numbers,” he said. “I didn’tmean to pry, but is everything all right?”
I nodded. “Yeah, thanks.” Dang! He knew that I was lying about mydaughter going to the hospital. I probably owed him an apology.
“Well if you need anything, let me know. Did you have to pay out-of-pocket expenses for the ER?”
Hooray! He had no idea I had lied! “Yes,” I told him, adding anothersmall lie to my growing list of Minor Indiscretions on the Path to Riches.
“If you need anything, let me know. Your insurance ought to cover it. Iknow we've got problems with the benefits here, so I will see what I can doto help.”
 
  
 
8 ADVENTURES OF A CURRENCY TRADER
I thanked him, then I thanked God that I hadn’t been caught, and thenI totally forgot about John Murphy and the ER and the lie. It was time totrade. I booted up the Amazing Forex software and my trading account,pinned the “Out to Lunch” sign outside my cubicle, and made sure my com-puter monitor was still positioned so that only I could see it.
Barely had I signed into Amazing Forex (Login: SUPERTRADER_2000,Password: G$TRICH) that I noticed Scott standing behind me.
“You got your account set up?”
Just hearing his voice was disturbing. Right now I needed privacy! Theclock was ticking down, and I only had 37 more minutes of lunchtime tomake as many trades as I could.
“Yeah, Scott. Got it set up. I am going to check it out now, see what’sgoing on, you know, during my lunch.”
He nodded. “Gonna make some coin at the office! Nice.”
“No,” I replied, showing some frustration in the tone of my voice, “Iamgoing to just take it easy today and watch.” I didn’t mean this either. Thelying was coming easier, and right now I was grateful that I could use aplausible distortion of the truth to distance myself from unwanted intru-sive eyeballs.
“Well, then I might stay and watch.”
Isighed and realized that arguing with Scott would steal precious trad-ing time. “You can stay but just keep quiet. I am trying to learn this and it’snot easy for me.”
“Looks like you have a buy alert on the Gee-Bee-Pee,” he replied.
He was right. There it was, my first order alert! I quickly toggled to mytrading platform, hit the GBP/USD quote, and up popped an order window.
Without a moment’s hesitation—for there could be other trades justwaiting to be taken—I clicked the okay button and boom! My trade wasopened with a slick whooshing sound. There, in the open trades window, Isaw it, but I was already down $50! How could that be?
“How could that be?” I found myself saying out loud.
“You already suck at trading,” Scott said. I considered poking out hiseyes with a pen, but that would also rob me of precious time that could notbe wasted.
I toggled back to the Amazing Forex software screen. It told me thatthe GBP/USD trade, the one that I had just taken, should be negative 5points (or $50, since I had traded for $10 per market point) right then.Phew! Knowing that the Amazing folks were experiencing the same quickloss helped ease my mind. I faintly remembered that nearly all trades in thesystem started off unprofitable. Good. I planted my feet firmly on the floorunder my desk and waited for the next order to appear.
Then my cell phone rang. The ring tone told me it was my wife, Gini.Scott had set that up for me so I would not miss her calls.
 
In Search of Amazing Profits 9
“You gonna get that?” Scott asked, knowing it was my wife. This time Iconsidered taping his mouth shut, but all I had was clear office tape andthat would not do the trick.
I took the call, if only to appear that I was cool and calm, even thoughmy palms were sweaty as I opened the phone. My nerves were rattling as Ispoke.
“What's up?”
“Hi sweetie,” she happily chirped. “How’s your day?”
I answered that it was going fine in the tone of voice that a husbanduses when he wants to tell his wife that she has called at a bad time, butdoes not want to actually say that she called at a bad time.
“Is this a bad time,” she asked. “I wanted to know what you wanted fordinner.”
“Anything is great.”
“Any-thing,” she replied, speaking slowly as if she were writing itdown. “Got it. I will check at the market for Anything. Want to say hi toyour son?”
“Not now,” I quickly answered. It was impossible to hold my cell phoneup to my ear and toggle back to the trading account. I tried, but all I man-aged to do was switch to a screen that showed my e-mail. Now I couldn’tsee anything!
“Okay, I just wanted to say hello and that I love you,” she told me, andI could tell that she wanted to talk more even though she was kindly will-ing to end the call if I insisted. Which is what I did.
“Not now,” I barked. “I gotta go.”
I immediately felt terrible, but I hung up the phone anyway. I didn’teven give her a chance to respond; I was now sweating badly and havingtrouble keeping my right leg from bouncing on the floor, which is what I al-ways do when I am nervous.
Scott didn’t say anything about the way I hung up with my wife. Iclicked on the trading software and up popped my account. I looked at thecurrent profit on the open trade: Three hundred dollars. Three hundreddollars!
Scott’s jaw dropped down. My sweat turned cold. I heard my heartbeating, and my foot stopped drumming on the floor. I think 10 secondspassed, but to Scott and me time had ceased to have meaning, and I cas-caded into a deep trance.
I imagined quitting my job that day. I could see my wife driving a newsporty sedan, the kids happily cheering her on as she sped through the EZ-pass gate on the way to our summer home in the Hamptons; then I couldsee myself diving into an oval of midnight blue water, with reggae musicplaying in the background and leggy blondes sunning themselves aroundthe edges of the pool. This was the life! Trading had brought it to me!
 
