NOVEL NEXT Chapter 178: More Money
Jack had received a message from Henry during class, asking Jack to call him, but said it wasn't urgent. So he waited until he was walking across the quad on his way to have lunch with Analise.
That morning, before Naoko had returned to her room, she had suggested that she could "bump into him" during his lunch with Analise, but he had declined.
He wanted Analise to meet Samantha first, believing that Naoko was more likely to trigger Analise's insecurities than Samantha.
"Jack, thanks for calling," said Henry over the phone.
"Sure, what's up?" replied Jack.
"Natalie contacted me and asked if she could have more money to manage."
When he'd worked with Summit Partners to collect his winnings, Dan Corson had recommended he hire Natalie Bykov to help manage his wealth. They had agreed to give her 50 million credits to manage as a test, to see how well she would do.
"How is she doing with the 50 mill we gave her?"
"She's doubled it already."
"What the fuck! It's only been a month! And you're saying she's already doubled my money?"
Summit Partners had helped him set up an account so he could log in and monitor what was happening with his money.
"Just a sec," he said to Henry.
Then he opened the app on his phone that allowed him to log into his account. He had to pull out his hardware token and plug it into his phone, then enter his PIN before he could login.
Looking at the balance for Plutus Financial, he saw that the total of all assets added up to 103.5 million credits. He'd initially assigned 50 million credits for her to manage.
Holy shit! He thought. This woman is a market genius!
Wanting to see how she had managed to double his money so quickly, he opened her trade history.
He didn't understand what he was looking at. As best he could tell, she was doing something with futures or options or something. Whatever she was doing, it wasn't simple stock trades.
"Sorry, Henry. I had to check my account and see it for myself. One hundred and three million. I looked at her trade history but still don't understand how she did it. Something to do with futures or options or something."
"Yes, she mentioned something about derivatives. Then she said now was the perfect time to leverage the current market volatility, and it was a shame she didn't have more money to work with."
"Did she say how much she wants?"
"She did. I asked her how much she was hoping for, and she said anything over two billion would be too much. Something about causing market fluctuations or something."
"Okay. Thanks for letting me know. I need to think about it. I'll get back to you once I've made a decision."
"Okay, talk to you then."
He hung up.
He needed to have a can-I-trust-you conversation with Natalie. When he first got Genesis Heart, he'd been uncomfortable with the idea of making a sapient template of good or neutral people. But now, he didn't mind, as long as it was for the purpose of determining a person's trustworthiness.
While his physical self continued on his way to meet Analise for lunch, his parallel self located Natalie so he could templatize her and have a candid conversation.
He didn't need anything fancy, so he just set up a wood table and two chairs in a private room in his soul space.
He "summoned" Natalie, and she appeared sitting in the chair across from him, hands out like she was typing on a keyboard.
As soon as she appeared, he modified her to be unconsciously obedient.
She stared at him uncomprehendingly, blinking in confusion at the sudden transition from her office to his soul space.
"Greetings Natalie. You are a copy, and your original self is still in your office, unaware that you exist. My name is Jack, and I was able to make a copy of you using a divine artifact. I'm going to ask you some questions, and you will answer me fully, and truthfully, with no deception."
She nodded, but then asked with intense curiosity, "Where is this?"
He didn't want to spend time satisfying her curiosity, so he said, "Where we are is irrelevant."
Then he continued, "You told Henry, my lawyer, that you want more money to manage so you can take advantage of the current market volatility."
"Yes, this is true," she replied. "The current market is perfect for making money. It won't last too long, maybe another three months. I expect to achieve between 300 and 900 percent returns during that timeframe."
"You've already doubled my money and you're saying you think you can increase it an additional four to ten times?!"
"Yes."
"And could you make the same returns if you had 500 million credits to manage?"
"Yes."
"How? How can you make such massive returns? Most people would be ecstatic over 40 or 50 percent, and you're claiming 300 to 900 percent."
"There are several groups that are engaged in a secret financial war. They are moving enormous amounts of money through the markets, and I was able to identify their patterns. Because I can predict what they will do, I can leverage the volatility they cause."
A secret war? Who was fighting? Why?
"Do you know who the groups are? And what are the chances of these groups noticing what you are doing? Or worse, know who you are."
"No, I don't know who the groups are. All I can see are the battle lines drawn in the trades they make. Maybe in a few more months I'll be able to identify the groups, but right now there are just statistical clusters."
She sounded annoyed that she hadn't yet identified the groups.
"As for being identified; as long as I keep my trade sizes random and below a certain statistical limit, they are unlikely to notice. And if they did, they would not be able to link the trades back to me, or you, because I'm doing the trades through several proxies."
This was good. He didn't want some Illuminati-type group to notice her profiting off their secret war.
"What are the chances that you end up losing money instead?"
"A small percentage of my trades do lose money. But I make sure that I never commit the entire portfolio to a single market segment. This way, any loss is limited to a small percentage of all that I manage. Even if the market makes a sudden and unexpected turn, I am confident that at worst, I'll be able to double your money again."
He asked her a few more questions and, in the end, decided he would transfer more of his money for her to manage.
She noticed he was done asking her questions and asked again, "Please tell me where we are and how you were able to make a copy of me. The curiosity is killing me!"