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2.1 A Little Too Nice
Air Date: 4/2/2012 Daniel and Paix discover that the stock exchange they developed for trading good deeds is actually being used to trade sexual favors. Daniel wants to shut the exchange down completely. Paix wants to let it run. As a compromise, Paix suggests filtering out the undesired transactions. Debra comes to have lunch with Daniel. She spots Paix's list of forbidden expressions on Daniel's desk and accuses Daniel of cheating on her with Paix. Daniel explains the list of expressions, but Debra isn't convinced Daniel isn't cheating on her. Debra plants a test for Daniel by forging an email to Daniel from Paix inviting him to do sexual favor number 36. Daniel calls Paix into his office to decline her supposed proposal. Hilarity ensues. Finally Debra commends Daniel for not taking Paix up on her fictitious offer. |
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1.7 Our New Status
Air Date: 10/9/2011 Debra enters Daniel's office and asks him to pick a restaurant for lunch. Daniel offers several suggestions, none of which are acceptable to Debra, who has already booked a reservation at an expensive French restaurant. They go to the French restaurant. On their return, Debra suggests they buy a bigger home that suits their new status. Daniel says he's out of money, having used his signing bonus to pay Debra's debt from trading call options. Debra informs Daniel that she has already obtained a $1,000,000 bridge loan to cover the down payment. Daniel insists that they not buy a house, because he is worried about losing his job if and when his firm loses a ton of money. After Debra leaves, Paix enters Daniel's office to check on the Niceness Exchange. It's looking good at first, but then the stock market tanks and alarms start sounding. Sam enters and says there are going to be a lot of DKed trades, where the counterparty claims to have no knowledge of the trade. |
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1.6 To Keep Paix
Air Date: 9/25/2011 Paix discovers that the firm makes money off of securities owned by customers by lending them out to other people. She storms into Sam's office and threatens to raise the issue with Congress. Sam implores her not to do that. Paix asks Daniel about the practice. He says it is pretty standard on Wall Street. Paix threatens to leave the firm. Daniel goes to Sam and asks Sam to stop lending out customer securities. Daniel tells Sam that Paix is thinking of leaving. Given that the firm doesn't make much money from lending, Sam agrees to stop it. |
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1.5 Go Niceness Exchange
Air Date: 9/11/2011 Paix and Daniel have a ribbon-cutting ceremony to inaugurate the opening of the Niceness Exchange, the stock exchange for trading good deeds. The second Daniel starts the Niceness Exchange, it gets a high hit rate. Meanwhile, Sam calls Paix into her office and asks her to fix a bug in the firm's portfolio monitoring system. This causes Paix to miss the first day of the Niceness Exchange. She returns to Daniel's office after market close and is happy to learn that the Niceness Exchange had a successful first day. |
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1.4 A Little Capital
Air Date: 8/28/2011 Paix and Daniel look over the encouraging results of the simulation of Paix's proposed stock exchange for niceness. They take the idea for the exchange to Sam. When Paix and Daniel enter Sam's office, he is on the phone with his personal assistant. He's having difficulty arranging a vacation to an island with lots of sophisticated women that isn't too sunny where they speak French and serve low fat food. Paix and Daniel present the idea for the niceness exchange to Sam and ask him for some capital to try it out. When Sam refuses, Paix starts meditating very loudly. Finally Sam agrees to start the niceness exchange off with a $50,000,000 maximum gross position, with the proviso that he'll shut it down if it doesn't make substantial money within three months. |
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1.3 Helping People
Air Date: 8/14/2011 Paix enters Daniel's office with a yoga mat and teaches Daniel her yoga moves. Afterwards, Paix asks Daniel to consider whether what they are doing at the firm is helping people. Daniel argues that their arbitrage trading helps people by improving market efficiency and adding liquidity. Paix says that's not what she had in mind and proposes a system that incentivizes being nice, a kind of stock exchange for niceness. Daniel thinks it is a bit farfetched. Paix asks Daniel to build a simulation of the system to prove that it works. |
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1.2 Sample Size
Air Date: 7/31/2011 Daniel's wife Debra asks Daniel to transfer $100,000 into her bank account. Daniel says he doesn't have a spare $100,000. After Daniel tells Debra about Sam's $90,000,000 bonus, Debra urges Daniel to get Sam to hire him at a very high price. Daniel is reluctant because he doesn't think Sam knows what he's doing. When Debra confess that she has actually lost $500,000 trading call options, Daniel agrees to go work for Sam. Sam welcomes Daniel to his new office and asks him to develop a pricing algorithm for Thursday's long bond auction. Paix, one of Sam's other employees, enters Daniel's office and meets him for the first time. |
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1.1 Wall Geek
Air Date: 4/16/2011 Sam is Daniel's boss in the information technology department of a large Wall Street firm. They are working on a skunkworks project to design a trading strategy that will make a ton of money. Before Daniel considers the strategy ready, Sam pitches it to the firm. Sam is informed that trading strategies are not his job, whereupon Sam resigns from the firm. He invites Daniel to join him in starting a new fund. Daniel declines and Sam leaves. Sam's fund is wildly successful, and Sam takes home a $90,000,000 bonus for the year. |