The Goldfish on the Trading Floor

Sarah stared at the candlestick chart as red candles cascaded downward like blood. Another bear market, her third in fifteen years at Goldman. Her portfolio had taken a beating, but that wasn't what kept her awake at 3 AM, nursing a glass of Scotch and watching her husband sleep in the guest room.

"We're in a bull phase," David had told her three years ago, when they bought the brownstone they couldn't afford. "Just ride it out."

Now she understood what he'd really meant: he was done riding anything with her.

The goldfish bowl sat on her desk, a birthday gift from her junior analyst. Its sole inhabitant—named Bear, because irony was the only currency that still held value—circled endlessly in its own waste. Sarah found herself jealous of the fish's three-second memory. Imagine forgetting the fight about the affair. Imagine forgetting how David had looked at her over dinner last night, like she was a leveraged position he should have closed years ago.

"Market's down," her boss announced that morning, waltzing in with his cufflinks already undone. "But the bulls will return. They always do."

Sarah thought about the baby they'd never had, the promotion she'd sacrificed for a man who'd traded up for a twenty-five-year-old strategist. She thought about Bear in his bowl, swimming through the same water, making the same mistakes, forgetting them, making them again.

Her phone buzzed. David: "Can we talk?"

She watched Bear bump against the glass for the tenth time in as many minutes.

Sarah stood, gathered her things, and for the first time in her career, she walked out before the closing bell. Some positions, she realized, should never be opened in the first place.

The goldfish kept swimming. Sarah finally stopped.