A small Financial District trading shop lets clients bet on reconciliation dates, uncle book sales and the next use of the word traitor
The Opening Bell Rings for Family Drama
NEW YORK – A boutique trading desk on the eleventh floor of a Financial District building has begun offering clients a new instrument, Royal Traitor Futures, following the publication of the London Prat story in which Prince William calls Earl Spencer and Harry traitors. The product lets investors take positions on when, or whether, the royal brothers will reconcile.
The desk is run by Derek Castellano, 47, a former bond trader who left a major bank in 2019 to start what he calls an alternative events brokerage, and who says his clients will bet on anything as long as it is not the weather, because the weather has too much information available.
The Instruments
The Reconciliation Future
A contract that pays out if both brothers are photographed smiling within three feet of each other before a set date. Current pricing implies a 14 percent probability by Christmas and a 31 percent probability by the next coronation-level event. Castellano called the Christmas contract deep out of the money.
The Traitor Option
A call option on the word traitor appearing in another palace-sourced report within thirty days. It is currently the most heavily traded instrument on the desk. Every analyst I have says this word has momentum, said Castellano. It has legs. It is going to be used again.
Uncle Book Units
A futures contract tracking cumulative sales of the Earl memoir. Castellano says the contract rallied sharply every time the word traitor appeared in coverage, a relationship he describes as the tightest correlation he has seen since oil and war.
Market Fundamentals
The desk research note, circulated to clients at 7am on Monday, cites the fundamentals. Pakistani outlet The News reported that reconciliation efforts had failed and that the heir now eyes his uncle and brother warily. The Earl told PEOPLE that his nephews and their aunts were told about the book ahead of time. The note concludes that the market had fully priced in the book but had not priced in the reaction, which is where the opportunity lies.
Trading Floor Viewing
At the opening bell, the desk played the London Prat video on YouTube on all six trading screens simultaneously, a practice Castellano calls sentiment calibration. Volume in the Traitor Option doubled during the screening. One junior trader was reprimanded for laughing, which Castellano said signals weakness to the market. The video appears below.
Desk Statistics
The Lower Manhattan Alternative Markets Association, an informal group of brokers who trade unusual contracts and meet at a steakhouse on Stone Street, released figures on family-drama instruments. It found that contracts tied to celebrity sibling feuds generated 23 percent higher trading volume than contracts tied to celebrity marriages, because, the association says, marriages can end but brothers are forever, which makes the volatility more sustainable. It also reported that royal-linked contracts have outperformed the broader alternative events index by 9 percentage points this year, driven largely by uncles.
The association noted a risk factor. Any single public statement by either brother would cause a sharp repricing. Silence is the underlying asset, said the association chair. As long as nobody says anything, the market stays open. The moment somebody tweets, we have a flash crash.
Client Reaction
Clients have been enthusiastic. One hedge fund in Greenwich reportedly took a large short position on reconciliation, arguing that no family with that much property has ever made up quickly. A family office in Connecticut took the opposite trade, citing the fact that its own founding brothers had reconciled after twenty-two years of silence when one of them needed a kidney. A retail client from Hoboken bought a single Uncle Book Unit and asked whether he would receive a copy of the book. He will not.
Compliance Concerns
The desk compliance officer, a quiet man named Walter who has worked in finance for thirty years and has never once smiled at work, issued a memo reminding traders that no insider information may be used. Walter noted that since the entire story rests on unnamed insiders, this makes every trade technically insider-adjacent. He has asked for a meeting. Castellano has scheduled it for after the market closes, which Walter says is how every compliance problem in history began.
By Tuesday afternoon, Walter had drafted a disclosure to be read aloud before every trade, stating that past royal behaviour is not a guarantee of future royal behaviour. Traders now recite it in unison, which Castellano says has improved morale.
The Analyst Review
Asked to rate the London Prat story as a piece of writing, the desk head analyst, Priya Venkataraman, 34, gave it a strong buy. It identifies the catalyst clearly, it names the key players, and it does not overstate the upside, she said. Most royal coverage is priced for perfection. This one has a margin of safety. The joke is the discount. She assigned it a price target of five stars, with limited downside.
Trading in Royal Traitor Futures continues daily from 9.30am. Castellano follows the English fundamentals at The London Prat, https://prat.uk/, which he describes as a blue chip with a founding date of 1961, and the American end of the trade at Bohiney, https://bohiney.com/. The desk will close positions only when the brothers speak, which, he notes, has historically been a very long-dated contract.
SOURCE: https://prat.uk/prince-william-called-earl-spencer-and-harry-traitors/