earth might I have done that could possibly be seen as criminal?

C Invaded someone’s privacy, stolen computer time, exploited a twelve year old with a games console...

T That’s about as close to rank nonsense as any professional can get.

C With respect, it’s far from nonsense. These are issues that concern everyone...

T [interrupts] If people are concerned about their computer time being used, then why do they use browsers that collect and transmit details of their internet use? Why do they allow ads to be displayed on their screens? Certainly in these two cases, there is computer time being used without the express permission of the user. My systems do no more than this and, compared to ads, they take up less time, use fewer resources and pose less of a threat to the user’s experience or privacy, for that matter.

C But they still do things without permission...

T Here we go with the editorial line again. Why don’t you say it again? Go on, repeat it...

C I merely want to get at the truth. [pauses]

T Have you ever heard of a mask?

C [pauses] You are not trying to change the subject by any chance?

T [emphatic] No I am not. Have you ever heard of a mask? Do you even know what a mask is?

C I wore one to the last fancy dress party I went to.

T What did you study at university, Christine?

C You know perfectly well what I studied. You were in the room with me as an eighteen year old when I accepted the place at Oxford to read ancient history. But I don’t see what that has to do with...

T It has everything to do with the subject. I am the world’s richest man - or so you tell me - and I make my money by a system of trading that is unknown on the planet, except to me. It is a highly precise, completely calculated method of working that uses a variety of tools, some of which I am willing to discuss, because they form no part of the crucial elements, which will remain both unnamed and undescribed. But how can I possibly discuss anything of relevance with an interviewer who knows precisely nothing of science, mathematics, statistics or even, perhaps, modern rational thought? I am not talking in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, and I happen to inhabit a universe with a few more than four elements. A mask is a computing term with a significant relevance to what you have just asked. But your lack of technical knowledge means you are simply not capable of recognising an answer, even when it is given explicitly.

[a continuity shot briefly pans across a distant shore]

C Then perhaps for my benefit and for the enlightenment of the viewers, you might explain?

T [pauses, leans back, away from the interviewer with a scowl, he continues reluctantly] When packets of data are transmitted by computers, they are identified by addresses. You may have wondered why it is that when you send an email it goes into the recipient’s box and nowhere else? Well in fact, at least in theory, it does go to everyone. But only one destination has a hole which is the exact match of the key that is placed on the front of the message, and only that one point allows the message through. The key on the front of the message matches the keyhole. The keyhole contains the mask that does the matching. Because the other keyholes are all the wrong shape, the message bounces off and is discarded because it doesn’t fit the mask on the entrance.

C Our teenager? And his games console?

T My systems have a way of reshaping themselves to make use of any facilities they find available. They can fit anything that will have them. And they do that by manipulating their own masks.

C They are viruses then...

T No, not at all. They visit, spend a moment of rest with their host, and then go on their way, leaving nothing behind and affecting nothing. It’s like a stroll through a park, visiting only the public places, keeping off the grass and occasionally pausing to sit on a bench. After a short rest, no-one would ever know the bench had ever been used, and it remains completely unchanged by the momentary occupancy.

C But your systems invade other people’s computers and use them as a base for making trades...

T They pass by, do their work, remove themselves completely and then bid goodbye. They behave a little like Jehovah’s Witnesses ringing the doorbell and getting a foot in the door. But unlike Jehovah’s Witnesses, they don’t try to leave anything behind.

C And that is why virus checkers and malware protectors cannot detect their presence?

T In theory they can. But my workers simply don’t hang around long enough to be detected. By the time any software responses have been triggered, my systems have come, done their work and gone. So by the time the checking system looks for them, they have already moved on, and left no trace of their visit. And they do nothing to the host computer, except use a little of unused time. They can come, do their bit and go in between the keystrokes of a quite competent typist. We are talking milliseconds at the outside, and a few milliseconds at the most.

C And in the short time they can make your trade?

T You are displaying your technological illiteracy again.

C I really would appreciate it if you would answer the question.

T ..and I would appreciate it if you would at least frame a sensible one.

[an extended continuity section shows a grimace from Christine Gardiner followed by an expression of surprise; then Cartwright is seen smiling, before there is another panning of the horizon, this time zoomed in on the distant tree-line as a hydrofoil ferry crosses from left to right]

C You said [agitated, raised voice] that these ‘workers’ or ‘systems’ of yours hang around for milliseconds at most. Now I am not the most technically-minded person on the planet...

T [laughs]

C ...but I do know that milliseconds are fairly short. Are you telling me, and I must press this point, that your trades are made in this incredibly short time while your systems have invaded other people’s computers?

T Why did you use the word ‘invade’? And why is it that you ‘must press the point’, as you put it? Who requires you to press the point? On whose behalf are you asking these questions? What gives you, personally, any right to publicise or share any knowledge of how my business is conducted? Why not ask people who make fizzy drinks for their secret recipe for burnt sugar?

