This post is an idea for a potential TV show. Basically, this deals with the information technology (IT) aspect of the financial markets of the world, but mainly American markets.
So Shay is the lead character in this show. Shay just got hired to be the head IT guy at the trading firm Rothstein and Bateman (R&B). In a nutshell, this show will accurately highlight how the IT industry affects financial markets. It’s going to tackle issues related to social engineering via cyber hacks and social media, the hardware used for trading, how the speed of data helps traders, and how the IT industry is trying to battle these problems.
Social engineering helped the stocks of GameStop (GME) and AMC rise to heights never seen before. How did social engineering occur in this instance? Zerohedge.com basically started this. They put out the short volume on the GME stock and asked on Twitter “is this real?” After this people naturally found /r/wallstreetbets (WSB) and boom the meme stock mania began. Why was it zerohedge.com that caused this? It comes down to the audience of zerohedge’s website. These are millennial and generation z men who come from middle-class backgrounds that are prone to more right-wing minded politics. Also the timing of this. The real boom in GME and AMC came right after January 6, 2021. When a bunch of idiots stormed the Capitol. Basically there needed to be a way to distract these people from the political radicalization going on at the time and divert it into something that might quell their frustrations and it worked like a charm. So why were AMC and GME chosen for this? It comes down to risk management and the easy memes that would come out of it. The risk management is that AMC and GME are not very relevant companies and it would not matter if they failed or succeeded. Now a company like Wal-Mart cannot have this kind of blatant manipulation. Wal-Mart as a company is critical to the global economy and any manipulation of its stock could cause serious problems for things like pension funds, taxes, and prices of goods that Wal-Mart sells. In other words, use irrelevant companies to avoid the chaos it would cause if done to a relevant company. Another aspect of risk management has to do with seeing how retail traders (investors who trade casually) can be controlled. Basically, the people that control Wall Street have given the WSB people a tradeoff: the big whigs will use targeted algorithms to help promote shit stocks that the WSB people can pump and dump with little legal damages as long as they leave alone the stocks that play a critical role in humanity’s day to day operations. This benefits both sides.
Shay’s job in R&B begins with him enabling MAC filtering on the local area network (LAN) so that traders won’t get hacked by anyone outside the company. MAC filtering prevents unauthorized devices from accessing a network.
R&B specializes in trading stocks that are focused on the banking industry. This is a critical fact. The way IT solutions are different depends on what industry a trading firm specializes in. A company that specializes in trading banking stocks needs to be sure that the information they analyze and receive from external sources is accurate and not malware. If a big company like R&B shorted JP Morgan due to faulty information, then that could have a big impact on the banking industry and cause panic that could have been easily avoided by enabling simple e-mail filtering. A company that specializes in pharmaceutical stocks wants to make sure its IT department thoroughly vets people who claim to be medical experts.
Shay works with typical Wall Street douchebags who fuck hookers and do cocaine. Shay parties with them sometimes. Shay’s job as an IT administrator is to also make sure that extortion material doesn’t leak from his partying coworkers. For example, Todd got caught snorting cocaine off of a transvestite hooker’s dick and a picture was taken by a representative of a competitor company. The representative threatens to leak this photo if Todd doesn’t share company practices with him. Shay’s job is to make sure this image goes away and isn’t accessed by doing forensic recovery. Todd is critical to the company and they cannot afford to fire him. Note: Wall Street is a fucked up place and the police do nothing about things like hookers and cocaine when it pertains only to Wall Street. It’s a Wild West type of thing. Police can be easily bribed when dealing with murder and rape.
Shay’s boss is a man named John Mondapha. The boss is a guy who also partakes in hookers and coke, and he has Patrick Bateman and Christian Grey vibes to him. Basically, his biggest issue with people like Todd is that they don’t know how to do these things discreetly. Mondapha is a guy with really fucked up sexual urges, but he is very organized. When he pays a hooker for her services he is very upfront about what he is into. The guy likes dungeons and enjoys playing out a rape fantasy with a little blood mixed in. He makes them sign NDA’s right after and tasks Shay with making sure they don’t tell people about it by hacking the phones of these women and seeing who they talk to. He always tasks Shay with making sure the potential hooker isn’t a cop or an extortion trap by his competitors. The boss is a mentor to Shay and teaches him the principles of investing. Mondapha does everything he can to make Shay happy as he knows Shay is the only person who has the resources to ruin him. This plays out big time in the series when Shay needs Mondapha’s help in covering up a heinous crime. Mondapha uses Shay’s IT skills to extort competitors and get any legal insider information he can possibly get. The show will focus heavily on hacking and how it’s done. Also, it will focus on how to get information voluntarily from people who think they have any power. Note: Mondapha helps Shay prosper financially but unintentionally turns Shay into a sociopath. Think about how Tony Soprano fucked up Christopher Moltisanti, except Shay is actually competent and doesn’t need Mondapha to babysit him.
Remember, the police are irrelevant on this show. But the NSA, CIA, SEC, and FBI are very much involved. The NSA is there to investigate irregularities in who has been accessing critical documents. The CIA is there to launder money and do covert psychological operations via R&B. The SEC is there to investigate trading ethics. The FBI is there to cover up murders and other despicable crimes. The NSA and SEC are considered adversarial. FBI and CIA are considered allies. FBI and CIA help R&B when dealing with NSA and SEC. However, the help will stop if Mondapha doesn’t play ball. The CIA and FBI work out arrangements with New York City’s district attorney’s office to keep relevant players safe.
The other IT aspect that the show will explore is how much energy is consumed by the trading of certain stocks. Using aggregation software to track what YouTubers and WSB are talking about and see if we can spot a trend that they aren’t aware of yet, but are talking about.
Another aspect to using IT for markets will be the use of indirect communication channels that heads of top firms will use to communicate with each other via mathematical placement through algorithms. The current laws of the United States are not caught up with the technology we have now and that is a very easy way to get away with insider trading.
Shay’s interpersonal drama is big in this. He comes from a conservative Nepalese household and he is trying to find a balance between being a good Nepali boy and being a Wall Street douchebag. His relationship with his wife Anisha begins to deteriorate as the series progresses. When Mondapaha teaches Shay to make “fuck you money” it turns him into a dick, and Shay covering up heinous crimes turns him into a sociopath who forces himself to get rid of his emotions. Anisha at first tolerated Shay constantly cheating on her, but she started getting insanely uneasy with it when Shay started seeing a Nepalese side chick. Little did Shay know the side chick was a plant by competitors of R&B who wanted to distract Shay from the great job he was doing at R&B. The side bitch, Kanchan is a major point of contention in the series. Anisha brings up Shay’s cheating ways to his parents…(try and guess what happens next). Shay’s personal life is way more intertwined with his professional life than he realizes. His wife is being socially engineered, and he knows it, but she doesn’t, and if he tells her she will ask questions that could get her killed. The only question now is: Who is socially engineering Shay? Is he arrogant enough to think he’s not susceptible to it? Is this a question Shay could handle the answer to?