  
 
10 ADVENTURES OF A CURRENCY TRADER
Scott knocked me from the daydream by gripping my shoulder andshaking. “Dude, dude, you gotta take that money!” he told me, and he wasright. I had no idea what Amazing Forex said, but there was no way I wasgoing to miss out on three hundred bucks. I clicked once on the open tradewindow, and up popped a box that asked me if I wanted to close the trade.
“Darn right!” I said, speaking much louder than I should.
“Woo hoo!” yelled Scott, happy for me and now much more interestedin the Amazing Forex software than he had been the week before.
Iclicked a button and all of asudden, my account value had gone from$1,000 to $1,300. Holy moley, I thought. This really is simple. This really isthe answer to my financial problems. In less than a minute, I had madeenough to buy a new iPod for my wife. I determined that this was exactlythe present I would give to her to tell her all about the trading.
Scott wanted me to see what the software was telling us, so I switchedback to look at it. But something was wrong. The trade was still there, butit was showing a 34 pip loss, not a gain.
“What’s up with that,” Scott asked. “Did it go the other way?”
I spent a moment looking over the screen for clues. It wasn’t hard tofind.
“Sheez, Scott. We bought when we were supposed to sell.”
Scott was speechless.
I had taken the wrong trade! Immediately, I checked the trading ac-count again. Yes, the sweet profits were still safely secure in my “accountequity” window. This meant that Amazing Forex Profits’ suggestion to sellthe GBP/USD had been a horrible idea—but that we had mistakenly takenthe opposite trade and profited. As I watched the sell trade go deeper intoaloss, I actually felt happy.
Ismiled. We had cheated the Amazing Forex software! We were victo-rious. It stood to reason, in my moment of complete insanity, that I couldbeat the software. I was that good.
Scott agreed, and appropriately took credit for first misreading thesoftware’s recommendation to sell. I patted him on the back and promisedto share some of the profits with him over time. Maybe he could be mytechnology right-hand man. Surely there were other programs out therelike the Amazing Forex Profits software, and we could install a few ofthem.
I determined that I owed my wife a phone call, instead of doing anymore trades. It was the right thing to do and she happily accepted my apol-ogy. I told her I had a surprise for her when I got home. She giggled on thephone, and I realized that my superpowers as a trader were only exceededby my Amazing Relationship skills.
 
 
The FutureLooks Bright
 
way, smiling the entire way home. Of course, I needed to make a lotmore money before I quit my job, but that day I felt as if I had alreadygiven notice.
When I arrived home, I was so consumed by thoughts of trading that Iforgot to give my wife her surprise present. But that doesn’t mean I wasn’thappy to see her. I found her in the kitchen, and I wrapped my arms aroundher waist and hugged her tightly.
“Not so tight,” she said, laughing. “Caroline’s in there!” Caroline wasour five-month-old fetus, growing strong and healthy and on schedule. Mywife was starting to grow bigger now, and was as beautiful as ever. I kissedher neck and she turned around to face me.
“I am happy to see you, too. We're late for our rent payment again. Idon’t mean to ruin the happy moment.”
I knew she loved me, and I knew she had to remind me that the rentwas late. Otherwise, I was going to pretend that it wasn’t happening. Wewere knee-deep, or deeper, in debt. I hated to face it. My usual response,as I said before, was to ignore financial problems and hope they woulddisappear. Once I got around to admitting there was a problem, I woulddwell on the depressing state of affairs until I had a knot in my stomachand a headache. That evening, admitting that the rent was late was, foronce in my life, not so terrible: I could face it, knowing that during 60 sec-onds of my lunch break I had made enough money to pay a nice chunk ofthe rent.
A fter work that day, I bought my wife an iPod and hopped on the sub-
 
