The Other Side of Wall Street: In Business It Pays to Be an Animal, In Life It Pays to Be Yourself

6. An Officer and a Gentleman

Following the Letter I fiasco, management watched the way I traded like a baseball manager watches a slugger after he’s been hit in the head by a fastball. It took some time for me to regain my confidence, but I again found my stroke after connecting on a few solid trades.

I never understood if ADD people made good traders or if the constant assimilation of a sensory overload environment made traders ADD. Either way, Letter I stopped taunting me, and life again assumed a sense of normalcy. That was the way the business worked: make money and all was forgiven.

There used to be an ingrained ethos on Wall Street. I’m not talking about the country club mindset or the opaque engineering that would ultimately befall the ...