The greatest compliment a trader can have

What advice would you give someone who wants to be the head of Goldman Sachs propietary trading someday?

A lot of this is luck, but humility is probabily the most important thing. If you're not humble, you're not going to last very long. You also have to enjoy it. Too many people come into this business for the money, and that's not going to work out over time.

I can put my hand on my heart and say I don't get stressed out by the markets. I don't have bad days or good days. I did get stressed in 1994 when I was either going to break or not, but since having gone through that, I hope I can pretty much cope with anything.

The best compliment anyone's paid me over the years was when one of my traders said, "I can never tell whether you've had a bad day or a good day." That's probably the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me in the workplace. I've seen people get very stressed, you can't do this job effectively.

-- Christian Siva-Jothy

(On p.91 of Inside the House of Money bySteven Drobny)