  
 
12 ADVENTURES OF A CURRENCY TRADER
After dinner, and when the kids were in bed, I retreated to our smallfamily room and I opened my wallet. Here is what I found:
¢ Regular identification¢ Six credit cards
I took out the cards one by one. I shifted them between my fingers.These would soon be history! My wife walked in and noticed what I wasdoing.
“I didn’t mean to worry you about the rent,” she said.
“I'm not worried at all,” I replied happily and put the cards away.
As I got ready for bed, I started to calculate in my mind everything thatwe owed. The total came to $24,000, give or take a few hundred. Ourmonthly payments on the cards were low—interest rates were falling—sothat wasn’t so bad. Sometimes I paid our rent from one of the cards. Butwhat was going to happen when the introductory low rates ended? Whatwas going to happen when we ran out of credit? Without trading, we weregoing to be screwed. I couldn’t believe how lucky I was to have found trad-ing—it had come along at just the right moment. My wife was trying to beas supportive as possible. But I knew that a big talk was coming betweenthe two of us, and it was not going to be an easy one. I wanted to be opti-mistic. Ignoring the problems wasn’t optimism, though. I had been lying tomyself, living in a daze, expecting to ignore my problems.
But now I didn’t have to ignore them anymore. I could face them, threehundred dollars at a time!
THE FIRST NIGHTMARE
 
At 2:00 in the morning, I woke up with my wife tossing violently at my side,and my golden retriever, Franklin (who slept in the bed with us), nudgingme to do something because he was worried but did not know how to help.Irubbed my eyes and looked at my wife, who was whispering somethingwhile she thrashed back and forth. It was obvious that she was having anightmare.
“We will pay you,” she said. It was eerie to see her speaking and tossingaround, with her eyes closed the entire time.
“We will pay you. We will pay you.”
She said it twice more, and then I put my hand on her shoulder to keepher from rolling over onto the floor, and spoke her name loud enough towake her up, but not so loud that it would scare her.
 
The Future Looks Bright 13
She bolted upright in bed and gripped my hand that had been on hershoulder, and then let out a huge gasp for air. She was covered in sweatand trembling.
I hugged her. “You were having a bad dream.”
A few moments passed before she could speak. “I did. I did have anightmare.”
I got her a drink of water and sat on the bed next to her. She laid herhead on my lap. “I heard you talking in your sleep,” I told her. “I heard youtalking about paying someone.”
“I’m worried about money, Harry.”
“T know.”
Franklin was now awake as well and was up on all fours, panting andready to go to battle for my wife.
“It’s okay Frank,” I told him. “I’m all right. Sorry we woke you up.”
“We can’t pay our rent,” Gini reminded me. She had only been awakefrom the nightmare for a few moments, but she was speaking clearly as ifshe had never been asleep. I heard the traffic outside our open windowthat was definitely not providing enough cool air. I kicked the sheets offthe bed.
Icould feel my heart pounding. This was not something that I could or-dinarily feel. Gini continued.
“And Judy needs a uniform for Girl Scouts.”
“Can we use a credit card?” I hated to even say the words.
She shook her head and I heard a sniffle. A street lamp sent light intoour room, and onto her face, where it reflected off a teardrop. She wipedher nose and sniffled.
“I don’t think we have any more credit.” She was probably right, espe-cially since I had charged $250 to a credit card to buy her the iPod.
Out of credit. Not good. Franklin stirred a bit, as if we had just de-stroyed his plans to order some dog biscuits online. I spoke up. I needed totake control of the situation and stop playing like I didn’t care.
“I think I know a way we can get out of this.”
She perked up a bit. It was obvious that she was so upset that any solu-tion seemed like a good idea, even if she had not heard it yet. I could havetold her that I was going to start a meth lab in our walk-in closet, and sheprobably would have gone along with it for a few moments. She felt as badabout not buying that Girl Scout uniform as if she had been unable to feedthe family. It was coming down to this: We were so far down the well thatwe could no longer see the light at the top.
“How?” she asked.
“I might be able to do some trading.”
Her head shot up. She wiped her nose and smiled. “Really?”
Her eyes were brighter.
 
