THE TAINTED TRUST (Volume 2 of The King Trilogy)

CHAPTER 25

        New York. Monday, October 24, 1988.

North winds howled and the temperature was plummeting when twenty-one year old Kerri Pyper left her two bedroom Manhasset apartment and climbed into a yellow cab. Rain droplets splattered against her window, blurring everything in her field of vision as her taxi inched its way through heavy Manhattan traffic. The inclement weather compounded the emptiness and loneliness she had confessed to Brian.

Kerri was alone in a city of millions of people, none of whom knew her or cared she existed. With the exception of her marriage to Brian, her job search was the only brightness in her life. In spite of being frustrated and offered nothing but rejection, she thrived on it. The challenge of finding a job kept her busy and helped her to forget her loneliness. Instead of tolerating each day by making tedious boring domestic jobs last, she now found herself hurrying. She had a focus and liked it.

In an attempt to broaden her resume and to fill some of her empty evenings, Kerri had enrolled in a course on commodities at Long Island Community College, near Smith Town. The forty hour course was to be given in two hour segments, every Tuesday and Thursday evening. Kerri's business courses at university had given her an elementary exposure to the world of commodities. She discovered an intense fascination for the subject. In her final year of university she won a prize for her brilliant essay on the subject of the supply and demand equation for soybeans.

Kerri arrived for her first session at one minute after eight and ran as fast as she could to Lecture Room Four. She took a seat in the back row near the door, then looked around the room, an amphitheater with seating capacity for one hundred. Almost all seats were occupied, by men. Including herself, she counted only three women.

The lecturer entered the room through a door to the right of the blackboards. He was tall, thin and sharp featured, with thinning gray hair. He wore a dark blue suit, matching tie, a buttoned-down pale blue shirt, and tasseled black loafers. He marched to the middle of the podium and stood behind a maple wood lectern. He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and removed his notes, then looked up and scanned the audience. "Good evening, ladies and gentlemen," he said with a warm smile. "I had to scan the audience to confirm that I could include ladies in my salutation. I'm pleased that I can. Welcome to the Long Island Community College, and to the fabulous world of commodities."

The speaker paused to take drink of water, then smiled again. "I'm happy to see a few of my clients here tonight. For them, I need no introduction. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Miles Dennis. I'm a broker with Iacardi & Sons, in New York. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the company, it's small, very well respected, has offices in the World Trade Center, has been operating successfully for over fifty years, and specializes in brokering commodities." Dennis grinned, then blushed. "One of the perks of this job is to have the privilege of plugging my company, whenever I want."

While the audience laughed politely, Kerri continued to stare at Dennis. She liked him and was delighted to have enrolled in his course.

Dennis continued, "My job is to deliver the course to you and to try to make the subject interesting and fascinating to you. I urge you to ask questions, as many as you like, but please save them until the end of the class. Believe it or not, your questions might not be of any interest to others. They might also waste time...Any questions?" he asked, smiling again.

Silence.

"If any of you could determine the future, you would certainly have the means to become wealthy beyond your wildest dreams. It's evident, however, that none of you is so blessed. If you were, you wouldn't be here. Please dream with me for a moment. Suppose all of you were blessed with the ability to predict the future, and that you wanted to apply this ability to commodities. Your only limitation is that you could forecast only changes in prices, not the times of their occurrences ...Can anyone tell me what problem that limitation presents?" Dennis searched the audience for a raised hand.

After a very long fifteen seconds, one hand was raised. It was Kerri's.

Dennis pointed to her. "At last we have an answer. Please go ahead."

"With that limitation, we would have to live with an element of risk," Kerri offered.

"Bravo!" Dennis declared. "Good answer. I couldn't have said it better... Now, suppose we mortals decided to try to improve our chances of determining the future by graphing a series of events over time. If we graphed the series long enough, it would run off the end of the page. Eventually we would notice that a portion of the line we are producing looks like another portion of the same line. Can anyone tell me the significance of that?"

Kerri raised her hand once again.

"I'm pleased we have one alert person in this class," Dennis acknowledged. "Go ahead, please."

"The similarity would suggest history is repeating itself."

"Exactly. Take a bow for that answer." Dennis picked up a piece of chalk and proceeded to draw a crooked continuous line across the full length of the five sections of blackboard. He turned to face the class when he ran out of blackboard. "Now, assume the line I've just drawn is our graph of a particular series of events. If we were to spend enough time graphing it, eventually we would be reasonably certain which direction the line would go next...Can anyone tell me why?"

Kerri glanced around the amphitheater to see that once again, no hand was raised. Her modesty refused to allow her to raise hers for the third time.

"Time's up," Dennis declared. "I'm going to ask you all to return to the Thursday session fully prepared to answer that question. The answer is absolutely crucial to your success in this business. You must learn how to follow a line and react to it. If you do, the future will belong to you. The line is the only thing that really counts in this game. Discarding the vast majority of lines and selecting the ones that have the potential to make you money are the most important things you will ever learn about the commodities game. A line on a chart is the historical price record. There can be no argument, no mystery. It's a fundamental fact."

Dennis continued without interruption until ten, then concluded the first session. "Thank you for your kind attention. I look forward to seeing all of you again on Thursday evening."

Kerri was thrilled. At last she was doing something useful. She was involved, growing again. Commodities fascinated her, and so did Miles Dennis. She had identified him as a learned confident man, a professional. She looked forward to the Thursday session and resolved to arrive early enough to get a front row seat.