Black Thursday 24th October 1929
 

Next morning Susan braced herself, venturing out to grab a newspaper from one of the paper boys. Yesterday was officially the worst day trading ever the news said: surely it could get no worse. Susan shuddered. The 23rd October was not a date that had made history. That began today: Black Thursday.

The factory workers were trailing in, and in the background she could hear the noise of the factory picking up as the day’s work began. She ignored it. Getting a coffee, Susan returned to the ticker room, sat down in front of the wireless, and listened for the news. The newspaper, discarded after a quick glance, carried a warning of short selling on the stock exchange forcing prices down. It seemed the world had awakened too late to the fact leverage worked both ways.

Focusing on the steady click of ticker tape from the machine next to her, and the wireless news reports beginning to come in, she could feel her heart pounding. The market had opened and lost eleven percent immediately. That would trigger stop-loss orders, often set to sell if a share price dropped by five or ten percent to preserve the investment – except it was not one share, it was all of them.

It was one thing to have heard about the crash in history class. It was another to see the people she worked with grow quieter, more worried, as a pall settled over the company. Hearing the whispers of whether they could afford the rent, of what would happen to their families, whether Killgrace would collapse, and most dreadful of all the few holdouts who insisted it would get better, that shares were the future…she already knew that some of them would not live long enough to see their shares recover in value thirty years ahead.

The ticker was running as fast as she had ever seen it, and the wireless news reported huge trading volumes. At twelve-thirty she heard on the wireless that the New York Stock Exchange were closing the viewing gallery, and then the first rumours that the banks were meeting. This was no use: her information would be too far out of date.

Stepping out of the office and the useless, outdated, ticker feed, Susan stopped the first office boy she saw who was not obviously busy.

“Are you working?”

“Just running these down to Mr Marcus, Mrs Chapman” he said, fidgeting as he stopped.

“When you’re done there, go and see if the papers have any extra editions. Ask reception for petty cash and pick up a copy for me and one for the breakrooms.”

“Yes, ma’am!” He tore off at a run, eager to get his errand out of the way and take the chance to get outside to find out what was going on. Susan watched him, wishing she was still young enough to find this exciting instead of excruciating. There was no rational reason to be so desperate for news; there was nothing she could do about events now.

~

Analysing market share, Cet observed the trend of the position it had selected for disposal. The broker had eked the buy orders onto the market, rather than announcing a huge request, ensuring the price was not artificially inflated. The total profit was less than predicted: a return of $625,000, with seventy-five percent paid for in gold certificates. Four hundred thousand would be assigned to Porter & Mason tomorrow, leaving a surplus. One complication had occurred: the broker had informed Mr. Killgrace that a buyer had attempted to refuse to pay for its short, opened on Monday, and a second appeared close to bankruptcy. That could be managed.

Susan’s location was the ticker office, which had no direct telephone connection. Irritated, it relayed a message to reception, to send someone to fetch her, and waited – running share simulations – until the laboratory door opened.

“Query: Selected funds to short today.”

“Today? You won’t find any buyers,” Susan said.

“Unexpected income has been acquired.”

“I wouldn’t short,” she said coldly. “Right now, the only buyers are small traders, the inexperienced, the people who this will really hurt. Not the institutions.” The humanoid’s ethics programming was as obstructionist as its own loyalty encoding had been. Removal should be considered, but a temporary override would suffice.

“If an institutional investor could be acquired?”

“Where?”

“Italy.” It spat the word with some satisfaction.

“What did they do?”

“Attempted stock fraud against Killgrace.” It did not need to observe biosigns. The humanoid’s reaction indicated a successful ethical adjustment had occurred.

“Then, if I had additional funds to short, I would wait until trades closed today and prime my broker to short Steel first thing tomorrow. But that won’t make you popular with anyone.”

“Operational objective is resources, not popularity.” Ignoring her, it extended a data probe to the telephone wires.

~