ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
A long lunch ruined, blood running down the gutters of Sydney’s Bridge Street and one Betoota Grove stockbroker is now a sadbroker.
Alistair Watson-Cove, a partner at Goldman Sachs’ French Quarter offices in the Joh For PM Tower on Cumberland Road, was rudely awoken by Magda, his wife and life coach, this morning as she left for yoga at 6.
But that gave him ample opportunity to roll over in bed, grab his phone from the mid-century Danish nightstand and check the markets.
While the 41-year-old was expected a market correction, he wasn’t expecting the Dow to drop as much as it did overnight.
“And with that, I lept out of bed. Put my RM Williams dressing gown on and ran down the stairs to the home office,” he said.
“I had to sell everything. How didn’t I see this coming? There’s a Republican in the White House, why is the market going backwards?”
But it was too late, the damage was done.
As the market opened this morning, the forlorn Gemini dressed in his least favourite suit and asked his Magda to start the Audi softroader in the driveway.
“I wore my old MJ Bale suit I got when I was just a junior trader. I can machine wash it, I think, so I can spill as much food and wine on it as I want.”
Today was supposed to be a great day, they’d booked the long table at the district’s finest restaurant – Le Marché Des Ours Putains on Rue de Pamplemousse.
However, frantic early morning calls between the Goldman employees confirmed that nobody would be having much fun today.
Though the wine was needlessly expensive and they spent so much money that the owner let them smoke inside, neither of the seven stockbrokers at the table could keep their eyes away from their iPhoneXs for longer than a few minutes.
“Then it hit me like a sledgehammer,” said Alistair, speaking to our reporter emotionally at a local taxi rank.
“I promised my kids that I’d take them to Aspen this year. That’s looking more and more like it won’t be happening. God fucking damn it, man,”
“My family might have to ski on that shitty fake fucking black ice they roll out at Thredbo or fucking Smiggin Holes or something. The wine list is always shit and there’s no fucking gear down there that’s worth doing. Maybe they’d be happy going to Chillagoe caves?”
More to come.
