The Palm Reader's Bull

Marcus stared at his palm, the lifeline blurred by sweat. Another 3 AM staring at screens. Another morning feeling like a zombie—dead but still walking, still trading, still pretending he gave a damn about the bull market that had made him rich and empty.

'You're going to crash,' Sarah had said three months ago, when she packed her things. 'And this time, I won't be there to watch.'

She was right. The bear was coming—he could feel it in his bones, the way animals sensed earthquakes. But none of these young guns listened. They'd never seen a real crash. They thought numbers only went up.

'Chief?' Emma from the junior desk stood in his doorway, looking impossibly awake. 'The Singapore desk needs you on the line.'

Marcus nodded, his palm hovering over the mouse. His own father had died at this desk, heart attack at fifty-two. Marcus was forty-eight. The math didn't comfort him.

'Chief?'

'Coming.' He stood, knees popping. His father had called it 'the bull's revenge'—the way the market turned on you, gored you when you least expected. But his father had never understood. It wasn't the bull or the bear that killed you. It was the becoming—the slow zombie walk toward numbers that meant less than nothing, while everything that actually mattered slipped through your fingers like sand.

He sat back down. There was always tomorrow. Always one more trade. Always the lie that this time, it would be enough.