Mastering Trading Stress
Strategies for Maximizing Performance
Chapter One
The Nature
of Stress
What Is Stress and
Why Is It a Problem?
Walter was a 28-year-old bond trader who was working a block
away from the World Trade Center when disaster struck in
2001. His office building was successfully evacuated. Yet when
the financial markets resumed operations, he struggled to return to the
winning ways he had enjoyed in his relatively short career up to that
time. He attributed the downturn in his performance mostly to the downturn
in the economy but felt his excitement about his work diminishing.
Then one afternoon, about a year after 9/11, his heart began thumping
wildly and he suffered chest pains. Fearing a heart attack, associates
called an ambulance, and Walter was rushed to a hospital where cardiologists
performed tests for hours before concluding that the episode was
nothing more than a case of stress and acid reflux. Walter took small
comfort in this. For weeks, he felt tightness in ... read full excerpt from Mastering Trading Stress: Strategies for Maximizing Performance ebook