  
 
14 ADVENTURES OF A CURRENCY TRADER
“What does that mean? Is it expensive?”
“No,” I said as I chuckled. “In fact, so far it has been paying for itself.” Iexplained the late night commercial, the clandestine purchase, the all-nighter at the office when I learned to use the software, and how I had al-ready started making money.
“How much?” she asked.
“Three hundred dollars.”
She lifted her head from my lap. “Three hundred dollars?” I could tellshe was amazed. Well, that’s what the software promised! This was good!This was not a crazy scheme to ask for another raise, especially now that Iwas probably the highest paid (overpaid) file manager in any U.S. law firm.This was a way to make money on the side! This was being sensible! Thiswas what the provider does! He thinks of real solutions that make sense towives.
In that moment, I remembered the iPod and felt even more proud ofmyself.
The obvious question came next: “What kind of trading is it?”
I hesitated. My wife was excited and I didn’t want to have an endlessdiscussion of the risks associated with trading. Honestly, I had hardly lis-tened to the risk disclaimers on the commercial, and thank goodness Ihadn’t paid more attention. I might never have bought it.
But I owed her the truth.
“Tt’s forex trading.”
“Flo-recks?” She was perplexed.
“No, forex, like ‘foreign exchange,’ or currencies. It’s like tradingstocks, only you trade currencies.”
“Wow. I didn’t know they did that.” I was really happy that she did notblow up the idea immediately. This emboldened me.
“Honestly, neither did I,” I admitted. “But it only took me about aminute to trade today.”
“So you can do it at work?”
“Well, at lunch. And after I get home.”
“At night?”
Inodded. “Yes, it’s a 24-hour market, so I can trade it anytime. It’s per-fect for keeping my job now and doing this on the side.”
“Can you make that much every day?” she asked, perhaps now morehopeful than I was. I decided a bit of restraint was in order.
“Well, not every day. Maybe that much. Maybe a bit less.”
She was doing numbers in her head. “That’s like nine thousand dollarsina month.” I could tell she was having trouble comprehending that I couldmake that much money.
“Well, there isn’t any trading on Saturday. So it’s less than that.”
“Still,” she spoke, putting her head back down on my lap. “That is somuch money. We could be out of debt in a few months.” She then said noth-
 
The Future Looks Bright 15
ing for a few minutes, and I knew what was coming next. Her head poppedback up: “Is this risky?”
I shrugged, trying to act cool. “For a beginner. For someone whodoesn’t know what he is doing. Sure. But I’ve got the software, and I amgoing to play it safe.”
“Can we lose the thousand dollars you put in?”
“I don’t think so. I’m only going to trade when the software tells me to.There are people making a lot of money from this. I watched it for a weekand it was just as amazing as they say—it was really making some incredi-ble trades.”
Skeptical but satisfied, she told me she just wanted to go back to bednow. I told her that before she did I wanted to give her a gift. I went into thehallway, opened my briefcase, and brought her the present.
When she unwrapped the iPod, she threw her arms around me andkissed me. “Can we afford this?” she asked.
“We can now,” I laughed. And with that, we went back to sleep, peace-fully and with hope of the brighter future that was now within our reach.
 
  
 
 
A Trip to theThirty-FirstFloor
 
Wakeman, Butterman, and Bailey, and all I did—and I am not making
this up—is file stuff away. Motions, briefs, interrogatories, settle-ments... you name it, I found a way to file it. This may sound like a boringjob, and that’s exactly what it was. It was like watching Brady Bunch re-runs while poking my eyeballs out with a fork. This is the type of job that aman will do anything to get fired from. And believe me, I tried. There weretimes when I wanted to eat my leg just to inject an interesting event intomy day.
While I never ate my leg, I did all sorts of other things to pass the time.I spent as much time as possible walking in between lawyers’ offices andthe filing area: We had 145 attorneys at the time, and I could waste a good25 minutes on the way to a lawyer’s office. I still finished all the work that Iwas supposed to do.
What got me the job in the first place was a pretty well connected fa-ther. Mine, to be exact. Harold Banes Sr. worked in the New York Metro-politan Transit Authority. He wasn’t an engineer. He didn’t dig tunnels or doanything cool like that either. He was a janitor. To put this into perspective,you need to pretend that you are in charge of cleaning up an area the sizeof a football field, only it’s made of secret passageways, it’s always eitherbelow zero or above 90 degrees, you enjoy the company of rats, and youconsider it a pleasure to call the police about once a week because some-one is living (or dying) in your work space. He’s retired now, but I imaginehe has nightmares in the same way as do Vietnam vets or abused pets.
[vse in midtown Manhattan for 11 years. I worked at the law firm of
16
 
