Chapter 162 Wasting Resources
"I am Shen Lan, a visiting professor at the business school."
The woman looked at Su Wei and, for the first time, introduced herself. Her tone was no longer the anxious and condescending one she had used before, but rather one of complete equality and scrutiny. Su Wei nodded, without introducing herself.
Shen Lan looked at the girl in front of her.
He wore a thin shirt, had a pale face, and held a slightly chipped thermos in his hands.
Apart from the unusual calmness in his eyes, there was nothing particularly unusual about him.
Shen Lan doesn't believe in the magic of photographic memory; she only believes in logic and stress testing.
The example of the binding error mentioned earlier might just be a coincidence; perhaps the girl happened to have flipped through that book a few days ago and happened to see the error. On Wall Street, a data source that cannot pass continuous cross-testing is absolutely not allowed to be integrated into the core model.
Shen Lan's gaze sharpened, and without warning, she spoke directly.
"Analysis Report on Implied Volatility Anomalies in the Nikkei 225 Index in March 1996".
Shen Lan spoke very quickly, as if issuing a search command.
Su Wei didn't even blink.
"Review of Financial Studies, Spring 1996." Su Wei's voice remained calm and clear, unaffected by Shen Lan's faster pace.
"Page 214, that's a comprehensive report, with charts spanning three pages, from page 214 to page 216." Shen Lan's pupils contracted slightly.
She didn't check the bookshelf, because she had just looked up this data in another database last week, and she clearly remembered the source of the report. Su Wei even gave the page numbers perfectly.
"1992, Rubinstein."
Shen Lan directly issued the second instruction, even omitting the specific direction and only providing the year and the person's name.
Su Wei tightened her grip on the thermos.
But the pause lasted for less than half a second.
"An exploration of early pricing models for the Votility Smile."
Su Wei picked up on the information that Shen Lan had omitted.
Shen Lan paused for a moment.
"Journal of Business, Summer 1992," Su Wei continued, stating the coordinates.
Page 45.
Su Wei paused for a moment, seemingly recalling the specific image from that page in her mind.
"The subscript of the derived formula in the third line of the second paragraph is printed incorrectly."
Su Wei looked at Shen Lan.
"The variable 't' that should represent time was printed as variable 'i'. If we directly copy the formula, the entire time series derivation will collapse." Shen Lan stared intently at Su Wei.
She did not issue a third instruction.
no need.
Two extremely obscure searches, spanning different years and journals, and even including a specific printing error, have completely shattered any semblance of a coincidence. Shen Lan understood perfectly what this meant.
This is not because of a good memory.
This is how, in the brain, tens of thousands of messy and incomplete physical journals were painstakingly transformed into a multi-dimensional inverted index database. It not only indexed book titles and authors, but even typos, missing symbols, and binding errors were all tagged and added to this database. It's practically a humanoid computer in human skin.
In 2004, no civilian computer or campus network database could do this.
The most troublesome and critical bottleneck in the quantitative project she just took over after returning to China is the lack of a tool to quickly clean and extract raw historical data from the 1990s. The few graduate students in China are driving them crazy trying to find data, and even when they do find it, they often feed incorrect or incomplete data directly into the model.
Shen Lan placed the heavy book she was holding on the cart next to her.
She looked at Su Wei.
"What's your name?" Shen Lan asked.
"Su Wei."
"What year?"
"A sophomore in the gifted youth program."
A look of realization flashed across Shen Lan's eyes. No wonder she had such an illogical photographic memory and reverse indexing ability.
Shen Lan's gaze passed over Su Wei's shoulder and looked at the lit cubicle at the end of the corridor.
She saw the air conditioner running on the wall and the computer on the desk.
Even from a distance, Shen Lan could tell that the pulsating matrix models on the screen weren't ordinary document processing, but rather complex mathematical calculations. Clearly, some unknown old professor or department at the university was utterly wasting this child's time.
Shen Nan withdrew his gaze and realized that high-quality assets were undervalued. The most effective way to deal with this was to buy them out at a high premium.
She didn't beat around the bush, nor did she ask Su Wei if she was interested in quantitative finance, nor did she offer any of that nonsense about how much she could learn working with her and how it would guarantee her a place in graduate school. "You're sitting in this resource room now, how much of a monthly stipend does the school give you?"
Shen Lan asked very directly.
Su Wei looked at her.
"The highest rank for office staff is two hundred."
Su Wei answered.
Shen Lan's lips curled into a cold smile.
Hiring a humanoid supercomputer for two hundred dollars is a complete waste of resources.
Without saying a word, Shen Nan reached out and pulled open her trench coat, taking out a long black leather wallet from the inside pocket.
Long, slender fingers unfastened the metal clasp of the wallet.
Inside the wallet's inner compartment was a thick wad of red hundred-yuan bills.
Shen Nan ran his fingertips over the banknotes and quickly pulled out several.
"I don't care which department you're in now, or who provided you with that computer."
Shen Nan slammed the cash he had pulled out onto the scratched table.
The brand-new, undisguised red banknotes stood out starkly in the dimly lit archives.
"It's a complete waste of your talents to do this kind of menial work for a fixed salary of two hundred yuan from the school."
Shen Nan looked into Su Wei's eyes.
"I've rented your brain."
Su Wei looked at the cash on the table.
"You don't even need to leave this archive room. Just use that computer to do my work. From now on, sit here every day, extract the underlying historical data I need from these tattered books, do the basic data cleaning, and then package and send it to me."
Shen Nan tapped the edge of the banknote with his finger.
"It's piecework, and the minimum wage is four times what the school pays you. I'll give you 800 yuan a month in cash, not through the school's account. This is the advance for the first month of the next semester." Shen Nan stared at Su Wei's face.
Su Wei's gaze shifted from Shen Nan's face to the few red banknotes on the table.
For a girl who came from a remote mountain village and had to carefully budget her finances every month, nothing was more convincing than cash in her hand. She didn't refuse, nor did she stand on ceremony.
Su Wei stretched out her left hand and pressed it directly onto the several hundred-yuan bills.
She picked up the money, held it in her hand, and then very naturally put it into her pocket.
"I accepted it."
Su Wei looked at Shen Nan and nodded decisively.
Shen Nan nodded in satisfaction.
"I will send the first batch of data requirements to your email at 8:00 AM tomorrow, along with a report format."
Shen Nan turned around without even taking the copy of "Econometrica" that he had been searching for.
With this human database in front of her, she no longer needed to personally flip through the books.
The sound of high heels on the ground gradually faded away, disappearing around the corner of the stairwell.
The archives room returned to silence.
Su Wei stood in the aisle and reached into her pocket.
Those few unwrapped banknotes, pressed against my thigh through the thin fabric, gave me an extremely reassuring tactile feeling. A primal sense of security.
She carried her thermos and turned to walk back into the warm cubicle.
Close the door.
Su Wei sat down at her computer desk, placed her thermos aside, unzipped her pants pocket, took out the few bills, and laid them flat on the desk. She didn't count them; instead, she opened the innermost compartment of her canvas bag, carefully placed the money inside, and zipped it up.
On the computer screen, the probability model of the discrete matrix had just finished its last progress bar.
A green 100% popped up.
Su Wei looked at the screen and breathed a sigh of relief.
She moved the mouse to the upper right corner, clicked save, typed on the keyboard, and entered the shutdown command.
The screen flickered and went black; the computer stopped working, and only the sound of the air conditioner remained in the cubicle.
Su Wei stood up and unplugged the air conditioner from the wall.
She slung her canvas bag over her shoulder, pushed open the door to the cubicle, and walked out.
The overhead light in the archives room was turned off.