Back at UBS, all the floor activities took place on the third floor at the bottom of an atrium with open space and sunlight from above. A side effect of this was that equity research on the floor above was often looking down upon us and had few if any qualms in saying that the floor was a pit brimming full of uncouth barbarians.

In their defense, it rarely got to the point where people would be shouting out their favourite f word, instead they would just think it and get on with things. After all, sales people wouldn't get caught doing anything like it down the phone to a client (although I wouldn't say salespeople got much defense from traders).

My floor has no salespeople and so the swear words come through largely unfiltered and without second thought. As I absorb some of this culture and begin to hit my desk a little more in frustration, find my temper generally getting shorter while working, I've also found that on an average day, I'll think or say about 30 expletives a minute after doing some sampling.

Even more surprising was that I use particular words for particular events or feelings consistently and others are simiarly ordered. Actually, you'll find that traders, while flexible beasts in their job contending with the stark reality that judgement and outcome are not always so well correlated - are meticulous in establishing a degree of order in their regular daily lives. If as an intern, you wondered why it was that your desk would order virtually the same breakfast for 50 days running with little inclination for change, this is why. It's like there needs to be a balance between being Mr. Elastic in the markets and regular life away from it.

I've heard that some people go so far as to ensure that at lunch, the meat, veg and breads are placed in a particular position on their plate. Traders will chew the same gum, get a particular lunch on a particular day and get the same thing from the shop. They're also extremely irritated when routines breakdown, unreasonably so. Late trains, tube strikes even - out come those lovely colourful metaphors mentioned earlier.

Published by the B in Derivatives Trading at 12:30, 25th November 2007

tagged as traders

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