<<NEW YORK, Oct 11 (Reuters) - Making money feels good. And trying to hang on to it in a wildly pitching market can push you close to the edge. With the stock market swinging hundreds of points in a day and bonds whipsawing as well, Wall Street traders -- some of whom have only known success in their careers -- are facing high emotional stress.
The markets have not been kind. Amid treacherous downturns overseas, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has traced a jagged path from a July zenith of 9,367.8 to last Friday's 7,899.52. And ''safe haven'' U.S. government bonds have provided only limited sanctuary to shaken trader psyches. The yield on the 30-year Treasury bond has plummeted, scraping 4.70 percent last week before bobbing back to 5.13 percent by Friday.
The emotions many traders describe having in the past few weeks sound remarkably like the five stages of grieving: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally, acceptance. ''They have dark circles under their eyes,'' said Henry Willmore, senior economist at Barclays Capital, as he described a room full of traders.
Usually cool-headed analytical traders are becoming desperate as they see profits, million-dollar bonuses and job security evaporate in the quickly changing numbers on their quote screens, analysts said. ''The pain of losing is greater than the joy of gaining, so a lot of them are hanging on irrationally, hoping they'll get even so that they don't have to admit to themselves that it's a real loss,'' said internationally-known psychologist, Dr. Joyce Brothers. ''And, as the bottom keeps dropping out, that becomes less and less a rational decision and more and more an irrational one,'' she said in a telephone interview. But as stressed-out market players are left to painfully contemplate the fate of their quality of life, Brothers offered these words of advice: ''This too will pass; it always does, so hang in there.''
One problem traders have is that it is virtually impossible to escape the 24-hour, global market. ''If you're really active and on top of your game, you'll have no free time, because you'll always have to monitor one situation, or another, to just to stay in the loop,'' said
Carlos Sanchez, vice president and syndicate manager at Utendahl Capital Partners LP. ''There's no downtime, there's just so many things to be alert to, whether its the Treasury market, the overnight Asian market, Greenspan talking, or a new twist in the Clinton matter,'' Sanchez said.
So how are market players coping amid all the turmoil? ''Drinking heavily,'' joked one mortgage securities trader. ''It's pretty frustrating.'' Bonds are getting hammered and ''to a certain degree, there's no rhyme or reason to it now .... It's kind of like a panic mode.''
Brothers said the turmoil might cause brokers to lose sleep or their appetites, or have nightmares, or binge. Keeping frantically busy is also helping defer some of the emotional symptoms, the mortgage trader said. But the threat of job loss and bonus cuts are ''all givens.''
Although he feels confident about his own job, ''profitability is definitely going to be a factor down the road,'' he noted.
Some players banking on the usual big bonuses at year-end, amid record highs set in U.S. markets earlier in the year, may now have to face some belt-tightening. ''When money is flowing in, you spend it freely, you don't think that the faucet is going to be turned off,'' said Brothers. ''Many of them are not only not going to get their bonuses, they're going to be severely in debt, having already spent or committed the money to other things.'' With fewer extra dollars for the cars, the vacations, the expensive suits, ''I'm sure the scenario seems much bleaker than it did a while ago,'' said a head government bond trader at a primary dealership. >> |
