The Wall Street

7. The Examination

It was already thirty past noon and a tensed Ryan was not sure about the stocks to invest in.

He can see all other interns are typing hard on their keyboards, closing transaction by transaction. Some were cheery after making a small profit on the trade others were cursing the stocks for causing a loss. The whole environment was giving goosebumps to him, further confusing him about what do with the money.

He lit his Marlboro Red and took a few deep puffs and opened his notepad. He had did his share of research on the fundamentals of the stocks over last week and have shortlisted some stocks to invest. He had shortlisted Bank of America(BOA), Pfizer, Ford Motors(FM), General Electric (GE), AT&T and Coca Cola. All of them are Blue Chips with strong fundamentals, with seldom chance of any loss whatsoever.

He decided to in invest in GE, BOA and Ford to start with, buying 100 shares of GE at $31.06, 200 shares of BOA at $13.76 and 200 shares of Ford at $13.59, leaving him with $1424 out of assigned $10,000

He customised ticker in his account to show live prices of these stocks on the screen and then he lit yet another Marlboro.

On the closing of Day 2 (Tuesday), stocks closed at a premium clocking him a net profit of $120, taking his total tally to $10,120. Ryan was happy with the performance, he has already made a profit of 1.20% in two days, which comes out to be an annualised return of 144% that too considering only working days. Considering the average return of a hedge fund to be in 30% range, he has already made 5 times the amount and was pretty sure of landing in the top position in this examination.

He was having a pretty average day on Wednesday, with marginal changes in the pricing of his stocks. A bored Ryan thought of having a cigarette break in the common smoking area instead of his desk.

"Hey Ryan, how's the internship going" came the voice of Brian, the trading floor head as soon he enters the smoking area, the ever suave Brian was having a Havana Cuban cigar.

"Hello Sir, yes it's going pretty great, pretty sure of cracking it" replied a confident Ryan.

"Cool, when I cleared the first examination I generated a 100% profit and then only managed to come third, fucking derivatives" said Brian remembering his days

"100% return?" asked a curious Ryan

"Yup, things have been crazy nowadays. World of derivatives have completely changed the examinations and the measuring stick to choose brokers, every dick can now get 30-40% return in a week now, it's all about who can do 100% or better. I hope you are on way to achieve 100% in this examination" said Brian

"Yes sir, trying my best" lied Ryan and rushed towards his desk.

A tensed Ryan checked the ticker and made some calculations, he was on mark to achieve 8-10% return over this week, which is way behind the passing of 50% return.

He has evaluated trading derivatives, but the possibility of huge losses including a high possibility of wiping out the total investment, Ryan had decided otherwise, but seems there's no other option now. He quickly started analysing NYSE, DOW, NASDAQ & some stocks, he studied all the possible fundamentals and analysed them to the best of his knowledge, as per his calculations the markets are going to correct very soon, mainly coz of the global pressure on Chinese economy.

He sold all of his stocks, clocking a profit of $450 and used all of his $10,450 in building short future positions on NYSE and NASDAQ.

The market rose marginally by the end of the day causing him a small loss, but Ryan held on the positions and decided to continue with them till weekend.

"What the fuck is happening, I am fucked completely" thought Ryan on seeing the flat market on Thursday. It was already 330 PM, one hour of trading left for the day and there were hardly any fluctuations in the market. Ryan knew that if his calculations are wrong and market don't lose tomorrow the his days as a wannabe broker are long gone.

"Fucking Shit" came a voice from background when he was busy with his thoughts, he rose from his seat and saw a sudden fall of 60 points in NYSE. An excited Ryan stared at his ticket and portfolio, finally there was some decent profit on the books.

The market closed on Thursday at a loss of 72 points, pushing his portfolio by a profit of 28%

One part of Ryan wanted him to close the positions and make whatever profit he has made as there are chances that his prediction might go wrong, other part of him wanted to continue with the position as the research he did will definitely work. A confused Ryan decided to do some more analysis before taking a decision.

"Fuck Yeah" thought Ryan after spending hours on research and analysis, stock markets worldwide were in red, because of the weak economic data coming out of China, a correction in American markets was pretty much spot on.

Much as per Ryan's prediction, Chinese market dipped further on Friday, by the time NASDAQ & NYSE opened up, most of the asian & european markets were bleeding. NASDAQ, NYSE & DOW opened up with a gap down of over 2%

There was chaos on the internship floor, most of the interns didn't saw it coming. They were shouting & cursing and unloading their positions for damage control. The very same interns who were celebrating their profits a couple of days back were now on a verge of breaking up, some even started crying on their desks, as they knew their days as stock market broker are long over.

By the closing bell, markets crashed well over 2.5% wiping off billions of dollars market capitalisation, Ryan was one of few interns who used this downslide to his benefit, clocking in 125% profit on his investment of ten grand.

"Hey Guys" came Mark's voice as he entered the floor

Abuses & Boos welcomed him

"Bad day, huh?" asked Mark

Surprisingly the floor which was buzzing with abuses & slurs was completely quiet.

"Coming straight to point, we will be calculating your performance now and a final list of lucky 100 interns with their performance will be emailed to you in an hour. Feeling sorry for the remaining 100, but this will be your last day with us, you can pack your stuff & leave" said Mark, before he can complete his sentence, booing started again.

"Calm down guys, i am not done yet. For the chosen hundred, we have decided a weekend getaway to Vegas, so if you see your name in the list, then get your bags packed and meet me at JFK by 7 PM, we are flying out tonight." completed Mark.

There was thunderous applause and hooting from a selected few interns, who were pretty confident about making the top 100.

The email came within an hour and Ryan was surprised to see his name on the top, he knew that he had cracked this examination, but he will make it to the top was something, he was himself not sure off. He was the only one making it to three digit profit, his nearest competitor was Chen, a Chinese immigrant who made 90% profit.

Ryan rushed back home to pack his bags, Vegas was waiting for him.