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The next morning, John was up early and surprised to find his daughter Emily in the kitchen. The cook didn’t come in until eleven, so they had privacy to talk.
“So, cutie, what’s on your agenda?” John asked, sitting down to a croissant that was by some miracle simultaneously flaky and buttery. Only the French. He sipped his coffee. “Thanks for going to the patisserie, by the way.”
Emily, sixteen years old, wavy blond hair halfway down her back, blue eyes, was dressed in a cute, tight, pink knit shirt that showed her curves and cleavage. John knew that it had cost her all of six euros at the Sunday outdoor market on Boulevard Raspail. Thank God she wasn’t following her mother’s footsteps. Yet.
“Well, I have school—”
“I have a great day planned,” John said enthusiastically. “I’m meeting another potential client—a Saudi prince. Oil money! Won’t run dry in my lifetime. Hard to impress these Saudi princes, though. They race around Paris in Bugattis, they have high-priced whores—whoops, sorry, honey—they eat at Maxime’s every night. What should I do to impress him? Huh?”
She quietly watched her father.
“What’s in the shopping bags? You went with your mother?”
“I didn’t buy—”
“I’m like a gentleman in Victorian times, wondering how I’ll keep my women in all their ribbons, bows and finery. Did you buy something cute? I’m thinking, when I land my next client, I’ll buy a GPS for the Grey Skies. I want you to come out with me this weekend. I’d like to talk—”
Emily had picked up her croissant, but now she threw it down on her plate.
“Hey, watch out!” John said, still in an expansive mood, leaning back in his chair. “Don’t break your mother’s Royal Copenhagen Flora Danica—the most expensive china in the world. Of course.”
He said it to her retreating back as she marched out of the kitchen.
John threw his arms wide in surprise and leaned back on two legs of his chair.
“Emily, what did I say?” he called.
The door slammed.
“Women!” John muttered. “Must be that time of the month.”
Cassandra came into the kitchen wearing a floor-length white satin peignoir over a floor-length white silk nightgown.
“Hi, honey!” John said. “You look great!”
“Don’t start, John,” Cassandra muttered as she poured a cup of coffee.
“What, you’ve got it, too?”
“Got what? Make sense, John.” Cassandra grabbed a no-fat, no-sugar yogurt out of the refrigerator and sat down where Emily had been. She didn’t bother with the flakes of croissant Emily had created by throwing her breakfast. The cook would take care of that.
“Never mind,” John said. “What’s in the shopping bags?”
“Just some stuff.”
“Well, show me, I’d like to see.”
“Later maybe. I’m meeting friends at the gym in a few minutes.”
“Nobody talks to me around here,” John said, pushing away from the table. He put his breakfast dishes in the sink. “I’m going to work so we can afford all the Gucci and Dior and Chanel you buy.”
Cassandra didn’t answer. In two minutes, John was out the door.
He ambled along Boulevard Raspail, passing unique little shops. Paris was a city of almost nothing but boutiques. Cassandra was getting into a world of trouble here.
Oh well, in spite of the credit card bill, he was looking forward to his day in the office. His pet investment, the Dow Jones-UBS Precious Metals exchange traded fund, otherwise known as an ETF, was indexed to gold and silver and had been doing brilliantly on the New York Stock Exchange. By luck, or maybe instinct, or maybe inborn talent—John smiled to himself—he had caught it at a deep low. It had grown steadily since.
The other two ETFs tracked silver bullion and had grown almost as substantially.
He had bought similar ETFs on the EuroNext and the Hang Seng markets. He had cleaned out his less risky investments to put all the money into these new ones, and had advised his clients to do the same. They had gone along with it because of his renown as an investor.
His approach was unconventional. It went against prevailing Wall Street wisdom, all that stuff about not putting too many eggs in one basket. It defied convention, it was risky. And it was brilliant. His gold and silver ETFs had increased everybody’s money by twenty percent in just nine months.
He was in a good mood when he opened the door to Germaine & Co.
“Anjali, hold my calls,” he said, walking into his office.
“Sir, the phones—”
“I said hold the calls.”
“Sir—”
He stopped mid-stride and looked down at her, behind her desk.
“What is it, exactly, about ‘No calls’ that you don’t understand?”
“Sir. Your top three stocks are tanking on the Hang Seng. You’ve had calls from Chen in Hong Kong.”
“They aren’t stocks, they’re ETFs.”
“Yes, sir.”
“So the ETFs are tanking in Asia. That’s different than the New York Stock Exchange or the European market. Why didn’t you say so?”
“Sir, you had calls from Dieter at EuroNext also.”
“It’s just a correction. Get Chen in Hong Kong for me.”
“Yes, sir.”
Anjali was dialing as John closed the door to his office. He took his suit jacket off, draped it carefully on a hanger, and put it in the closet. He took his father’s cuff links off, placed them carefully on a corner of his desk, and rolled up his sleeves. The intercom buzzed.
“Chen on line 1, sir.”
John pushed the button for line 1 and put the phone to his ear.
“Chen, what’s happening?”
