“Curling is fiercely competitive,” said Nigel Lucas, a New York-based portfolio sales trader for brokerage and investment group CLSA, who also acts as treasurer for Nutmeg Curling Club in nearby Bridgeport, Conn. “It looks slow, but it’s not. You’re not just thinking what are you going to do, but what is the other guy going to do.”

It isn’t possible to accurately measure curling’s popularity on Wall Street, but anecdotal evidence suggests that the sport has a growing fan-base in the investing world that’s been reinforced by successive Winter Games. CNBC has carried Olympic curling for multiple consecutive Olympics, and it consistently rates as one of the highest-rated daily programs in its 5 pm slot, after the trading day ends. …

Dr. Paul Baard, an organizational sports psychologist at Fordham University, said that emphasis on strategic thinking and the ability to make quick adjustments to a changing situation, is very similar to the work of Wall Street.

“They work in small teams. Traders work in small teams, and to close a deal, you work in a small team,” he said. “And there’s major pressure. You either win that game, or you lose it.”