Hi Bonnuss in austin; My comments on the love of the market was with regard to traders, more specifically, the highly profitable daytrader types. And yes, they think about the market all the time, the same way Picasso always thought about art. You should consider the obvious possibility that you've never met any real traders.
Your first examples were full service brokers. (Snicker!) Brokers are salesmen who's job is to generate commissions through their support of retail clients. They are not traders. Frankly, with what they have to do for a living, I wouldn't be surprised if they stayed away from the market as much as possible, take repeated showers after they get home each day, and ritually burn their suits when they finally retire.
Analysts are not traders. Traders, particularly daytraders, (and I consider market makers to usually be a form of daytraders) live and die by the market. It's probably the same way that the more competitive sailors view the sea. It's not a matter of just getting by. It is a matter of an intense struggle with what is an amazingly difficult and fascinating game. The winners at this game make unbelievable amounts of money, but they typically don't have a lot of use for it. All they really want is to keep playing and to keep winning. It is not a form of gambling, any more than what Tiger Woods does is gambling. Trading is a vicious, amazing, fascinating, complex, game with thousands of complicated rules, but also very free form. There is nothing similar to it on earth.
The hot shot traders I have talked with did not seem to be at all unusual. You would never be able to pick them out in a lineup as being the traders. They could hide in any blue collar bar and you would never know they were there. No Rolex watches, no nice clothes, no good accent, no high brow education, no remarkable physical features, nothing at all visible on the surface.
Traders are a fascinating type, but they are not terribly common. I see nothing at all abnormal with traders talking to each other on a message board.
-- Carl
P.S. Okay, there is one rather odd facial feature remarkably common among high speed traders. Their eyes are relatively close together. Technically, this is called the "IPD" or inter pupillary distance. It is one of the odd features of a face that you would not notice unless you happen to have spent some time having to design head mounted displays. So if you have to pick the daytrader out of a picture, try for the guy with a thin, narrow nose and relatively deepset eyes. Another place to see the same sort of facial features is in the local jail... |
