Gem Soup is named after the well-known trading floor legend of the three hungry investment bankers who structured a delectable bouillabaisse by adding a beautiful gemstone to a cauldron of boiling water, and then convincing a passel of investors to make contributions until it was a meal fit for a CEO.

This story is a favorite of bond traders the world over. In case you haven’t heard it, here is how it goes:

The Legend

Once upon a time not very long ago there were three very hungry investment bankers who were returning through the Upper East Side of Manhattan after having been sacked by their bank. As they walked the streets of Carnegie Hill, they called on investors they knew to send some bread their way. No matter how quickly their fingers flitted through their cell phone calling lists and not matter how fast their lips moved, they could get no one to ante up any dough, much less bread. The investors all claimed that a hungry bear had made off with all of their unallocated bread. The bankers did, however, get a number of their investors to come to the windows of their fashionable apartments and look down on them with sneers of derision.

Suddenly one of the investment bankers had an idea. He whipped out a large gemstone from an inner pocket in his Armani suit jacket, wiped it with a cashmere cloth, and held it up in the air. "Since you have nothing for us to eat," he shouted to the onlookers, I will take this gem and make a delectable feast for you with it. Please, does someone have a large copper-bottomed stock pot and a professional 6-burner gas grill on casters?" His colleagues were working the phones and soon had identified an investor with the requisite equipment, who quickly had his man roll it out onto the Park Avenue median.

The other investors looked on in amusement at the spectacle of an investment banker preparing to do work. When the call came on the cell phones for a number of large bottles of distilled water, the request was promptly filled and the bottles appeared, to be added to the stockpot. With a flourish the banker added the gemstone to the full pot, saying, "This magic gemstone will now do the rest. Please be patient as the soup comes to a boil. It will be the most delicious soup you have ever tasted!" His backing chorus communicated his message to the manifold investors, who by this time were starting to make their way down to the street to see this most ridiculous of road shows at close hand. Most of them wanted to see the offering crash and burn, but a lively market in side bets rapidly developed at the corner of 86th Street, with the contrarians demanding 8-1 odds.

After a while, the banker, tasting the simmering pot, remarked casually to the audience, "This soup is extremely nutritious, and very high in healthful lycopene, but you know it can be a wee bit understated without some ginger, garlic, and a shake of kosher salt to punch up the flavor." Appreciating the joke of the situation, one of the bystanders called over to Zabar’s and had them express deliver an order of these seasonings across the park.

When the seasonings arrived, the banker carefully added them to the cauldron and stirred it with an attentive air. The aroma of the soup began to permeate the district, and the crowd began to gather. Soon the banker’s colleagues’ cell phones began to buzz with calls from out of town investors who heard that a road show was going on and wanting to be invited. They quickly set up a conference bridge and arranged a webcast.

After some more stirring of the soup, the banker commented, "I served this soup to a Fortune 500 CEO the other day, and he was extraordinarily impressed with its sophistication and refinement. But you know I had put in a bit of broccoli rabe to give it some color and body." The crowd began to buzz, trying to guess which CEO the banker meant, and soon one of the investors procured a box of the designer brassica so as to equal the CEO’s consomme.

The banker’s sidekicks continued to work the phones, and after a time they patched the disembodied voice of a respected research analyst into the conference bridge. "Our analysis has concluded that, with a beta of 1.07 and a correlation of 0.89, high quality gem-based soups include smoked red peppers for color and flavor." The soup by now had a very tantalizing aroma, and to fulfill the prophecy an investor at the back of the crowd obtained, singed, and peeled a dozen red peppers, and gave them to the banker, to be added to the pot.

And so this went for some time, as the banker talked of – and the investors delivered – such appealing ingredients as hickory smoked pheasant, diagonally sliced okra, garam masala-spiced lentils, and roasted Yukon Gold potatoes marinated in venison stock. As these last ingredients were added, the audience realized that they were in the presence of a truly stupendous culinary creation.

One investor called out, "Surely with such an extraordinary soup we need a superb libation!" and he left briefly, returning with three cases of Roederer Cristal, which he had been saving for a special occasion.

The party – for by now, it was a party – sat down at several hastily installed trestle tables covered with linen table cloths and set with Spode china and sterling silver. (An investor had been on the phone to an event planning service). They had their gem soup with a lovely fresh-baked foccacia garnished with black olives and red onions, sheepishly delivered by an investor whose bread had earlier all been allocated. They bantered convivially until late into the night. At this point the investment bankers circulated their fee, which was calculated as a percentage of the total estimated meal value, and the investors happily paid.

The next day, as the bankers prepared to leave town, an investor’s committee thanked the bankers profusely for creating the greatest feast they had ever known, and one that they could brag about attending for years. Handing out lucite-covered tombstones commemorating the meal, but pocketing the gem, the bankers thanked the investors and headed for JFK to hop the Concorde to London.

Market Commentary:

An investor: We thought that there was no way they could bring that meal in. They started the talk in late morning, and by an hour before the greenmarket close they had all the fresh vegetables they needed. Really impressive, and the soup was tops. I supplied the pickled radicchio.

A competitor: This was a very tough investor base. We pitched a lightly sauteed foie gras with a port wine reduction earlier in the week, something we thought would have broad market appeal, and had only two takers … at two hundred over prime rib! Those guys really did it with their magic gem. We’re now looking into Egyptian amulets.

The soup runner: We knew we were hungrier than the competition so we had the advantage. It looked bearish in the early going, but that magic gem really did it for us. The stone was just cubic zirconia, but all the flashing really caught investor attention and just made that meal happen.

See the Commentaries for more about the source of this legend, and some discussion of its relevance to this initiative.

Copyright notice: Adaptation copyright Brian Lynn,© 2002. Limited Permission is hereby granted for electronic reproduction of this adaptation via electronic mail or on web sites only, as long as this notice and the Gem Soup URL (http://gemsoup.com) are retained and displayed prominently. For other reproduction rights, please contact business@gemsoup.com.