Signing Contracts

Michael arrived back in Austin in a great mood. He had finally taken care of the behemoth that was trying to snuff his young company out. He drove to his office to check on the traders. Last time he saw them was over a month ago; He gave each of them personal advice hoping that they would improve. It was time to see the results of his coaching.

He called each trader over and checked their performance. The results were better than last time. The initial four that performed well continued to do so. Out of the seven that had mediocre performance; five started showing great progress. Two out of the last four managed to overcome their gambling habits and broke even.

The 15 traders were given a total of 7.5 million dollars to trade. The total fund had increased to twenty million. It would be even higher if he ignored the lousy traders. Michael felt like he had seen enough to start offering contracts and properly inaugurate his Investment firm. The traders had been at his company for two months and he had learned enough about them to know which ones he wanted to offer contracts to.

Of course, The salary portion of the contract was left blank since he wanted to offer different salaries to each person based on their potential. The first trader Michael wanted to sign was Melvin Conner. Michael was planning to appoint Melvin as the manager that would supervise the traders.

Michael watched Melvin nervously shift around in the chair.

" Melvin, I called you here to offer you the employment contract. You have had quite some time to look over it. Are you interested in working at Empyreal Holdings for the next ten years?" Michael asked.

Melvin gulped and drank a glass of water before answering. " I would love to sir." He would be an idiot to turn down such a great opportunity. A contracted trader was treated on a completely different level compared to the interns. The salary jumped to $9,000 per month; The benefits were probably better than any other company in the world. Each trader would also get a year-end bonus that was a percentage of their earnings.

Of course, the biggest advantage that contracted traders had was that every week Michael would send them a report. The report would list undervalued stocks and other profitable opportunities in the market. Initially, all the traders were skeptical of Michael's expertise; however, as he started giving everyone advice, they realized that he was a trading prodigy. If they could get tips from him every week, then they were guaranteed to make huge profits.

" That is great. I do have another request though. I was looking for a manager to supervise the traders; would you be willing to accept the position?" Michael asked.

Melvin was taken back by the request; he did not expect to be asked to take on this much responsibility. " Honestly, I just want to trade with the funds assigned to me; although I like to help others. I am not sure I will be a good supervisor."

Michael smiled at Melvin's response. He knew that Melvin did not believe in his own management skills since he has never taken that role before; however, Michael knew something that Melvin did not. Melvin had an Advanced management affinity making him the highest talent in the office; with the exception of Jennifer. So he was confident that Melvin would perform well as a manager; Michael just needed to ease Melvin into the position.

" How about this, For the next two months track the progress of all the traders and send me a report each week. Give all the traders a score based on their performance and progress. You don't have to manage; just evaluate them. See if you like the extra responsibilities and we can go from there." Michael suggested.

Melvin reluctantly agreed to take on the extra responsibilities and left the office. Michael continued the talk with all the traders. He ended up offering contracts to 11 traders that showed improvements. The rest were fired; out of the initial 25, only 11 had become contracted traders. Not to mention that the initial 25 was selected from a list of hundreds of candidates, so one can tell how difficult it was to find talented traders.

All the contracted traders were called to the conference room. It was time for them to get the accounts that they would trade with. Furthermore, they also wanted to know what would happen to their old practice accounts.

Michael walked in and started explaining the details of their accounts.

" First, The current balance from the practice account will carry on over to your main accounts. However, you are allowed to withdraw 10% of your profits."

The traders were flabbergasted by the announcement. Although 10% might not seem like much; for the leading traders that would amount to six-figure bonuses. Everyone here would take at least $50,000 home.

Then, Michael started passing out folders. " These folders contain your main broker account details. Everyone will start with a 5 million dollar balance."

People were still trying to recover from the shock of the previous statement when Michael dropped another bombshell. They all expected to start with 1 million dollars at most; however, Michael handed out 55 Million dollars like it was nothing.

Michael had his own reasons for giving out so much money. He knew more than anyone else that the more capital you had, the more profits you can make. He already verified the skills of all the traders so there was no point in having them trade with small amounts anymore. The truth about money was that you need money to make money. In reality, he wanted to give everyone double the amount but he had been low on cash recently.

Due to dedicating all his attention on the breakthrough for the past month, Michael had not gotten a chance to trade personally. His current balance was at $250 million dollars; because he spent so much money on the skills. He would need to spend some time earning back some of the capital before he can go on a spending spree again.

Michael finished the meeting and dismissed everyone; he then drove to the college to talk to an advisor about switching to an online degree. He managed to sign up for a distance learning program that allowed him to finish the courses online at his own pace. He also signed up for a fast-track degree plan that would double his course load but allow him to graduate in three years instead of the initial four.

With everything sorted out Michael had his schedule filled up for the next two months. He would be busy trading, studying, and finishing his courses.