C I am a journalist. I make my living by identifying issues of public interest, researching them and then making programmes that seek to inform the world at large about what is happening in their midst. My subjects are always those that may - I cannot say ‘do’ - that may impinge on the lives of ordinary people. The public has a right to know what affects their lives.

T So you are like a self-appointed police, prosecutor, judge and jury on any subject that happens to appeal to you?

C [angrily] I am none of those things, of course. My interest and the public interest are one and the same. I am merely a journalist trying to get a story.

T ...and tell it for a profit...

C Of course. I am professional, but no-one will buy my work unless the story is worth telling. I will remind you that you agreed to make these programmes. No-one has forced you...

T But what interests me, Christine, is why you? A brighter producer might have sent someone with technical, financial or trading knowledge - a specialist - someone who might have been able to frame sensible questions about how I operate...

C And I am still waiting for an answer to my question on milliseconds!

T [shouting] Precisely. You seem blissfully unaware that the modern processor completes billions of cycles per second - they have done so for years...

C ...and so?

T ...and so a few milliseconds is more than ample time for my systems to do their work several times over. Anyone with the slightest technical knowledge would have known that.

C But our viewers may not have known it, and it is my duty to inform...

T But it is not your duty to bore them!

C It appears that I got the answer I wanted out of you in the end.

T You should be in possession of all the facts before you pursue a line of questioning. This interview needs someone with technical knowledge.

C But if anyone else had suggested these interviews, you would have refused, just like you have refused all other media contact.

[edited cut: continuity shot of Christine Grainger in close up, smiling]

C So let’s recap, if we may. Your systems, as you call them, gain access to any computer that might be connected to the internet, use some of its time and resources, make a trade and then move on. Is that a fair summary?

T [nods]

C And you do not consider that to be in any way an act of theft or a breach of privacy?

T Nothing is being taken, so there is no theft. And there is no breach of privacy, since my systems are not interested in anything that is already stored on the computer. They bring with them what they need, use it and then leave, clearing up after themselves as they go. If that is a breach of privacy, you could accuse the electricity company of the same thing, since their power supply is entering the computer all the time.

C ...but the computer would not work without electricity...

T [laughs] Technical issues again. You seem not to realise that it is perfectly feasible to use the power transmission network to carry communications data as well as power. It merely depends on how you choose to modulate the signal.

C We are perhaps getting beyond what our viewers can follow...

T You mean you are beyond what you can understand.

C [interrupting] But what I - and no doubt everyone watching this interview - still don’t understand, is why you don’t use your own systems to make your trades... Why use other people’s computers?

T [pauses] Now that is a better question.,. and I am not sure whether I can answer.

C ...for lack of technical knowledge?

T No. We are in danger of entering the realms of trade secrets.

C [dismissively] You must have known that this would be one of the first questions, an inevitable follow up to our examining the fact that as a matter of course you do invade other people’s machines? It is something that everyone has been asking, ever since your run of success began. Why do you not just use your own resources? Why piggy-back on other people’s computers?

T Muslims don’t piggy-back, Christine.

C [smiles wryly] Just answer the question.

T [pauses, scratches his right arm, his left reaching across, just above the elbow; he then folds his leg under his body to raise his posture] The answer is a single word: randomness. [remains in shot during an extended pause]

C [off camera] ...randomness...?

T It’s an essential part of my system. It wouldn’t work if it was not random, or as close to random as it can possibly get, given that it has to operate in the real world.

C And using other people’s computers allows you to attain this ... this randomness?

T As close as is possible.

C Let me be clear. Are you saying that your trades are made completely at random? Because if you are, then surely you should have answered ‘yes’ when I asked if you were the luckiest man alive?

T Again, you show you have no concept of the framework of the problem we are trying to discuss. You are applying syllogistic reasoning to a position that is decidedly fuzzy. The situation we are dealing with is not black or white, not even black and white, but formidably grey throughout. Without giving a course in Brouwer and Gödel, I can’t illuminate further. It might shade to black here, white there...

C ...and when that happens it indicates where these opportunities for trading might arise?

T [long pause during which his gaze focuses] You know more than your questions indicate.

C [off camera] We were addressing the concept of randomness.

T The trading is not done merely at random. Its execution appears to be random, but eventually it is not. Put it this way, we know where we are going and we know the road to take. When we set off, how fast we are going to walk is, as yet, unknown, so the overall result of our journey has yet to be fixed.

C And when will you know such detail?

T It builds up as we progress. We collect data as the process unfolds, randomly, and then we monitor how we make progress towards the destination, constantly checking, of course, that we are still on the right road.

C I don’t understand...

T I am not surprised.

C So what role does randomness play?

T Let me put it like this. Suppose I reckon a stock is going to move. The price is going to change, but at the moment I have no idea which way. It might go up or down. So let’s make several, near simultaneous trades in that one stock. Some of the trades assume a rise and others a fall in the price. So we make the trades - all hedged, of course, so at this stage the outcome is close to neutral - and then we assess the results. A trend may become obvious. Then you know your next trade and, irrespective of whether it goes up or down, you make money.

