"You either do something or you do nothing - and either one can hurt you." There was not a hint of excitement or worry in his voice. "When you decide to do something you have just two choices, either buy or sell."

This was a huge man in a perfectly white, perfectly starched shirt. The shirt attempted to contain what must have been his gargantuan animal body. The tops of his hands were hairy and his whole nature seemed held under by only a very thin veneer of starch and cotton.

"How much do you buy or sell?" he was asking and then answering his own questions because I had no idea what he was talking about. "That's already decided. You buy or sell as much as you possibly can. In this business, money is your ammunition... it's kinda like a war."

As we walked across the trading room, people that happened to be moving desperately about the room moved even more desperately to get out of our way, or out of his way, although I must admit their was nothing overtly menacing or hostile about him - it was just the presence of sheer power that seemed to cause the throngs to ripple away from him.

"When you trade something it costs a certain amount of money. If you're right, you get many times that amount back. But if you're wrong you lose it. And there are many players in this game, bigger ones even than us. And their willing to spend whatever they can to make sure that they're right and you're wrong. They can make you wrong just by outspending you. So you better count you're ammo. You can fight the individual players but you can't fight the market."

We had just about made it to the middle of the room when Mr.Lavine stopped for a moment. He seemed to be in a subdued moment of rapturous wonder, triggered by some internal thought process perhaps brought on by his monologue. He breathed deeply and smiled, the way that one would ordinarily if they were in the city park and had come across a patch of roses or some sweetly smelling foliage. All I could smell was the ink of computer printout terminals and the dry smell of huge amounts of cheap and freshly opened paper that seemed to be spitting out of everywhere and covering every square inch of floor.

"See those guys over there." he pointed to a little enclave of ferociously intent office-types, surrounded in what could have been a pill-box barricade of computers, terminals, and quote screens. "They can bury you when they decide to buy or sell against you. They are INCOM - institutional traders, you know, the big guns. When they move, the market moves with them... when they move, you move out of their way."

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