The Wall Street Trader Who Became a Monk

Posted by Alex in Money & Finance, Religion on October 2, 2008 at 2:39 pm


What should people who lost their cushy jobs on Wall Street do? According to this one guy who’s been through it before, the answer is pretty simple: become a monk!

Hristo Mishkov had a successful career as a broker on the Nasdaq stock exchange in New York until he decided to give it all up to return to his native Bulgaria. His radical change of circumstances may start to look appealing to the tens of thousands of finance sector employees who face the bleak prospect of losing their jobs.

Exchanging tailored suits and expensive shoes for a cassock and sandals, Brother Nikanor, as he is now known, believes Wall Street and the City deserve all they get as the credit crunch bites deeper and the global financial system goes into meltdown. [...]

His colleagues were stunned when he decided to become a monk, but he had made up his mind to seek spiritual well-being rather than material wealth.

"Everybody can be a good broker but this does not bring much benefit for the world," he said.

"We always search for happiness in the outside world, in material things, which makes us constantly unsatisfied, angry with ourselves and the world."

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COMMENT

7 comments to "The Wall Street Trader Who Became a Monk"

  1. Creampants
    October 2nd, 2008 at 3:32 pm

    Looks like DeNiro to me

  2. Neatoramawontsendmeapassword
    October 2nd, 2008 at 4:50 pm

    Well, he has a point. But if every broker and financial person suddenly gave up their jobs and became monks, we’d have a bit of a mess.

  3. Miss Cellania
    October 2nd, 2008 at 5:43 pm

    I went to the linked story to find out he is an Orthodox Christian monk. I was thinking Buddhist.

  4. GregZ
    October 3rd, 2008 at 12:11 am

    A broker on the Nasdaq?? Suspicious…

  5. sw
    October 3rd, 2008 at 9:35 am

    is there such thing as a non-religious monestary/convent/etc? i would LOVE to give up my material wealth and devote the rest of my life to serving the public good, but without the god angle . . .

  6. stacyj
    October 4th, 2008 at 2:47 am

    Good on him, people SHOULD do more to keep sight of what’s truly -important- to them (heh, personally -I- left the corporate world for grad school; I bet I could give him a run for his money, austere poverty-wise =)

  7. onionbreath
    October 19th, 2008 at 2:29 pm

    Still doesn’t have a real job, though. Now lives on handouts. Instead of talking losers into flipping stocks just to boost his commission.


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