Risk managers, aside from monitoring traditional metrics such as P&L and position limits, may have to start quizzing traders on such esoteric topics as the negation of self, if the example of a National Australia Bank fx options trader is anything to go by. David Bullen, one of four NAB fx traders who have been suspended while the bank investigates trading losses estimated at AUD600 million (USD466 million). In comments attributed to Australia's Sunday Herald Sun, he said, "I'm not a currency trader anymore. I am nothing; I don't actually exist. I experience no self, but only enlightenment." Bullen, a convert to Buddhism, did not respond to e-mailed questions from DW sent via his Web site (www.enlightenedbuddha.com).
In further comments attributed to the Sunday Herald Sun, Bullen said, the money was "not 'lost.' Someone else in the world has it, so the planet has not lost anything. If someone drops $1 million on the road and another person picks it up, it is not lost. The fellowship of man has lost nothing in absolute terms."
