The Intern Who Stayed After Midnight

The first file was called "Narratives." In it he tracked what companies said, what analysts repeated, what investors seemed to believe, and what the numbers actually supported. The second was called "Pressure." It tracked short interest, borrow cost, options skew, credit default swap changes, inventory cycles, and insider selling. The third was called "Lies That Have Not Yet Mattered." By the third week, he had become useful enough to be exploited. An analyst covering consumer discretionary, Ellen Shaw, asked him to update a model for NorthBridge Outfitters, a mall-based apparel chain everyone considered dead but too obvious to short.