Traders and politicians can learn from dead pilots

Crisis situations on a trading floor sometimes require split-second decisions based on instinct, intuition, guts or – in desperation – a flip of a coin. Such decisions are often wrong. This is why talented traders spend weeks and months thinking through different outcomes, estimating probabilities, brainstorming with their associates, plotting exit strategies and building risk management systems. Bad traders respond to market shock with a hail of haphazard transactions, incoherent tactical