Diamonds and Cubes

Nick Anthony spent six years building up his securities trading business. With two business degrees and several years as a stockbroker, he knew that investing other peoples’ money was not for him. He opened the doors to Market Makers in San Diego and set up work stations for licensed securities brokers who would come in and rent a desk, and trade securities for their own accounts. These men and women were mostly day traders with the occasional value investor.
Nick liked the crew that worked in his office and many of them had become fast friends. So when the Federal Reserve pulled the rug out from under the financial markets by badly miscalculating the effects of too much rate tightening, the sudden shock to the markets caused millions of investors to lose fortunes. A number of the traders at Market Makers were caught up in the turmoil.
But Nick decided to do something about it. Fed up with watching politicians and lobbyists build fortunes by trading on privileged information, Nick, along with several of the most talented traders in the office decided to join the party. And the people Nick assembled to run this program were the best, several were bond specialists, one was a hedging genius, one had a Ph.D. in computer sciences, and there was even an attorney. All were licensed securities brokers.
The structure this group put together to facilitate their trading was brilliant. It scanned four continents and involved a network of a dozen international corporations, twice that number of banking and trading accounts, none of which led anywhere in the event of an investigation.
But early into the scheme the trading group hooked up with a bad character who brought trouble with him. As the FBI stepped in to investigate banking activities in one of the offshore tax havens, Nick’s group was noticed. Through fast work and the right connections, Nick and his traders were able to get in front of the investigation, make a deal with the Justice Department, and help to bring down a much bigger operation that the FBI had spent years trying to stop.
The Wall Street action in Diamonds and Cubes is fast and exciting, but the intrigue of going after international securities manipulators is a classic for the reader to enjoy.