More money you have more stress you have 1) fear of losing it 2) fear of crime etc etc 3) fear of getting sued so drinking is a social anaesthetic for most traders have HUGE stress, maybe highest in the professional fields.
Can anyone suggest a study on stress across multiple professions? I'd like to see stress levels comparing high net worth treasury traders with lead-off or power hitters. You have to love baseball for the statistics alone if you are a trader in the US. Great insight about ethnicity and drug preference--harvard material...lol The consensus is that a trader deals with stress everyday and needs a mechanism to alter this stress into a livable state. There's good stress and bad stress. If you have high bad stress everyday than you will need more than drugs and alcohol to cope. But, perhaps a coke snorting three martini lunch wife beating trader can attain a higher success rate then most. lol
dont touch alcohol. its a crutch. why would you put a toxic substance in your body with all the scientific evidence that it does harm?
all this is crazy talk. just because you like a drink - it dont make you a drunk. in fact there is medical PROOF that drinking in MODERATION is GOOD FOR THE HEART (and the soul ) if you chose to remain tea total, then good for you. as for the success v substance abuse thing, then it goes both ways. i know loads of folk who have more money than they know what to do with. some are raving coke heads and drink way too much. some are very clean living, some are like most of us - have a drink and the odd line of coke every month or so if its going round, but its no big deal. the bottom line is that its like a trading system/method. you gotta be happy with what youre doing. and one thing dont work for all. if a drink makes you unable to perform 100% then dont. if you need a line of coke to get you outa bed and perform then fine. different strokes for different folks thing is though, if you do live life in 'the fast lane' then sometime youre gunna crash!! thats for sure.
Ummm.. firstly, stress comes in all forms and from all aspects of life. I would think a divorce or a family problem is much more difficult to cope with in terms of stress than a monetary loss - well, maybe not if the family problems are a result of trading losses, is it possible that the trading profession sees this type of familial scenario more often than other professions? Secondly, I don't equate trading with stress, I would think it is more akin to anxiety. Stress is physiological and can actually bolster performance in many cases. Anxiety is what I feel when in a loser, cut the loser and the problem is solved. With the above in mind, stress and/or anxiety doesn't necessarily lead to alcoholism. While I'll venture to say that alcoholism may cause greater stress because it is a proven depressant (a hangover is a chemical imbalance of seratonin thus causing a mild form of depression), I think some people just plain enjoy drinking a good beer if not several - I sure do. In general, I think this topic is trite. People from all walks of life have been consuming alcohol for thousands of years. A better statistic would involve simple lifestyle choices - smoking, eating, excersize and the prevelance of heart disease (the #1 cause of death in the US). Alcohol is one small piece of the picture. Do traders have lesser health and a higher statistic of stress related diseases would be an interesting study.
i read somewhere that a&e doctors have the most stress in their jobs. i tell you something though - the worst occupation i know of for drunks is the police - no question.