The Hour Between Dog and Wolf

Description

My interest in the biological side of the financial markets dates back to the 1990s. I was then working on Wall Street, trading derivatives for Goldman Sachs, then Merrill Lynch, and finally running a desk for Deutsche Bank. This was a fascinating time to trade the markets, because New York, and indeed America as a whole, was caught up in the dot.com bubble. And what a bubble that was. The markets had not seen anything quite like it since the great bull market of the 1920s. In 1991 the Nasdaq (the electronic stock exchange where many new-tech ventures are listed) traded below 600 and had meandered around that level for a few years. It then began a gradual yet persistent bull run, reaching a level of 2,000 in 1998. The Nasdaq’s rise was checked for a year or so by the Asian Financial Crisis, which reined it back about 500 points, but then the market recovered and took to the skies. In little more than a year and a half, the Nasdaq shot up from 1,500 to a peak just over 5,000, for a total return in excess of 300 per cent. The rally was almost unprecedented in its speed and magnitude.