Armageddon Trade, The [Paperback]

Doing for city traders what John Grisham did for lawyers, Clem Chambers' "The Armageddon Trade" is a gripping adventure set against a backdrop of financial market meltdown. Like Grisham novels, it has the feel of a blockbuster movie waiting to happen, but it's no less entertaining a read for that.

When a junior bank worker discovers a valuable talent for reading trends in the market, he quickly soars to a position of power in the financial world. Yet, the celebrations may be short-lived, as his new status brings him to the attention of a shadowy figure who moves behind the markets. Together they must unravel a terrifying financial model, before a cataclysm plunges the world back into the dark ages.

With glamorous locations, global terrorism, and the power of limitless wealth, The Armageddon Trade makes numbers dangerous and sexy. I wasn't sure I would enjoy a financial thriller, but this was truly an enexpected delight.

This is a strange novel, a mixture of City trading with a terrorist plot and the concept of a predictive super-model that can be used not just to trade but to identify the geographical position of a terrorist. While we can accept a Jedi saying he feels a disturbance in the Force a computer model of the Nikkei is not going to be much good finding my car keys. However, we've been here before in Isaac Asimov's rocking Foundation Trilogy and frankly, it is just a story. For many readers though it will be one step beyond.

The hero is a chippy cockney constantly outplaying the rich and privileged until (weirdly) he gets together with them to save the world. Lovers of the man of action genre will be delighted to know the story features a volcanic island in true James Bond fashion.

Disclaimer: years ago I worked with the author.

I saw this book recommended on the Naked Trader website and I couldn't resist checking what type of "literature" a trader would find interesting. Unfortunately it was exactly as I expected or should I say feared.

How to describe this book?
It's not just that it's written by numbers (it's like Dan Brown or maybe Jeffrey Archer without the cringeworthy sex or suspense), it's that the plot is ludicrous (idiot-savant trader saves world from terror attack using market prediction software) and the list of characters the author has assembled would shame a pop-up book. Here are the main ones:
1) the hero - an uneducated cockney trader with a "gift" for looking at charts
2) a "blue-blood" called Fuch-Smith (I kid you not) - guess what his nickname is?
3) the holocaust survivor trading genius and his 14 dimensional mathematical model and
harem of beauties who call him Pappy - a sort of trading Hugh Heffner perhaps?
4) and finally the bad-guys - Islamic fundamentalists. Oh what a handy target they are. They don't like making interest on their deposits - the commies. Cue some lazy comments on the superiority of Western civilisation. To borrow a phrase from the book - these villains are half-dimensional.

Now, scattered throughout the book are various speeches in praise of traders, their importance in the market and the benefits they bring to mankind in general. For example this from page 306:

"Think of all the people hanging by a thread, only able to survive because the market drives the hardest bargain. Thousands live or die on the smallest tick in the price of grain and the engine that drives it is made efficient by what we and all the other traders do. It is a benign activity, and as for all the money you make, well, you can always give it back."

Give it back??? This is Hubris, propaganda, self-serving rubbish. The credit-crunch has exposed two things that anyone who has ever worked in an investment bank (like me) already knew:
1) Traders and Financial services are there only to make money for themselves and provide no benefit to anyone else. This is their very essence and it's no secret. They will happily admit to it. To them it's a game that they will keep playing regardless of the fallout. Starving hoards bother them not a jot.
2) When it all goes pear shaped the general public have to pick up the pieces. We pay for it but we don't control it.

Traders bring nothing new to the party they just buy and sell other peoples' work. That's why they are called traders.

As for the idea of using pricing software to locate "terrorists", I believe that the CIA or some such "intelligence" agency is following this very approach - enough said. Reminds me too much of "The Men who Stare at Goats".

On top of this there are absolutely no grey areas. I like some ambiguity in my thrillers, the possibility that the good guys are not so good, the bad guys not so bad, maybe a twist ending. Oh dear, in this mono-themed drivel the traders unquestionably do the dirty work of governments. There is an accepted single Anglo-American security model. The book toddles on to its dreary conclusion. In short it's a neo-con's dream.

As for the ending, I actually guessed what the terror plot was. Is that smart or what? Actually not very - I just happened to remember an old program I saw on BBC a few years ago describing a similar occurrence and put two and two together to get the correct answer. In the book it takes the billions of dollars of computer hardware to come up with it.

So not only is the writing questionable, the plot predicable and the characters cardboard the book is also punting a particular agenda.

Let me ask the following question:
Over the last two years who has done more damage to your well being and future prospects, al-Qaeda or the credit-crunch?

If your acquaintance with al-Qaeda has been through the news channels but your bank balance and prospects have been severely dented this past year then I think you know who the real enemy is.

The book would have been more interesting and believable if it had featured al-Qaeda hunting down rogue traders and returning the lost billions to the deceived.

Now, I might be giving this book too much attention, but for me an interesting question here is does the author believe the conceit behind the story? Does he actually believe that traders are some sort of super humans deserving of our interest? I thought Bonfire of the Vanities had at least partially answered these questions. Alternatively, this could be viewed as naive propaganda for the sham worldview that states that every decision must be made through the prism of the market as if it were the final arbiter on all decisions about mankind.

More disturbingly the description of the technology, some of which seem to be quite similar to that described in Neuromancer or Disclosure, shows a complete lack of understanding of mathematics, probability and IT in general. Maybe the credit-crunch was caused by overspend on lunatic IT projects. The Men who Stare at Goats would love it.

So please, they've taken enough of your money - don't give them any more.