A Trip to the Thirty-First Floor 17
He happened to work the same station that just about every singlelawyer from Wakeman, Butterman, and Bailey walked through every day.And over the years, he spoke to every one of those lawyers. He becamegood friends with many of them, and when I graduated from high school, Ihad already worked three summers in the filing office of the firm, thanks tohis relationships.
I wasn’t making a lot of money at the time, but I didn’t know it. I thinkthey were paying me $15 an hour, back in 1992. That seemed like a ton ofmoney to me then. But I certainly didn’t protect the money as if I thought itwas a lot. I spent it like money was coming out of the fire hydrants, and Ilived like there would be a raise every year. And that was fine for a longtime because it was just me, and I was living at home.
Soon enough though, my high school girlfriend and I were deciding toget married, and soon enough after that, we were having kids. Three, to beexact, in the first seven years of marriage. And now we had one more onthe way.
Every day for the past 11 years, I had taken an elevator up to the 44thfloor of a shining Manhattan skyscraper, to go to work at a job I didn’tmuch care for, for people I didn’t really think about unless they were stand-ing in front of me, to earn about $300 less per month than I needed to sur-vive (until now, ha!). And on the way up in that elevator, I passed floor afterfloor of other offices. I never really stopped to wonder who worked onthose floors.
Anyway, when I got up to my cubicle, Scott was waiting for me just ashe had done every day, for the past five years.
Today, he looked worried. This wasn’t normal. He was about the mostlaid-back guy in the world, but right now he looked as if someone hadcaught him smoking behind the front desk. For a moment, I worried thatthis had something to do with trading.
“You didn’t make any trades on my account, did you?”
He shook his head. I felt relief wash over me. I did not want him touch-ing the account or the software. I didn’t mind that he was now interested intrading, but I didn’t fully trust him.
“Dude, Herbie wants to see you,” he said, trying to seem as matter-of-fact as possible but really coming off as worried.
“Mr. Johnson?” Scott called him Herbie, always out of earshot, but allthe same I hated when he did that. When I heard the name “Herbie,” thename played over and over in my mind, and I worried that I might blurt itout sometime in front of Mr. Johnson.
Scott nodded quickly, like a child would do.
“Did he say what he wanted?” I asked, already dreading the encounterI was about to have. I had a lot of filing in front of me for the day, plusI wanted to trade again. I wanted to show my wife another good day of
 
  
 
18 ADVENTURES OF A CURRENCY TRADER
profits. Maybe I could go one more point past 30 today, and get $310. Thatwould be awesome.
“No, he didn’t say what he wanted,” Scott replied, interrupting my day-dream. “In fact, he just left a voice mail for you, which as usual I checkedbecause you never do.”
I smiled weakly. “I wanted to check the market before I got startedwith work today. It’s why I got here early.”
Scott nodded. “I’m sure you have a few moments. Let's fire it up.”
We did. And things were hopping! There were already seven AmazingForex orders open—all but two were profitable. I looked at the most re-cent order: It was an order to buy the British Pound against the U.S. Dol-lar—the GBP/USD—and the trade alert had just come through 5 minutesago. It was only 10 points in the negative right now.
Scott brightened up: “You can trade that right now and get a betterprice than they suggested.” I thought about it, and he was right: They hadsuggested buying the GBP/USD at 1.8100, and it was now at 1.8090. Thatmeant that we could get in on a profitable buy trade and at a better pricethan had originally been suggested. I opened my trading platform and en-tered the order.
Whoosh! I liked that sound. Now we only had to wait for the profit toappear. We also had to keep an eye on the Amazing software, so that wewould know when to exit. Yesterday we had exited in a gleeful pandemo-nium resulting from my first profit. But now I was committed to exiting thetrades when the software told me to. I rubbed my hands together. I forgotabout the filing that I needed to do. I expected the profit to come quicklyagain, but after a few moments had passed, the trade still did not budge. Iwas down $50.
“Why is it negative from the start?” I wondered aloud.
Scott answered quickly. “You've got to pay the spread. You can buy at aprice higher than what you can sell for. That’s how the broker makes hismoney.”
“Ahh,” I answered. The spread. Okay. That made sense. So I would benegative from the start of every trade. But Amazing Forex had been givingsuch good trades that usually I didn’t notice this. Minutes passed.
It was 8:29 a.m.
Theard a booming voice down the hall. It was Mr. Johnson. I heard myname being called and remembered that the big man wanted to see me.Oops. I had an open trade! I expected it to be closed by now. I was becom-ing uncomfortable with this trade out there in cyberspace. I should havesome profit by now!
“Harry, he wanted to see you first thing when you got in.”
“T know.”
“And he knows you get here every day at eight-fifteen A.M.”
 
