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all will be happy in the Hellenic Republic.” Toby felt the need for a few more glugs of Macallans at this point.
    JJ had listened to Toby’s tale without interruption. As each snippet of information came out, JJ’s brain was assessing, analysing, calculating. If the information was accurate then, at best, they only had till Friday, tomorrow, lunchtime to ditch one big bucket load of Greek bonds.
    â€œToby, given that the entire crux of this depends on how worthy this Spiridakos fellow’s information is, what makes Marcus think that it isn’t some desperate spin doctor’s wishful thinking. The bloke’s in the opposition party, perhaps he wants a bit of market chaos to put pressure on the government ahead of the vote. In fact, would Marcus’s pal, who he may not have seen for ages, really tell him this kind of stuff?”
    â€œWell,” said Toby deliberately, “Theo Spiridakos is not so much Marcus’s pal, as his brother-in-law. Marcus believes the information is 100% reliable.”
    Now it was JJ’s turn to have a gulp of malt whisky. “Jesus Christ, Toby,” said JJ after a pause. “There is no fucking way we can unload our Greek bonds by tomorrow lunchtime, even if we have till tomorrow lunchtime, without causing serious, or even fatal, damage to our unrealised profit on those suckers. The market won’t wait till they find out if Tsipras’s plan works. They’ll just beat the holy shit out of the bonds, the euro, equities and whatever else is directly linked to them, the bloody second they smell that any of those PASOKs are going to jump ship. It’s the fucking financial equivalent of shoot first, ask questions later. And if they shoot, we’re dead.”
    â€œI know,” said Toby, feeling a bit worse for wear by now. “That’s why I’m here on your armchair. It can’t wait till tomorrow and I don’t know what to do.”
    JJ stood up, walked over to his drinks cabinet and poured himself another whisky and Canada Dry, gesturing to Toby asking if he wanted another one. Toby was flagging at this point and declined. Toby was expecting JJ to say something and sensing this JJ said softly, “I’m thinking, give me a few moments,” and sat back down.
    While the Scot’s internal computer was whirring away, Toby was contemplating his potential financial demise. If these Greek bonds went belly up, he’d be getting no bonus and if JJ got the chop because of any debacle then he’d certainly be out as well. In hedge fund world you’re really only as good as your last trade. Reputation takes time to build but a nanosecond to lose. Who’d want to hire a trader whose CV read ‘butt-fucked by a bunch of Greek wankers’. Nobody was the answer.
    JJ was contemplating. All that time it took to research the Greek trade, the work with Yves-Jacques on the game tree, the apparently misplaced confidence that there was a 70% probability, at least, that the unrealised massive profit in the bonds was intact. It was all about to go down the toilet because a few Greek politicians couldn’t take the pain of the hair shirt that their own prior mistakes determined that they should don. There was no point greetin’ too much over that now, thought JJ. It’s in the past. If Marcus’s brother-in-law was straight up then by tomorrow afternoon there was going to be a shit-fest of red on all Bloomberg screens. Ironically, as it would be the first Friday of the month, US non-farm payrolls data, the pivotal data statistic of any month, would be released at 1.30pm GMT prompt. These were expected to be good, around 300,000 new jobs created in November if market consensus expectations and Wednesday’s ADP job figures were anything to go by. NFPs were often regarded as the key market data release from the US depicting the health of the economy. From a proper economist’s perspective they had no