A Cut In Time

At the AXIA prop trading desks.
London. Wednesday, 18th September 2024.

Some people take a long piss, you know. Wide stance, let it all out, shoulders back, to telegraph to all other busy by-passers that I too own the space. Leave the cubicle door open because good God man, we’ve got FOMC in ten minutes! In ten minutes we do battle, and everything else is of secondary importance. To show that, ya know—I own the space. It ain’t but a thing.

That right there is a trader who is switched on. You don’t lumber in; you bring Presence to the desk and our domain. You see that with the best, Alex Haywood once told me. That’s the answer to my question on the way into the office, this trading floor in a nondescript London townhouse: what separates the civilian asleep, dazed and buffeted on the Tube carriage and this special, special lot who are just ready, at all times, to spill their guts out? To take maximum risk, load the guns, load the boat—always a hairline away from total financial violence or to pack it in and leave in but a whisper. That is control, to possess the space—Presence. Own it.

“Yeah…” and so and so a trader in the bathroom says, washing his hands, checking his face in the mirror. To say: it ain’t but a thing—tonight’s action—but to part with the mandatory “—well. Good luck.”

This FOMC night is positively historic. The first rate cut to mark the end of the first proper hiking cycle in a generation or two, depending how you count a trader’s lifespan. The abandoned 2018–19 normalisation attempt notwithstanding. But how much tonight—a twenty-five or fifty basis cut?

Two minutes.