Out of Control

“What does that mean?”

Meka giggled. “A buy and a sell order. That is often completed in under one second. So instead of bidding $10.20 per share, the scalper will jump the bid at $10.201, thus becoming the best bid and therefore the first in line to be able to purchase the stock. When the best "Offer" is $10.21, the shaver will again jump first in line and sell a tenth of a cent cheaper at $10.209 for a profit of 0.008 of a dollar. The profits add up when using 10,000 share lots each time and the combined earnings from rebates for creating liquidity.”

“I could see when that could turn into real money when the buys are big enough.”

“A day trader is actively searching for potential trading setups.”

“In English, Meka.”

“That is, any stock or other financial instruments that, in the judgment of the day trader, is in a tension state, ready to accelerate in price in either direction, that when traded well has a potential for a substantial profit. The number of trades you can make per day is almost unlimited, as are the profits and the losses.”

Since the price of financial instruments can vary greatly within the same trading day, some day traders focus on very short-term trading within the trading day, in which a trade may last just a few minutes. Buying and selling many times in a trading day, receiving trading fee discounts from the broker for their trading volume. Some days Meka would focus only on price momentum, other days on technical patterns. She was careful to exit positions before the market closed to avoid unmanageable risks—negative price gaps which is the difference between the previous day’s close and the next day’s open bull price.

“This is just like gambling.”

“Now you’re catching on. Because of the high profits and losses that day trading makes possible, these traders are sometimes portrayed as bandits or gamblers by other investors.”

“Gambling is something I know a little something about.”

“But I have to tell you that because of the nature of financial leverage and the rapid returns that are possible, day trading can be either extremely profitable or extremely unprofitable.”

“I understand.”

“High-risk profile traders can generate either huge percentage returns or huge percentage losses. We could manage to earn millions per year solely by day trading.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

Deidra Walker had come up hard. She worked all of her life to get where she was, and now she saw it all falling apart before her eyes. No matter what she had to do, Deidra was not about to let that happen. From the minute she heard that a gangster from New York had settled on the island, she knew that nothing good would come of it. Then she stood by and watched as month by month her income diminished.

“We worked too damn hard to build this to just walk away with nothing,” she told Harry, but he was a proud man and her words fell on deaf ears. She had come to Nassau ten years ago with Harry from Miami and she pushed him to create the business that they now stood to lose.

Deidra’s life changed when her mother moved a man in the house with her and her younger sister Alison. She was a tall, pretty and well-developed twelve-year-old at the time. He began molesting her two-months later. He was rough with her and would beat her with his belt if she didn’t do exactly what he said. The lashes were always on her back and her butt, so no one ever saw the bruises. Deidra was scared to death of him. “If you even think about tellin’ anybody I’ll kill all three of you bitches.”

After two years of molesting her, he seemed to tire of Deidra and began looking at Alison. He began playing with her, buying her little things, just as he had done with Deidra two years earlier. Once, when the three of them were alone he tried to send Deidra to the store. She remembered that two years ago he had given her mother money and sent her to the store, “And take Alison with you,” he said the first time that he molested her.

Deidra saw the way he was looking at Alison. “Why don’t you go outside and play, Alison,” Deidra said and all but pushed her out the door. When the door was closed Deidra locked it and walked silently into the bedroom, took off her clothes and laid down on the bed. For the next year, Deidra was his willing sex slave. It only ended when her mother put him out, not because she found out what he had doing to Deidra; she put him out because he hadn’t worked in three years. One year later, her mother moved another man in the house over Deidra’s strong objections.

Deidra ran away.

For the first two weeks she lived at the house of a girlfriend until her father found out and made Deidra go home. A week later she ran away again. This time Deidra lived at the mall. It was cool, because a lot of her friends were there and she ate whatever they would buy her or she would eat out of the garbage when she simply had no choice. That ended the night a security guard caught her sleeping in the bathroom. The police were called and they took her home. Deidra slept at the house that night and left the next day.

After that, she slept in the park and survived by stealing clothes and selling them on the street. One night it rained, Deidra was cold, wet and hungry. She turned her first trick that night. From then on she worked the trade. She didn’t like what she was doing, but at least she could have a roof over her head at night and she could eat every day.

When she was twenty-one, Deidra met Harry Walker. He had come to Miami from Nassau to visit his cousins. They met one night while they were cruising the stroll looking for some action. Harry fell in love the minute Deidra walked up to the car and stuck her head in the window. After that, Harry became Deidra’s only customer. He had money to spend on her because Harry and his cousins were stickup artists. Then they stepped up to bank robbery and Harry spent just about all his money on Deidra. But when the FBI caught his cousins, Harry figured that it was just a matter of time before they caught up to him too. Harry decided to take the rest of his money and go back to Nassau. He begged Deidra to go with him.

Deidra wasn’t wild about the idea of going to Nassau with Harry, but she decided she would go and when the money was gone, she would be gone too. That was ten years ago and the money hadn’t run out yet. That was mostly because of Deidra’s eye for opportunity and her pushing Harry to keep her in the lifestyle he had given her. They say that behind every great man there is a woman telling him what to do. That was Deidra Walker, but she was smart enough to make sure that Harry believed that he was boss.

Over the years and under Deidra’s guidance, Harry ran a few gambling spots on the island, while Deidra focused her attention on prostitution. The first sign that things were changing was when her girls started bringing in less money. She was at one of their spots with Harry the first night Jamaica came to visit.

“Who are those guys,” Deidra asked Harry that night.

“Never seen them before,” Harry told her.

“I got a bad feeling about them.”

“You always worry too much.”

“That’s how we got where we are,” Deidra said and watched Jamaica. Nothing happened that night and things were quiet for weeks after that, but it wouldn’t last.