Paradoxically, they have embraced uncertainty as their former sense of loyalty to firm and task has been disappointed.  Their “security”, they say, is their portfolio of trading assets: and they have proven, even in perilous markets, their executive capabilities in assessing the corporate world to locate niches upon which their willingness to lay their own money down in exchange for future gain, may be centered.

They tell me that the reality they embrace differs from the realities they have left along one dimension: their fate is entirely in their own hands. Each day. Every day.

The worst has occurred: they have been extruded. But they have recognized their anguish, uncertainties, and the necessities of negotiating the dread of redundancy as their strength. And embraced that strength as their first principle in day trading.

Their chief difficulty as a group? It becomes imperative to “clear the mind” by getting up from one’s computer regularly and doing something enjoyable, reliable, and satisfying: whether yoga, basketball, or reading group—- to restore the frequently jarred sense of equanimity and judgment which comes with living daily between your own mind and the changing numbers on a computer screen.

Some thoughts:

• plentiful and current over-supplies of information, facilitated by technology, allow market participants to react more quickly (also helped by technology) than ever before

• while we react to momentary market shifts—for example, (1) our reactions in the plunge post-Lehmann, (2)  in the bubbling up last March, and (3) last week in the steep correction—we rarely step back in attempting to discern larger systemic patterns. We are too gripped by the immediacy of our own financial positions.

• It benefits us to consider what is going on when we reach a position of calm.

Hypothetical Takeaway:

Talking with clients about changes in our global linkages with markets— often felt as we react to them rather than recognized clearly and considered coolly— most agreed that we have embarked on an era of significant turbulence.

However, while most clients focused initially on systemic threats, a general consensus emerged over time: there appears to be a silver lining. A pattern, characterized by a bursting bubble, presents market participants with a momentary choice of repair or rupture.

While the verdict is hardly in: Greece after all, is followed by Spain and Portugal…..media murmurings about the EU as white knight suggest a moment of global repair.

For some of us, that’s worth a sigh of relief. For others, it means profit as equities return to test former highs.