A top market strategist for JP Morgan has canceled all trips that would take him more than a four-hour drive from his family's suburban home.
The director of research for Merrill Lynch has been scheduling twice as much time for meetings to give people time to stare down at the rubble of the World Trade Center and talk about what they saw and how they felt.
A Morgan Stanley Dean Witter stock trader, long the go-to guy for the latest joke, cannot remember the last one he heard and says he would be in no mood to repeat it anyway.
One veteran bond trader says many of his peers are more timid about taking big risks that could cost them their jobs as investment houses begin another round of layoffs and prepare to divide up dwindling bonus pools. Stock prices and trading volumes have rebounded in recent weeks week, but traders say that much of that is driven by computer programs that are effectively moving chips around the table rather than adding new ones.
A month after two hijacked planes ripped a huge hole in New York's financial district, tens of thousands who worked there have resettled, but not much seems routine. Some of the energy and boldness, and a lot of the fun, are still missing.
Douglas R. Cliggott, whose job as chief equity strategist at J.P. Morgan requires him to be away from home an average of one or two nights a week, has already canceled trips to Minneapolis and Europe this month. He has not developed a fear of flying since Sept. 11. He simply has decided not to be more than three or four hours by car from his home in Westchester County.
"I want to be where I can just put my thumb out or just get a rental car to get home," Cliggott said. "What I am afraid of is being in San Francisco and not being able to get home for 36 hours."
He said he was uncertain how long he could curtail his traveling. "I am going to have to go to Tokyo again," he said.
But so far he has been only to Boston, Baltimore and Washington. He is covering for his canceled trips by doing conference calls and video conferences with clients.
"Anyone who was on the island of Manhattan has to have a heightened sense of mortality," he explained. His own, he said, is making him "think less about myself and more about my kids." These days, he said, instead of meeting his wife in Manhattan for dinner, he is at home, "with one of my kids on my lap."
Andrew J. Melnick, director of global research for Merrill Lynch, has chosen to stare down the residual horror from the 14th-floor conference room at 222 Broadway, where Merrill has moved some operations until its building reopens.
The view is so riveting, Melnick said, that he schedules two hours for a meeting that should last only one. Though he said he is lucky that the windows in his own office are covered by a US flag draped on the building, he understands the universal need to take in all of the mangled mess and exhale personal feelings and recollections.
"It is much different from what you see on TV, and that's how people react," especially those in their 20s and 30s, said Melnick, who is 59.
"Every generation has an event that rips their innocence out of them," Melnick said. "For my parents', it was Pearl Harbor. For me and my generation, it was the Kennedy assassination. For this generation, this was it."
For as long as anybody can remember, Michael Lyons, a 62-year-old Irish-American with a hearty laugh, could be counted on to share the latest joke making the rounds -- no matter how tasteless. He was a jovial fixture at Morgan Stanley's trading desk on the 60th floor of 1 World Trade Center.
RSS