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The trading these days is almost round-the-clock. By the time European money traders get to their desks, usually at 8:30 a.m., the market has already gone through a full trading session in Tokyo. Trading continues in New York until late afternoon, which is late evening in Europe. Some market is open somewhere in the world almost all the time, and cambists must keep track of all. New York money-dealing firms now assign traders on a rotating basis as night men who make calls to fellow cambists at midnight (when it is 2 p.m. the next day in Tokyo) or even 2 a.m. (4 p.m. in Tokyo) to keep posted.
Instant communications are as much bane as boon to the traders. Bourg complains that "the daily newspaper is no good to me any more." By the time he gets to work, the news in it is already old and the markets are concentrating on later information coming over the electronic display screens. Moreover, adds Scaillet, the clients have their own screens: "Now 89% to 99% of the multinationals and large corporations get the same information as the banks at the same second. There is nothing worse than having the big corporations on your back [with dol lar-selling orders] the instant you receive the news yourself. It means you are instantly involved in transactions when a market doesn't even exist." Robert F.C. Leclerc, Montreal-born trader in New York for Chicago-based Continental Illinois National Bank, comments wryly: "If foreign-exchange dealers take any view at all, it is a very short-term one — often as short as 60 seconds."
Hectic though the pace is, cambists generally claim to enjoy it. They are well paid; in Germany, salaries of $40,000 to $50,000 are common for traders in their late 20s. Beyond that, many cambists get a kick out of the very speed of the action. Michael Lend, 30, a money trader at Commerzbank of Frankfurt for the past two years, sometimes works from 6:30 a.m. to 9 p.m., and admits he is often too keyed up to sleep after a particularly hectic day. Nonetheless, he says, "it is fascinating because the market is so sensitive; it reacts quickly to political and economic events or just a key politician's remark. I love my job, it's great fun."
Senior cambists reluctantly admit that their subordinates' youth and inexperience may be aggravating the dollar's fall. The younger traders have never known anything but a sinking dollar; their impulse is always to sell, in maximum amounts, right away. But the boss traders too are disinclined to have their clients hold dollars. In their experience, those who have done so have usually lost money for the past several years.