Capital market needs clearing up

The prolonged stock market slump is taking its toll on the mood and aspirations of many young professionals in an industry that once seemed gilded in gold.

For the first time in their relatively short careers, a host of young stock analysts and traders, mostly in their late 20s and early 30s, have had a taste of hard times, as some have been laid off by their firms and others have seen their salaries slashed.

Covering the plight of these former hotshots in the mainland's stockbrokerage community, a reporter at our Shanghai bureau told me that everyone she talked to was unbearably gloomy. The reporter also told me that her husband, who works at a Shanghai-based commercial bank, was so shocked by the cut in his salary that he voluntarily gave up eating fresh fish, his favorite dish, at every dinner. And at the insistence of the husband, the young couple has gone into austerity mode, skimping on everything except books and CDs.