The market balances, but through pain. When the analyst makes a bad bet, he loses his job. He is then approached by a new backer: a continental gentleman named Lefevre, a devoutly quantitative man, one who manages his money with math alone. Lefevre offers an unusually generous salary. But the analyst is a straightforward stock-picker. A sifter of fundamentals yes, yet a self-confessed intuitive. What use can he be to a man like Lefevre? The Analyst is science-fiction set at the skirt-edges of Wall Street: part econ-blog con theory, part boiler-room gas.