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There were no partners. There was just Robert Astor, sole owner and principal investor. In the world of finance, Comstock was technically classified as a hedge fund.
Hedge fund
was one of those funny terms that meant everything and nothing all at once. Simply defined, a hedge fund was “a private partnership that invested in publicly traded securities or financial derivatives.” That meant he bought and sold stocks, bonds, commodities, currencies, and just about anything you could legally speculate on with a view toward making a profit. But that was only a beginning.
    Most hedge funds had four things in common. First and most important was
fee structure,
since traders, Astor included, cared about only one thing, and that was making money. Comstock, like the majority of its competitors, used something called a “two and twenty model.” Comstock kept 20 percent
—
a full one-fifth
—
of all profits for itself. On top of the 20 percent, it charged a management fee of 2 percent on all funds invested with Comstock, win or lose. In this last regard, Astor was a gentleman. He charged the 2 percent only on the funds actually invested in his positions. Any money sitting in a bank got off scot-free. He even credited his investors the interest.
    The other three things hedge funds had in common had to do with the way they invested the money entrusted to them. As the name implied, Astor often hedged his investments, meaning that if he bet that one stock might go up, he bet another might go down. The idea was to guard against swings in the market. Hedging might limit your returns, but it provided the investor with a margin of safety. It was never smart to put all your chips on red or black.
    Next, Astor used something called “leverage” to jack up the value of his bets. Leveraging just meant borrowing to increase the size of your bet. Back in the day, an investor would buy stock “on margin,” which meant he used the value of the stock he had bought to double-down and buy some more. That was old school. These days an investor leveraged. Astor borrowed billions of dollars to amplify his bet on anything: stocks, bonds, oil, wheat, pork bellies, and especially currencies.
    The last element was freedom. Hedge funds like Comstock operated in a nether region where regulation held little sway. When an investor signed a disclosure agreement and transferred his money into a hedge fund, he was giving Astor his trust to make money the best way he saw fit.
    And that’s why Astor loved the business. Hedge funds were a license to bet
—
and to bet big
—
without Big Brother looking over your shoulder telling you what to do and how to do it, and, worse, demanding an outsized share of your profits when you won. God bless the U.S.A.
    Astor continued to the end of the desk. Though it was summer, most of the traders wore fleecies and sweatshirts. Astor kept the room chilled to a brisk sixty-two degrees. He liked his boys and girls alert. Many of their sweatshirts bore names of alma maters. There were more Stony Brooks than Whartons. Astor couldn’t care less where someone had gone to college. (After all, he hadn’t managed to get a degree anywhere.) He cared about smarts. He’d cherry-picked the twelve men and two women who worked for him from the best firms in the world. He had two Brits, a few Indians, a gal from Shanghai, an Israeli, even a few Americans. They ran the gamut in personalities from extroverted jerks to introverted jerks. Talented traders were not renowned for their people skills. Or, as Alex had often commented, “It takes one to know one.”
    Astor’s office occupied a corner of the building adjacent to the trading desk. The door stood open and he was greeted by a view south across Battery Park to the Statue of Liberty, Staten Island, and New Jersey.
    New York City. The center of the universe.
    Astor set down his satchel and dropped into his chair. An electronically tinted glass wall allowed him to look onto the floor.