For years, Chris Cathey’s mornings were shaped by markets.
Prices moved. Phones rang. Decisions came quickly. On a trading floor, attention had to be constant because hesitation could be costly.
It was a demanding world, but one Cathey knew well.
In Bulls, Bears and Pigs: Trading, Grief and Reinvention, he reflects on a career that took him from a working-class upbringing in Newcastle-upon-Tyne to Cambridge University, a PhD in Chemistry and eventually thirteen years as a trader at Goldman Sachs before later working at a hedge fund.
Then life gave him a completely different kind of responsibility.
After the death of his wife, Claire, from breast cancer, Cathey became a single father to four children.
Suddenly, the priorities that had defined his professional life had to be reconsidered.
When the Day Starts Differently
Trading teaches people to focus on what matters immediately.
What is moving?
Where is the risk?
What needs attention right now?
Fatherhood after loss demanded that same urgency, but in an entirely different form.
There were children to care for, routines to maintain and a household that still had to function despite grief.
The contrast is striking.
One chapter of life may revolve around markets, performance and professional pressure. Another may revolve around breakfast, school, family responsibilities and simply being present.
For Cathey, this shift was not small.
It changed the way he understood success.
Redefining Achievement
In finance, achievement can be visible.
There are profits, bonuses, promotions, bigger responsibilities and professional recognition.
Parenthood offers a different kind of measurement.
There may be no applause for getting everyone through the morning. No annual bonus for creating stability. No headline for being there when your children need you.
Yet those ordinary acts can become far more important than anything that happens in an office.
After losing Claire, Cathey eventually returned to Newcastle and focused on raising his family. That decision became a central part of the reinvention described in the memoir.
He had spent years building a career.
Now he had to help rebuild a family life.
Why the Story Reaches Beyond Finance
That is what makes Bulls, Bears and Pigs more than an insider account of trading.
Readers interested in Goldman Sachs, financial markets, risk and trading-floor culture will find plenty of fascinating material.
But the emotional core of the memoir lies in the way life forces Cathey to reassess everything he once considered important.
The book explores a question many readers can recognize, even if they have never worked in finance:
What happens when the life you built is suddenly no longer the life you need?
For Cathey, fatherhood became the answer.
Not because ambition stopped mattering completely, but because responsibility had changed.
From Markets to Meaning
There is something powerful in the image of a man moving from making markets to making breakfast.
One world is fast, competitive and measured in money.
The other is personal, ordinary and measured in presence.
Chris Cathey experienced both.
And Bulls, Bears and Pigs: Trading, Grief and Reinvention shows how the second came to reshape the meaning of the first.
It is a memoir about money and markets, but also about grief, children, identity and the difficult process of discovering what matters when life changes the rules.
Discover Chris Cathey’s story in Bulls, Bears and Pigs.
Available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GX34WRSD/