These are brutal days on Wall Street and when the going gets tough, the tough get ... well, a little bit depressed actually.
With the Dow Jones Industrials Average plunging to its lowest level since October 1998 and the NASDAQ faring even worse, the high-octane world of the trading floor is suddenly running on empty.
"It's depressing, you know ... traders get very depressed," said Todd Leone, managing director of equity trading at SG Cowen Securities Corp. "It's difficult to come in every day and lose money. Everybody I talk to is tired. It's like `Oh I need a couple of days off. The markets have been beating me up.' That's how you feel."
PHOTO: AFP
Rational thought seems to have fled the US stock markets, chased away by a tidal wave of emotion -- or more specifically, outright panic -- among investors whose confidence has been shattered by a series of corporate scandals.
The psychological meltdown has left people like US Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan and New York Stock Exchange chairman Richard Grasso looking like waterlogged Little Dutch Boys, struggling to plug gaping holes in the dyke of public concern.
"Please be patient. Please don't do something that emotionally feels good but, in the long term, will be a mistake," Grasso pleaded to investors on Sunday after yet another week of market bloodletting.
President George W. Bush echoed the "don't panic" message on Monday when he stressed that US economic fundamentals were strong, despite the horrendous declines that have wiped seven trillion dollars off the value of stocks since March 2000.
"I know the economics -- the platform for growth is in good shape," Bush said.
So far, such assurances have fallen on deaf ears, and the investors are continuing to sell their positions almost as fast as the traders can trade them out.
The stressful nature of the job and the high burn-out rate mean that the composition of trading floors has always had a strong bias towards young, gung-ho operators.
So for many traders in their twenties and thirties, who revelled in the astonishing bull run of the 1990s, the current crisis is an entirely new and unsettling experience.
Suddenly, jobs are on the line and the prospect of the traditional hefty annual bonus has been wrenched away for the foreseeable future by the downward spiral of the Dow Jones average.
Unexpectedly, however, the trading floor seems to exude an eerie surface calm.
The emotional temperature and decibel levels may surge from time to time, but for the most part the atmosphere is subdued with the traders hunched sombrely over their flashing screens.
"You still get some yelling, but I find when people are losing money they tend to be quieter," said Leone. "The jokes and the bravado just dry up after a while."
In such trying times, some companies are looking to relative "old-timers" to help guide their younger colleagues along.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
Taiwan was ranked the fourth-safest country in the world with a score of 82.9, trailing only Andorra, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in Numbeo’s Safety Index by Country report. Taiwan’s score improved by 0.1 points compared with last year’s mid-year report, which had Taiwan fourth with a score of 82.8. However, both scores were lower than in last year’s first review, when Taiwan scored 83.3, and are a long way from when Taiwan was named the second-safest country in the world in 2021, scoring 84.8. Taiwan ranked higher than Singapore in ninth with a score of 77.4 and Japan in 10th with
SECURITY RISK: If there is a conflict between China and Taiwan, ‘there would likely be significant consequences to global economic and security interests,’ it said China remains the top military and cyber threat to the US and continues to make progress on capabilities to seize Taiwan, a report by US intelligence agencies said on Tuesday. The report provides an overview of the “collective insights” of top US intelligence agencies about the security threats to the US posed by foreign nations and criminal organizations. In its Annual Threat Assessment, the agencies divided threats facing the US into two broad categories, “nonstate transnational criminals and terrorists” and “major state actors,” with China, Russia, Iran and North Korea named. Of those countries, “China presents the most comprehensive and robust military threat
RSS