On Wall Street, Pride Signals a Fall

     Hubris is another word for pride, or cockiness. This presumptuousness is particularly wrathful on Wall Street, with several wildly succesful companies growing sure of themselves, and then suffering losses bordering on the catastrophic. These companies, like Enron and Winstar, reach for what Aristotle called "godly heights" and plunged to their doom, like the fabled Icarus - they acted as if they were above the world, and were brought crashing down without wings or a trampoline.

     The assumption that hubris negatively affects companies is not ungrounded - companies whose chairmen or CEOs appeared on magazine covers suffered a 10% negative growth over the next two years, compared to a 20% positive growth in the overall market. In general, as well, companies who pay to have sports arenas named after them also suffer in the years following.