dev2r

The stock market is an echo chamber for those who think they’ve figured it out. There were the antiquarians, who invested based on intuition and what they heard by word of mouth or on the news. Operating on a higher level were the wonks, those who put daily price trends into complex models and squeezed them through constraints and parameters of incredible variety. What Neil had realized was that the written word and the mathematical formula actually had a way of responding to each other.

Each word in the English language had a frequency with which it occurred in usage, and Neil’s sophisticated mining of the online dictionaries and Wikipedia had yielded a treasure trove of these word associations. So when CNBC reported that a stock had ‘soared’, Neil could now predict which other stock would also rise. When @wsj declared that a stock had ‘crashed’, he could also tell with certainty which other stock would fall.

***

Of course, others had tried this algorithm and failed. Neil’s algorithm would not, because Neil had added another wrinkle to it – his algorithm would react differently to a ‘plummet’ from a ‘dip’, and he had done it all for free!

In two weeks, Neil was beginning to see results. His portfolio had been aggressive to start with – the stock market was also a casino, and like a casino, it had its own watchdogs in a decrepit part of the DHS called the SEC. Once he reached his initial goal of a million dollars in profit, Neil dialed down his investments, so as not to rouse the watchdogs. The income kept steadily rising over the next few weeks, and Neil found himself sleeping and waking at his workstation, making minor adjustments and tweaks so he could maximize his profits and minimize the risk of being caught. The algorithm, which had steadily taken over his life, showed no sign of easing up. He had become a shut-in ever since he started work on it, and now even the twitter news alerts had no interest for him anymore.

***
To be continued…

Part I

Neil finally had the Answer. After weeks of running through simulations and trying out algorithms, the numbers were adding up. If he played this right, he could be a billionaire in weeks.

Neil decided it was time to let someone else into the secret. He geevoed Hideki. Hideki answered from his San Francisco loft, dressed in rust-streaked and paint-splotched overalls as usual. “I found the algo, Dekky!”, he announced. “You sure it’s flawless this time? Don’t want you losing your shirt again”, Hideki said. “No Dekky, this time it’s accurate within a 3% confidence level, which is pretty damn good. I even increased the sample size this time around, and 987 of the thousand stock picks responded as expected over a period of 10 days. The sigmas were on the dot!”, he replied breathlessly.

“Stop it, I don’t want you to geek out anymore on me. I sure will be the first person surprised if the collective wisdom of the internet brought home anything more than a pointless meme and porn that manages to break rule 34 every day. ”

“This is more than that, Dekky. I’ve found out a way to weed out the false positives from twitter and facebook feeds from actual news now! It’s looking golden, bro! Why is your cam all shaky?”

“There’s that rumble again… third tremor this week – gotta go check on the cats. Well, let me know when your first million rolls in, and fly me to New York to open a cold one”, Hideki said and signed off.

Neil was finally ready to hit paydirt.

***

Part 2

Maui, Hawaii. December 2011

Maui, Hawaii. December 2011

Central Park, NYC. September 2011

At places of prayer old
and new
a young me walked
and grazed
with his fingers
The dimples and bumps
of pillars hewn
and curves carved
from rocks
grey with age, mottled
white with wisdom -
the only Wisdom
he learned
in those hallowed spaces
was the stony Silence
that stands and watches.

Lake Havasu – Lake Havasu City. April 2011

Desert Botanical Garden – Phoenix. March 2011

Hopi House / Louisville, February 2011

Read Part I | Part II

A boy, about his height, drifted next to Vik, stared at him and then stared at the closed doors. He had an ill-fitting red shirt on, and a bad haircut. There was something wrong with his eyes, although Vik couldn’t tell what. The boy kept opening and closing his mouth for no reason, as though he were a goldfish.

“Bro-ther, what’s inside… the doors?”, said the boy. Vik was surprised. Did he not even know this!? Vik carefully considered his options. Of course, outright mockery might be out of the question. Mum took a serious exception to frivolity at the temple. A snide remark that would both educate and silence the boy, perhaps? But Vik was too sullen today to bother. And the boy had an earnestness about him that made him curious. He decided to keep it short.

“God. God’s inside”, Vik said. “God”, the boy repeated. A slow smile spread across his lips, and he brought his hands together, but with fingers spread apart, in an improper imitation of how Vik himself held his hands. The boy kept smiling at him. Vik didn’t know what to do. He smiled back.

Mummy heard the exchange, and turned and smiled. She made him give a toffee to the strange boy. The boy smiled even more and broke into a grin. Mum seemed pleased. She patted Vik’s head, and kissed him again.

“Happy Birthday, sweetie.”, Mum said. “You’re a big boy now.”

***