You’ve heard the talk all around the Street: the big trade that got bollixed up by boiler-room monkey boy Chuck Lamar, the huge, huge deal that would have had Manny Ramirez in a Mets uniform and Red Sox fans crying in their Boston Lagers, ground market activity to a halt around the trading deadline. So here we sit two weeks later, and Danys Baez is still a Devil Ray, Billy Wagner is still in Philadelphia, and Buddy Groom is feeding quotes to reporters in Phoenix. You had to see it coming. The market fundamentals were bullish but the spirit was all bear. Everyone was waiting for the chips to fall, and as a result everyone got caught with their ass in the woodchipper.

But just because July 31st has come and gone doesn’t mean that they’ve rolled up the sidewalks on the Street. The hunt for value is still on, and the big market players know that it’s really kill or be killed time now. You gotta gouge the other guy’s eyes out. You gotta eat his children, pull his jacket over his head, dent his Hummer, borrow his chainsaw and cut down every tree in his yard, back the Exxon Valdez into his schooner, rape his dog, sell his sister into slavery, switch his grandma’s nitro for mescaline, and load his tassel loafers with used kitty litter.

Yes folks, I’m talking about waiver trades.

The successful waiver trade, the one that finds real value for a roster instead of some flotsam that’ll be thrown off the SS Playoff Contender as bloody chum come October, is rare and a true black art. Though teams will put some attractive assets on the wire, they are allowed to pull those assets off the table. What’s more, if you’re a playoff contender, you’ve got to wait your turn, as teams with lesser records get the first whack at the wire. That’s bull, you say! Who dreamt up this system, Friedrich Engels? This hardly seems like free market economics at its best — more like a wooly commune for a pack of cash-hoarding spinsters too busy stuffing dead presidents under their mattresses and too afraid of their own shadow to go out and play the broader market, lest they get their asses chewed off by the running dogs of capitalism. Despite all the concessions to “competitive balance,” though, you can spin a trick or too in this market. I’m so high on this market, and I’m gonna give you all a running start before I go out there and lock my jaws of doom around some undervalued LOOGY that will finally make the sting of all those Global Crossing options go away.

Now, how can you possibly get ahead in this market, you wonder? It’s easy when there’s so much poor intelligence out there, folks. Take this, for example: Buster Olney recently floated the ridiculous canard that the Yankees somehow had an advantage over their Red Sox rivals because they’d be able to block any deal the Boston front office might try to make for an effective reliever or useful bat. Now this might be the way things work up on the Vermont Maple Syrup Exchange, but not down here in the bowels of capitalism. The Red Sox would no doubt be as happy as a little girl if the Yankees weighed their portfolio down with every piece of garbage floating down the East River. I’ve got two words for Buster: Jose. Canseco. How’d you like that one, B.O.? Steinbrenner’s still trying to get the stink from that particular dead cat off of him.

Make no mistake, the waiver deal is for real players — VCs, private equity, hedge funds. Don’t have the fuzz on your stones to sell short? You’re probably best off cashing out, packing up, and heading out to the Hamptons. But if you’ve got the juice to back some risky plays, well, here’s where the rich get richer. Check this swaption Henry & Theo cashed in earlier this week: they nab outfielder Jose Cruz Jr. before the deadline. Most of us were standing around with our balls in a noose trying to figure out what was going on — JCJ was thought to be wildly overvaled, with ugly fundamentals: low volume, high P/E. Radioactive. Plus, Theo was already heavily weighted in the back end of the bench. Turns out it was a brilliant short: Boston paid off its margins on JCJ with a couple of scud relievers, parked JCJ in a short-term outfield assignment, then pumped and dumped, flopping JCJ into Depodesta’s lap for cash, which the wax museum curators up in the Bronx will remind you is just as good as money.

Most of you would get your nuts handed to you in a K-Y jello mold if you tried to pull a stunt like that. There’s an ass-end of every trade, to be sure, but the returns here are potentially unlimited if you’re willing to strap it on. Though the pain of risk may be great in the near term, you’ve got to swallow your fears, roll up your sleeves, and scream BUY! BUY! BUY! until you rupture at least six blood vessels in your forehead. When the market’s will is weakest, that’s when you gather your greatest strength.

Now go forth and rip somebody’s face off.

Gordon Gekko has been a guiding light on Wall Street for almost two decades. He still thinks lunch is for wimps.