A Trip to the Thirty-First Floor 19
“T know.”
What could I do?
Scott smiled at me and said: “I will get out of the trade right when thesoftware says to. You go talk to Herbie. Here’s a pen and a pad so you cantake notes while he is yelling, and here is a tissue in case he spits on you.”He handed me these things as if he were preparing me for battle.
I did not want to leave Scott in charge of my trade, but I had no choice.
“Don’t do anything else. Just close it when the software says to close it.”
“T will. I won't move.”
I started on my way to Herb’s office, glancing over the top of my cubi-cle on the way out. I couldn’t see the screen because I had moved my mon-itor. This meeting with Mr. Johnson could last for a half minute. Or it couldtake an hour.
Herb Johnson was the managing partner of the firm. Newly elected, hewas in the position he was because he could get things done. He was afirst-class operator. This Napoleon-shaped man could return two phonecalls, scribble down a defense strategy, and scream at an associate lawyerall at the same time. He had earned more money for the firm in fees thanany other attorney in the firm’s history, he had brought in more clients, hada reputation for speaking his mind clearly and loudly, and scared the crapout of anyone who worked for him. When I arrived at his office, he was al-ready screaming. Not at me yet, but at someone on the phone.
Instead of ending the phone call like most humans do, he simply putdown the phone—didn’t hang up, just put it down on the desk—and staredme down for a good 30 seconds.
Was he going to fire me? Maybe.
Promote me? No way.
Yell at me about missing documents? Oh, yes. That was going to be itfor sure.
“Banes, you've done it again,” he growled. I heard what he was saying,but I was really thinking about my trade. Could it be possible that I was al-ready making some money? Ohhh, money. How I loved it. How I longed tosee the trade! It must be very profitable by now. I wondered how long itgenerally took an Amazing Forex Profit System trade to reach its profit tar-get. Maybe I would call the company later that day and ask. But for now, Icould nearly smell the profit wafting over the cubicles to me; it was a sweetscent that I hoped to smell again many times that same day.
I imagined myself sitting by the midnight blue water, reclining on alounge chair. An attentive server was approaching me:
ATTENTIVE SERVER: Mr. Banes, would you like another drink?Me: Why yes. I'll have another virgin strawberry daiquiri.ATTENTIVE SERVER: Of course.
 
  
 
20 ADVENTURES OF A CURRENCY TRADER
Mr. Johnson was still yelling when I snapped back into the presenttense. He was blabbering about some lost file, some letter that surely de-manded legal redress for the wrongs done to our firm's client blah blahblah.
When Herbie was really upset, he growled, and his growling increasedas he talked. “It’s the most important file in this whole damn office, Banes.It’s the Anderson case, the trader. The bonus discrimination case.”
He said this as if I actually cared about Anderson, or his case, orwhether the file had been shredded with the receipts of Herbie’s gifts to hismistress. I did care about trading, though, and when Mr. Johnson said,“trader,” it made me even more excited to go check with Scott to see whathad happened.
I wrote some notes down on the pad of paper that Scott had given mewhile Mr. Johnson continued his tirade. I didn’t have to take any notesabout the case, which Mr. Johnson was now describing in the most specificdetail. I knew this case because it was on the front pages of every NewYork business section. We were representing a Wall Street firm—one of thebiggest securities firms in the world. The firm was accused of paying asmaller