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It’ll be tough to find the time, with my schedule jam-packed until the weekend, but for Emma, I’ll clear one evening.
“Actually, I told Janie this week is no good,” Emma says. “With the move and everything, it’s just too crazy. Plus, I haven’t seen Kendall in a while, and I’m hoping we can do something over the weekend with her. But maybe we’ll see Janie next week, if that’s okay with you? Wednesday, perhaps?”
“That works. As long as it’s not right before the Alpha Zone conference, I’m good,” I say and pull out my phone to make a note in my calendar.
When I put the device away, Emma asks me about the conference and what Alpha Zone means, and I explain that “alpha” is the excess investment return compared to a benchmark—the true measure of a fund’s performance.
“Nowadays, it’s cheap and easy to invest in something like an S&P 500 index fund and get the same returns as the market,” I tell her. “The challenge is consistently outperforming, and that’s where investing acumen comes in. The Alpha Zone is an association of all of us who hunt for alpha, whether in the traditional sense of outperforming a given benchmark or simply getting the best possible returns. Most of the members are hedge funders like myself, but there are also venture capitalists, currency traders, private equity guys, traditional asset managers, real estate investors, and anyone else who’s in some way in the alpha generation business—and is successful at it.”
“So what is the conference for?” Emma asks. “Just to rub shoulders with other big-shot alpha hunters?”
I flash her a grin. “Pretty much. We also pitch an investment idea for the coming year, and at the following year’s event, we see whose idea performed the best.”
“Ah, I see. So your reputation is on the line.”
“Exactly.”
I ask about her day next, and Emma tells me about a new client who pinged her for developmental edits—those are apparently the hardest—and how the holidays are bringing more customers to the bookstore. Then she asks about the meeting that delayed me tonight, and I explain about the IPO we’re investing in this week. The meeting was with the company’s CFO, and it ran late because he’s based on the West Coast. Since she seems interested, I go over the merits of the investment, and she listens attentively, occasionally interrupting with astute questions. Though my kitten has no finance background, she appears to have an intuitive grasp of the risk-reward calculation that goes into investing decisions, as well as a knack for cutting through the fluff and succinctly summarizing the issues at hand.
“You know, you would’ve made a great equity research analyst,” I tell her as Geoffrey brings out our dessert—a fruit salad drizzled with chocolate syrup. “Those are the guys who publish many of the reports I read. With your way with words, you’d have quite a following—especially if your stock recommendations were more right than wrong.”
She grins, spearing a plump strawberry. “Are they often wrong?”
“On average? About fifty percent of the time.”
“Really? Then why does anyone read those reports?”
“For the information.” I bite into a juicy piece of pear. “These analysts do quite a bit of research on the companies they cover, and their reports often give a good overview of the business model, the competitive landscape, and such. That’s their real value add, not their opinion on whether the stock is a buy or sell. Professional investors like myself make those decisions on their own.”
“Ah, I see. So are all published stock recommendations useless?”
I smile at her. “Pretty much. Don’t tell your grandfather, though. I gave him access to our equity research database today, and he’s in seventh heaven.”
Emma laughs, shaking her head, and forks a chocolate-drizzled raspberry into her mouth. Right away, her eyes close, and a blissful expression appears on her face. “Mmm,” she moans through a mouthful. “This is so, so good…”
My heart rate jacks up, my mind flooding with images of how she looks when I’m inside her. That expression is very similar to the one she’s wearing, and my hands itch to reach across the table and pull her to me, so I can kiss the lips she’s licking at this very moment.
If it weren’t for Geoffrey in the kitchen, that’s exactly what I’d do.
She must know the effect she’s having on me because when she opens her eyes, her mouth curves in a sweetly seductive smile and she reaches across the table to lay her small, soft palm on my hand.
“This is delicious, but I think I’m full,” she murmurs, regarding me from underneath her lashes—which, I notice, are longer and darker than usual, as if she’d put on some makeup. “How about you?”
With her teasing me like this, I’m hard enough to break stone, but that’s not what she’s asking. “I couldn’t eat another bite,” I growl, standing up. “So if you’re full, how about we—”
