“This is Catriel, the Stonks Girl, signing in for another day at the trading floor! Our tip menu is on the screen and the room topic! Welcome, all of you.”
The usual suspects entered the chat room, among a lot of curious passersby and a few listeners for several media outlets and other interested groups, for whatever reason. She’d changed her watermark to, “For entertainment purposes only, not financial advice. Clothed Model. No naughty requests.” Which was a mouthful but saved her a lot of trouble.
Now that she wasn’t desperate for money anymore and could use the Bloomberg laptop to its full potential, she didn’t need to sell her body on pay-per-view anymore. She wouldn’t quit the studio because she was afraid the demon’s curse would make her lose the small savings she already accumulated. Her clothing was always daring but still something a girl could wear in public or at the mall without any trouble for public indecency. Just a lot of stares and raised eyebrows.
But Catriel was a character who day-traded from the comfort of her bedroom. Since she couldn’t look at both laptop and chatroom screens at the same time, the chroma key backdrop was a window for the viewer to have her POV. The “Stonks Girl” had eyes only for her candlestick charts. Her character haughtily deigned to show the viewers her nylon-clad feet and a little leg meat. Following one lightning-flinging Misaka Mikoto’s recommendations, absolutely no panties on camera as she dutifully double-checked for any wardrobe malfunctions before she started the stream.
Her chatroom visitors dwindled as those eager to see the sinful flesh wandered to other chatrooms where that product was in ample stock (and basically free by Economic supply and demand). But those that remained in her odd hours in such a nightly profession were exactly the kind of people most webcam models would drool from all sorts of lips for. Loaded with money.
She was thankful the culture of tipping was so ingrained in American society. Most of her Wall Street patrons tipped her fifty tokens when joining the room in the morning, to which she cooed and trilled to show how thankful she was for the literal quarter they threw into her virtual hat. But that was not all. She learned when each trader and broker would take a break and shower them with affection and emotional support to withstand another grueling day in the chaotic financial scenario the US found themselves thrown in by demonic design.
The trust fund “lockalypse” as a media outlet coined it, was most probably directed at her but it affected everyone that relied on such instruments for asset protection. People to whom the Wallenstein millions looked like a wealthy middle-class household portfolio, billionaires, and the old money.
Forbes’ famous list of the wealthiest was opt-in, a truth most didn’t know. The old money, the Methuselahs of the eight-figure and up net worth back when a dollar could entertain a man for a whole night at a saloon of questionable repute here in the West, they didn’t care about fame or exposure. Their wealth was so tied up with the very social structures people depended on and so hidden under hundreds of layers of anonymity that the sensationalist media couldn’t fathom them.
Citing just one example, where are the Rockefellers in such a ranking? Does one truly believe the heirs of the once greatest fortune in America squandered their gains? Or that they didn’t grow their wealth during all these years. No. The wealthiest rankings only rated those whose fortunes were tied to publicly traded companies or who parroted their own net worth, like a certain orange-faced real estate tycoon. Truly private and undisclosed (believing the IRS gets their due filings in time) wealth is unknown and out of the tabloids.
And yet the “lockalypse” affected them. It affected most of the Congress representatives too. Its ramifications shook the global economy. It sent ripples of uncertainty and instability. Emerging economies like India, Brazil, and others suffered heavy losses just because of speculative forces. And Catriel surfed these market fluctuations like Maya Gabeira in Praia do Norte
It spread among the Wall Street bankers that there was this young girl who traded with bloodhound instincts, and played her Bloomberg laptop like a renaissance virtuoso played their piano. Days before Theresa would leave Las Vegas and return to College in Wyoming, she became aware of that uncanny ability to time the market. When she was trading, things just made sense. All the graphs and tickers and news appeared in her mind’s eye as a web of causality that pointed to what she should buy or sell.
Her results were mind-baffling. She seldom completed any full trades at a loss and delivered constant results, getting solid profits every day. Her return rates in a single day were what most funds earned in years. She asked one of Rothman & Sullivan’s branch businesses to open a Nevada LLC as a nominee and then resign on her behalf to give her anonymity on her business. She was making so much money that somebody would soon end up bringing her to court so they could get some quick easy cash.
To the educated audience she attracted, it was obvious they were before a diamond in the rough. She received dozens of job offers and inquiries about her services, which she declined out of fear of breaking the deal with the demon. She also received some complaints with copycats that attempted to emulate her transactions to varying degrees of success, all worse than what she obtained. To solve that, she added a delay to her open stream, of about five seconds. That made it too late for anyone watching to tag along in her day trading.
She recognized what the Shaman said about “triple the mind”. From the piano and ballet lessons to making market analysis in a split-second, she had three times the mental celerity and retention of a normal person but not the intellect. Just as three people together didn’t a genius make, she hadn’t any enhanced intellect. But she could take decisions and learn as if a team of three people was working in perfect synchrony. Or four if you counted Catherine inside her head.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
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Sunk in one of the studio’s beanbag chairs, Cat checked her shell LLC account statement. Three and a half million dollars. The results of a frantic month of camming and trading. She routed the money to other companies for asset protection and sent the statements to the NY office so they knew what to do when they had to file her taxes. Without the offshores, she had little hope of enacting her tax avoidance strategies. She also made the maximum deposit to her Roth IRA and the 401(k) of one of her new holdings where she was listed as an employee. To get around the demon’s curse, this holding had a seat on the board of a sex toy manufacturer, therefore filling the demonic curse requirement that it had to be related to sinful action.
