Tue, Oct 16, 2001 page19

• Melancholy, malaise stalk Wall Street

  The Sept. 11 attacks may be seen as the event marking this generation's loss of innocence, and the psychological scars have cut deeply

  • By Patrick McGeehan / NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
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  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 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. Stock traders take a break in front of the New York Stock Exchange building last week.

  PHOTO: NY TIMES

  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.

  But this week, sitting in a warehouse on Varick Street that Morgan Stanley is using as a backup site, Lyons came up dry.

  "I haven't heard any," he said. "It's amazing. And right now, I would not try retelling one if I heard it."

  The shock has at least temporarily robbed many traders of some of their daring.

  "Generally, people are just hanging out," said one hedge-fund manager. "People who really make money in this business love the game. A lot of that love of the game has been lost."

  A veteran government bond trader for a big bank said, "A lot of people have to say the year ended Sept. 11. The people who made money by Sept. 11 are trying to hold on to what they've got."

  Those who were in a hole are resisting the urge to trade their way out of it, said this trader, because they think their bosses will spare them unless they make a big mistake now.

  Under different circumstances, John Argento might be counting his blessings. Instead, he is counting the empty parking spaces in the huge lot outside Sand Bar USA, a nightclub he runs in Jersey City, New Jersey. Traders and investment bankers, on their way home from Lower Manhattan, used to stream off ferries to tables outside Argento's bar in the Liberty Marina. Now, thousands of displaced Wall Streeters are working on his side of the Hudson River. But none of them are showing up, he said.

  "I had a tremendous Friday business going into this disaster," he said. "Now, I've got no Thursday, no Friday. I just don't really sense much of a mood among these people to go out and party after work."

  The wife of a senior investment banker said she had recently discovered that two executives at major Wall Street firms were suffering from a form of post-traumatic stress. For a couple of weeks after witnessing the attack up close, these friends had seemed fine, but lately they have not wanted to leave their homes, she said.

  "Now that the dust is settling, people are feeling like they are not able to function," she said.

  Even attempts at making life a bit more bearable have a whiff of dark humor about them. At Lehman Brothers Holdings' temporary headquarters in Jersey City, Boris, a light-colored Labrador retriever, has a company identification badge with his mug on it.

  Retired from the New York Police Department, Boris sniffs all of the bags and packages entering the building for signs of explosives. Boris has quickly become a valued member of the Lehman team. Last Thursday, the building was cleared twice because of bomb scares.
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