"As a trader you can be everything you want to be, at least in some ways. You sit at the wheel making decisions with very real consequences. Sell €1m of Swedish krona, and bang, see a directly observable effect on the market. The graph on your screen has a bleep on it and you know: that was me. It's real. "In a sense you merge with the market. One time I made a mistake and sold $40m of Swedish krona in one second. The market was waiting for an announcement by the central bank and pending this, trading had virtually stopped. There were very few bids or offers; in trader terms the market puked. I suppose there were ... (full story)