C And all this happens in milliseconds?

T Yes, absolutely, and much more besides.

C And where is this analysis, this assessment of the trades made?

T. By whatever computer the particular module happens to be visiting at the time. And, incidentally, I give nothing away if I say that there might be millions of active modules dashing about the world at any instant. They breed like flies, you know. [smiles]

C They are surely not alive?

T [laughs] No, but they do reproduce.

C Would it be accurate to say that you seem to have created a vast computer, being the sum of all the resources your systems inhabit at any time?

T Well, I suppose we got there in the end...

C Touché, I suppose. [pauses] I still don’t understand...

T You can’t understand, because you have no concept of the underlying ideas.

C So who does?

T Only I do.

C ...and would you be willing to explain?

T I can’t do that either because you cannot conceptualise the explanation. [pause] Imagine that you thought the earth was flat. You have no concept of a globe and the world as you know it has edges where you can fall off. Imagine then what it would be like to have never even considered another possibility. Now if you saw me set sail into the sunset going west and then return from the east some time later, you would inevitably assume that I had steered a circular course. But in fact I have carried straight on all the time. If I tell you what I have done, you neither understand nor believe me, because what I am saying appears to make no sense, because it contradicts the framework within which you think.

C [laughs] So your trading system works on a flat earth...

T Chris...

C Christine...

T All I point out is that you do not have the intellectual equipment to understand.

C I get the feeling I am being patronised.

T I am not referring to you personally, Christine. I am referring to you as the local representative of the rest of humanity, which collectively cannot understand my systems because they are unique. No-one apart from me currently understands them.

C And you will offer no further clues?

T Why should I?

C Because that would be a way of convincing people that your success is not a result of trickery or criminality.

T I have already said that I break no laws, so criminality is not an issue. I have already said that, like everyone, I need a share of luck to achieve anything in life, even continued life, itself. As for trickery, it rather depends on who might feel tricked.

C What about all the investors who lose money?

T [laughs] You are not about to blame me for the fact that some investors lose money? I did not invent the idea that stocks go up and down, or that some people lose money when they trade.

C But you have surely made a lot of your money at the expense of others?

T It’s not a zero sum game. Here you go again, dropping your syllogistic sinkers while you float on a sea of fuzz. If it were a zero sum game, where every dollar of profit was equally a dollar of loss for someone else, then your criticism inevitably would apply to anyone who traded the markets and not just me. But your assertion is wrong in every respect. [pauses, but continues to mumble in order to hold the initiative] Let me try to illustrate the problem. Suppose no-one knew anything about thermodynamics. No-one alive has any idea of the concept of entropy. People can make fires, boil water, cook their food and burn their dead. But they can’t make steam engines because they always either blow up or have no power. I come along, armed with my knowledge of the laws of thermodynamics, whose existence no-one else on the planet can even imagine. I can design and make a steam engine. It has more power than anyone can imagine possible, but because they have no concept of its essential operation, it seems to work by magic. And all this is possible because I understand entropy when no-one else does.

C [smiles] And that’s how your trading system works, like a steam engine?

T Now you are being facetious. It was an illustrative example of the intellectual leap required, that’s all. [pauses for some time, remaining on camera, he appears to begin speaking three or four times, only to stop himself, when he does speak he is assertive, displaying a confidence not yet seen] My model was originally called interaction analysis. I now use the term event theory, because the scope has widened. It’s a statistical process that allows me to apply knowledge of a population to help me predict - within known accuracies - the existence of the particular. Most statistical models, you see, work the other way round. They collect data on the particular and then try to conclude things about the population, which is assumed to display idealised characteristics. My systems can describe populations in a real, non-idealised world and show how they oscillate around a position predicted by the idealised model. So the eventual result is as current theory predicts, but my systems describe the variations which eventually sum to the expected values. I can thus live in the world of the particular and thus understand how these miniscule interactions eventually give rise to the predictable. And that’s as far as I will go.

C Interaction analysis... Event theory... You make it sound very simple - at least in theory it would be simple if I understood anything of what you were saying.

T Simple it is, but it arises out of three decades of research...

C And unpublished research, as well...

T I knew from the start what the potential of my ideas might be.

C So you kept it all to yourself...

T [nods]

C [continuity cut, Christine Grainger smiles, reaches forward to offer a handshake] Well that seems to be about all we have time for in this first of three editions of One-On-One in which we examine the phenomenal success of Haji Salleh Adbullah who, in the last two years, has risen from obscurity to become the world’s richest man. Join us again next week, when I intend to pursue the background to Haji Abdullah’s success. Until next time... [continuity shot to Cartwright, who appears unmoved, and then back to Christine Grainger, who smiles full face to camera, cut]