“I’m not sure, sir, I’m hunting to find out why, but I do know that our ETFs are tanking here.”
“Let me log on and look at it, and I’ll call you back,” John said.
“It’s still falling. It’s extraordinary. I think we should sell right now.” Chen sounded deeply concerned.
“Give me a minute, damn it!” Suddenly John’s heart was pounding. His gut began to scream that this was a bad one. He tucked the phone under his chin and fumbled with his keyboard.
What to do, what to do? He needed facts. He hit a wrong key as he typed his password because his fingers were suddenly sticky with sweat.
Why was he so slow? Hurry, man! he urged himself.
Finally he was logged in, and the charts of his three favorite metals ETFs on the Hang Seng were on his screen. Yes, it was confirmed, he could see for himself that everything was caving. He brought up his New York ETFs on his screen. The New York Stock Exchange wasn’t officially open yet, but his ETFs were tanking there, too, in early morning online trading.
His holdings—and his clients’—were losing value at the rate of hundreds of thousands of dollars per minute. He had to sell while there was still some value left.
“Chen, what are you doing, still on the phone, man? Go, sell!”
“I was selling while we talked, John,” Chen said quietly.
“Why didn’t you call me at home earlier?”
“I did but your cell phone was off.”
John didn’t have a landline in the apartment—Cassandra had never gotten around to having it installed. Waiting for Paris technicians irked her: it cut into her shopping, exercise, and café time. John remembered that he had turned his cell off the night before in order to pay attention at the writers’ group and had forgotten to turn it on again. Just for that, he would quit that blasted group.
He’d lost millions of his own and clients’ money because his phone was off. An expletive launched out of his gut and flew past his lips.
John clicked off Chen’s line and hit the intercom.
“Anjali, get our trading desk in La Defense on the line.”
“Yes, sir.”
At that moment, line 1 lit up.
“Pierre on line 1,” Anjali’s electronically distorted voice said.
John clicked in.
“Ze bottom falling out on the EuroNext exchange,” Pierre said with his heavy French accent. “Our ‘olding—”
“—Sell!”
“Yes, sir,” Pierre said. “Our biggest ETF lose sees point’ while I been on zuh line.”
“Why? What’s happened?”
“It’s zat a beeg new vein of silver ‘as been discover’ in Canada. Close to zuh surface, easy to mine. Should be on zuh market fast.”
John could not have foreseen that. He couldn’t be blamed for this. But he would be.
Anjali’s voice broke in on the intercom. “Sir, Dieter on line 2 from Amsterdam.”
John clicked off line 1 and onto line 2.
“Yes, sell! Sell!” he shouted at Dieter. He clicked off line 2. Line 3 lit up. He punched the button.
“John, did you pay the bill? The credit card isn’t working,” Cassandra’s relaxed, smooth voice said.
“Stop buying things, it’s not a good time!” John shouted and clicked off line 3. Line 1 lit up again.
“Aw, shit! Shit!” John said. He punched the intercom button.
“Who’s on line 1?” he shouted at Anjali.
“Sir, it’s Mr. Chaigne.”
John punched line 1 while taking a breath and exhaling his panic so his voice would be calm.
“John, what’s happening to my money?”
“The market is going through a correction—”
“Correction! Shit on that! Get my money out NOW!”
“Already done, just take it easy, what goes down goes up after a while and does even better. We’ll buy at the low—”
“I’m not buying, I’m suing you every which way I can! My lawyer will be in touch.”
“Max, you knew those ETFs were risky before you—”
“I’ll wring whatever I can out of your hide!”
The line went dead. Lines 2, 3, and 4 lit up, one after the other.
“Anjali.” John poked at the intercom button. “Anjali!”
“Yes?”
“Call the New York head of office on his cell, his landline, whatever. Keep calling him until you wake him up and then put him through to me.”
“Yes, sir.”
John spent the rest of the day tracking his portfolio on his monitor and trying to reassure clients. He figured that his personal net worth had dropped to less than the level he’d been at when he was twenty-seven. Six clients were threatening lawsuits.
Against traditional investment wisdom, he had put all of his money into one commodity, precious metals. His instincts, honed by years of watching the ticker tapes and then the electronic screens, had told him they were going up. And they had done so beautifully, for a while. His instincts had failed to tell him when to sell. Now he was close to broke. He had no IRAs—he’d always made more than the federal maximum to be able to invest in them. He had a small 401K. He had been more interested in buying status symbols than building his nest egg. He’d always figured he’d have time and money to invest in that later.
In other words, he’d been loony.
At the end of the day, John sat in his big leather chair and tried to rally himself. You’ve been through downturns before, he thought. But this time was much, much worse. Keep your head, John, he thought.
He opened a drawer and poured Happy Van Winkle, the most expensive Kentucky bourbon in the world at $2,000 per bottle, into one of two Baccarat tumblers. When he had his drink poured, he capped the bottle and laid it back down carefully. The drawer slid silently, elegantly shut. The intercom buzzed.
“Sir?” It was Anjali on the intercom.
“Yes?”
“The IRS wants an appointment with you.”
