Socially Distanced, But Fully Engaged in Markets

Many of the traders and portfolio managers I work with have seen their lives turned upside down. Their personal accounts, often invested in a combination of stocks and bonds, have reversed the gains of many months. They now find themselves working from home at the same time a spouse is working from home and children are taking classes from home. They are maintaining social distance and doing all the recommended hand-washing, but they are struggling with empty shelves in grocery stores and questioning every cough and sniffle. In a matter of weeks, familiar routines have been disrupted and the routine has been replaced by the uncertain.
Still, some of the people I work with are weathering the socially distanced world well and others less well. What makes the difference between thriving and surviving in a disrupted world? Here’s what psychological research tells us:
1) Engagement matters – An important therapy for depression is known as behavioral activation. When we actively do things—particularly things that bring enjoyment and fulfillment—we combat the sense of helplessness and hopelessness that typically accompany depressed emotional states. We know that aerobic exercise brings a number of health and emotional health benefits, including positive mood, greater energy, and self-mastery. Social distancing does not have to preclude jogs outdoors and workouts in the home gym. Indeed, we can use our time of distance to set goals for new levels of physical fitness and well-being! I also see people using this time of social distance to take online courses (intellectual engagement), join online events sponsored by community groups (social engagement), and stay close to family members via Skype, Zoom, and similar platforms. For those dealing well with the recent lifestyle changes, social distancing has not precluded a full calendar.

2) Attitude matters – An empirically validated approach to personal change is known as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). The goal of such work is the achievement of flexibility, whereby we can learn to embrace what we can change and accept what we cannot. The Positive Psychology team has developed a “crisis kit” to help people during this period of uncertainty, emphasizing many of the mindfulness and acceptance strategies of ACT. The people I work with who not only accept the current situation, but adopt a mindset of making the most of it, are the ones I see thriving. One manager I work with used the current situation to bring family members together and make a plan for helping each other out, including the young children. They created rewards for collaboration and emphasized, “We’re in this together!” In so doing, they have used the current challenge to role-model and reinforce important family values.
3) Teamwork matters – At one firm where I work with active traders, SMB, the shift toward working from home has challenged the culture of collaboration and teamwork. They have used this as an opportunity to link traders with a robust communications system and make use of virtual meetings and shared ideas throughout the day. One interesting innovation in the works is integrating performance coaching into those team interactions, so that traders who are socially distanced can stay fully competitively engaged. It is difficult to feel isolated if you’re actively engaged in teamwork, whether within a family or in the work-from-home. I’m finding that the people most connected to their teams are maintaining the greatest productivity in their work from home. A different kind of teamwork—networking—is helping those who have lost jobs and who are figuring out what to do with their investments. I recently interviewed with a community of online traders, Investors Underground, and discussed how virtual teamwork enables senior traders to role model skills for developing members. In such cases, traders can be socially distanced, but are anything but isolated.

In a recent article, I took a look at the significant benefits of living a purposeful life. The risk of social distancing is that it can lead to disengagement and a loss of a sense of purpose. I recently participated in an online class sponsored by a religious congregation. It was clear that the group was using this time of physical separation to achieve greater spiritual closeness. Greg Miller, in an excellent Science article, notes how social distancing can have unintended negative psychological consequences. After all, social connection is an important buffer to stress. Our great personal challenge in this time of financial and health turmoil is to turn social distance into opportunities for fulfillment and positive emotional experience.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/brettsteenbarger/2020/03/18/socially-distanced-but-fully-engaged/#23c57d222940