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How one trader learned that there's more
to life than the vicissitudes of the market

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By Bolt Edsall

June 24, 1999 | When the stock market is open, I can't keep my eyes off of it. Sometimes I am sure I see God in the last five minutes of a market session. I feel the religious supplicant's sense of utter surrender to the Divine Will, watching the awesome movements of that great sea. When that Invisible Hand moves all prices to where He or She knows that they ought to be, I am moved as correct prices are "discovered" and revealed throughout the day. To be in the market has seemed to me to be a way of aligning one's life with God's Will, through the full commitment and surrender of one's financial assets to the Universe's Plan.

As you can see, I love the stock market. Perhaps too much. So when word got out that as soon as September, market trading hours are being extended so Joe Six-Pack can trade at all hours of the day and night, you would have expected me and my stock-broker colleagues to be thrilled. The great communion with the All could be extended, the giant roller coaster ride, our life's enjoyment, would go on into the night, would not end on Fridays ... Hallelujah!

Instead I felt a giant knot form in my stomach. Have you ever wondered why the trading day is only six and a half hours long? I don't anymore. It is now painfully obvious to me. Last year I became an options trader, buying in and out of the volatile stocks of e-commerce companies, which we gambling addicts call simply "The Internets." First Dell was my baby. Then I gave that up because it just wasn't volatile enough. I ratcheted my nerves up a notch higher to AOL. My tolerance for huge market movements increased. So I moved on to Amazon, and then Yahoo.

The best thing you can hope for as a day trader is that you have a really bad first trade and lose some money. That way you will learn to respect the market. In my first trades I made $3,000 in a week. Total time spent in trading: possibly five minutes.

For information on compulsive gambling click here.

Just as no one wants to ski on a beginner's slope after they've successfully taken on a black diamond, my tolerance to volatility became more and more an intolerance of stability. My grandparents would have been thrilled to get a 10-point move in a stock price over the course of a year. But for me now, a mere 10-point move in a day just wasn't enough to get me excited. Next stop Theglobe.com, and then CMGI. When the market did good by me I was happy. When it reversed on me I was despondent. I loved and hated my stocks with a passion. My moods were completely at the mercy of the movements of the stock market, a force over which I had no control.

Looking back at that first set of trades, my first options positions, which I had been so happy to sell for a $3,000 profit -- those 37 Amazon call contracts -- would have been worth almost $650,000. Not bad for the approximately $15,000 I'd paid for them.

In the meantime, after my initial exuberant profit taking, I began a long and exquisitely horrible streak of losses, getting on the wrong side of my precious Internets. I netted out the year with a loss of about $20,000. Just as a point of reference, my yearly salary is about $30,000.

The point, though, isn't really about the money. It's about what happened to my mind and to the minds of others like me in this heated, schizophrenic marketplace. In the passion of my addiction I would absolutely hate the thought of an approaching weekend. For two days I was to live in suspense, not knowing what outcomes I would find on Monday -- it was more than I could bear. As the session ended each day, I sat transfixed in front of my computer screen, eating popcorn and screaming, as if the market makers could hear my pleas through my computer terminal. And then trading was over, leaving me with a sense of purposelessness until the next morning, when it would start again.

Next page | Get me some vodka and a valium!