Market Correction

The bull market had been charging for seven years, and Marcus had ridden its back all the way to a corner office overlooking the Chicago skyline. Now, as he stared at the terminal screens dripping red, he felt something fundamental shifting inside him. Not panic—something quieter, more dangerous.

"You've been running yourself ragged," his therapist had said two weeks ago, just before he stopped going. "Maybe it's time to ask what you're running toward."

He hadn't answered her then. The truth felt too small, too pathetic. He wasn't running toward anything anymore. He was thirty-eight, divorced, and the closest thing he had to a living creature was the goldfish his ex-wife had left behind—a translucent orange speck swimming endless circles in a bowl on his desk. She'd called it Philosophy, a joke that had stopped being funny sometime around their third anniversary.

The fish approached the glass, its mouth opening and closing in silent repetition. Marcus watched it and felt a sudden, crushing wave of loneliness. The goldfish would keep swimming until it died. It didn't know it was in a bowl. It didn't know there was an ocean.

His phone buzzed—his analyst, probably, with more numbers to crunch, more positions to liquidate, more bullshit to shovel against the coming tide. Marcus let it ring. Outside his window, the city pressed on, indifferent. People were rushing somewhere, always rushing, running toward things they didn't really want.

"The market corrects itself," his mentor used to say, pouring whiskey at 3 AM. "Everything does eventually."

Marcus reached for his keyboard, intending to check his positions one final time before—what? Before what? Before he admitted that he could walk away? Before he acknowledged that the life he'd built was just another elaborate form of running?

Instead, his hand hovered, then dropped to his side. The goldfish turned and began another circuit around its bowl. Marcus closed his eyes and, for the first time in fifteen years, stood perfectly still.