Trading Desks Expected a Quiet Holiday. That’s Not What They Got
- ‘I let my coffee go cold,’ said Oanda’s Craig Erlam in London
- Bokeh’s Kim Forrest turned it into ‘my stock Black Friday’
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It was supposed to be a quiet trading day in the U.S. that could easily be handled through post-Thanksgiving drowsiness. Instead, news spread Thursday night of an ominous new coronavirus variant, and traders braced for widespread losses on Black Friday.
In a rush of adrenaline that recalled the dark days of March 2020, Craig Erlam, a senior market analyst at currency trading and data firm Oanda, had to jettison his plans.