“I’m ready to go!” Theresa came out of her bedroom with her luggage on a cart. “Aww don’t make this face kitty-cat! I’ll be back for the summer! And if you feel really lonely, why don’t you enroll in our college? I can be your senior and I’d love to haze you.”
“I bet you would. But you are so eager to swap me for that cinephile roommate of yours, I think I’d get jealous if I saw you with her.”
Theresa hugged her. “Don’t be like that! Look, I bet you’d be besties in a flash. You have this hidden nerdy side of yours and now that you are a shaman’s disciple, you’d fit right in with her eco-activist projects. Besides, she’s just as gorgeous and elegant as you are.”
“We shall see. When and if all this ends, I might do that. I need a degree to get the next level of FINRA certifications anyway.”
Mr. Mouser scratched Theresa’s pants for attention. She picked up the feline and rubbed his belly. Satisfied, Mr. Mouser jumped on Cat’s arms and made himself comfortable.
“I’ll miss you too, furball.”
“Let’s get you downstairs,” Cat took the cart and pulled it toward the elevator. “Call an Uber.”
She repaid the favor by taking Theresa to the airport, watching her new friend disappear behind the gate doors. Then it was back to the studio for another day of streaming. Another day of trading.
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The military claimed the Little Valley and bought half a dozen farms at the foot of the trail leading up the mountains, at the shores of the Washoe Lake. They started to build a military base using premade concrete canvas tents to get basic facilities before they could build actual concrete buildings. Cat flew from Las Vegas to the base every Friday night after the NYSE trading floor closed, to vet the new soldiers Saturday morning. She noticed most new soldiers had Native American ascendancy.
Mining in Little Valley was a slow and gruesome endeavor. They needed to dig the mine shaft without explosives and the mountain stone was unforgiving hard. This problem was only made worse because they couldn’t just throw as many men into the problem as they could, given that every soldier-turned-miner needed to be purified by the Washoe shaman before entering the sacred valley.
There was also the problem of the ski resort on the lakeside of the mountains. The military had to shut down the traditional Tahoe Rim Trail that came too close to the mountain peaks, for safety. With ski season in full throttle, it wasn’t a popular decision but the enemy could use that as a point of attack and it was hard to figure out who was under demonic influence or not. The only way they knew was to use Mr. Mouser.
Cat worried a bit about her companion because she had no idea what Alice did to him. She still trusted the [Monster Tamer] and was grateful she had the presence of spirit to put in place this extra layer of safety. She could only hope she also made the feline more resilient because Mr. Mouser’s defensive instincts could put him in trouble. She didn’t want to see her animal hurt.
In her sessions with the Shaman, Cat learned about the Washoe culture. They were never a large tribe but what they lacked in the headcount they had in dedication. They saw themselves as the guardians and stewards of the Tahoe Lake and the alpine forests surrounding the massive body of water. If they had their way, they’d turn the whole lake into a wildlife reserve as many endangered mountain species lived there and recent developments saw the water quality plummet.
At the height of winter, the Shaman and she hopped over the mountains on the military helicopter to spend the weekend camping around the lake. The Washoe Shaman knew every single rock and shale of the lake margin and she often gazed on the distance or talked with apparently nobody. Cat felt envious at the Shaman’s powers but swallowed on that envy hard. She had her own advantages.
Catherine relished the opportunity to talk to someone else than her host. She was absolutely nuts about the weekend and the one that convinced Cat to fly to the base Friday night so she could spend more time with the Shaman.
“This lake is the home of many spirits. It is an ancient place of power. Now, the spirits of the water are restless as the motorboats stir the waters and the sewage of the vacation houses is dumped on the lake without processing. The people are drinking their own shit,” she laughed in her peculiar way.
“I appreciate the sentiment,” the Shaman replied, “but this won’t be necessary. Our people dwindles, the spirits are tired. The world has changed.”
“If only a bunch of demon cultists hadn’t locked down most fortunes in the country,” Cat sighed.
The trust fund situation was getting out of hand, with several families on the warpath. Oliver reported that absolutely nobody had any luck in courts to unlock the assets. A lot of pressure was on Congress to fix this mess and the market was very volatile. On the other hand, a volatile market was a paradise for a shrewd day trader like Cat. At this point, she could quit camming because she earned more money from trading than from the website tips. She’d closed her account on four of the nine she started once they indirectly complained she wasn’t raking in as many tokens as she could should she be open to showing her unmentionables on camera.
During the day they hiked, going around the lake, and learning about the medicinal plants the lake had to offer and the history of the people. At night, they would bivouac in sleeping bags next to a campfire. The temperature never dropped to uncomfortable levels and Cat suspected the Shaman had something to do with that.
“Now it’s Galais, Winter, and the plant spirits rest. In the days of our grandfathers, you either have food or you didn’t, but the sacred pines kept us from starving,” The shaman showed her fur coat. “Our people clad themselves in the fur of rabbits and other mountain animals to keep us warm. But Galais is the season to tell stories, to make sure our customs survive,” she laughed. “The children didn’t have anywhere to do but listen to the elders rambling!”
The three women laughed and ate fresh fish they’d caught in the lake along with roasted piñon nuts, the sacred nut of the Washoe. Fishing was ridiculously easy. Cat felt sometimes as if someone was underwater hooking the fish to her line.