From Dealbook: Jared Dillian, a former Lehman Brothers trader, was strolling through the Museum of American Finance, located in an old bank building on Wall Street, when he stopped in front of a placard that read: “Remember that the stock market is manic-depressive.”
“Get a picture of that,” he said with a chuckle. The epigram, a quote from Berkshire Hathaway’s chairman, Warren E. Buffett, rang especially true for Mr. Dillian, who struggled with bipolar and obsessive-compulsive disorders during his seven-year tenure at Lehman, now defunct.
In 2003, five years before Lehman went bust, Mr. Dillian was dealing with his own crisis. The stress of being a Lehman trader, a job in which millions of dollars were gambled every hour, had made him horribly depressed. He blew up frequently at work, went on drinking binges, and at one point, he writes in “Street Freak: Money and Madness at Lehman Brothers,” his recently released book, he downed half a bottle of Tylenol PM in a half-hearted suicide attempt.
Mr. Dillian wasn’t punished for his intensity at Lehman. In fact, it got him promoted. One day, he said, he slammed his phone down after a trade went sour, breaking the receiver. His colleagues rewarded this with a standing ovation.
“Dude, it’s a stressful job,” he said, eyeing a vintage 1981 Quotron trading terminal on display in the museum’s exhibit on the history of trading.
Mr. Dillian left the world of trading after the collapse of Lehman. He now lives in Myrtle Beach, S.C., where he writes The Daily Dirtnap, a financial newsletter for traders. While at Lehman, he began writing regular market reports. Those missives eventually got him noticed by a literary agency — and landed him a book deal...
Find out more at http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/09/22/after-the-lehman-storm-a-calmer-life-and-a-new-book/
No comments:
Post a Comment