It's been said that Wall Street steals all the most brilliant people away to work in finance. When I ask people who work in all sectors of finance, they all seem to have the same story: Graduated from an Ivy League; majored in economics or accounting; interned at some bank as students, always knew they were going to work in finance etc. They studied numbers all their lives. They had parents who pressurised them into the field. They were following a path that was already paved from them. They never knew anything else.
I sometimes wonder if insider trading is really about people who socialise at country clubs, playing golf, and saying, hey, let's do this next week, just between you and me. Just don't leave a trail of emails, facebook messages, or twitters. You'll be fine, right?
I once read that the best traders are star athletes. Most investment and capital groups are attracted to star athletes, not due to their Michelangelo and model-like appearance, but because as star athletes, they are disciplined. They get up at the crack of dawn, they practice their technique daily, they don't indulge in excess, they learn to persevere etc. It's akin to the myth of the hero: this perfect athlete/ trader. They are Greek gods, admired by men and ladies alike, wanted by all Proprietary Trading Groups and bring in the most revenue.
The truth is, this probably is untrue- at least for most Proprietary Trading Companies out there. At our company, 3 of our best intraday traders were not athletes. They didn't even play sports at all. One was a warm, caring individual who came from a foreign exchange background, and studied business administration when he really wanted to be a writer. The other two, foreign immigrants who liked to play a lot of video games in their spare time, and the other still, a French national who read a lot of literature, and had an intuitive way of analysing the market. They knew how to scalp based on their understanding of routes, tape reading and learning how to outsmart the automatons at the "big banks" at intraday play. They were never A-students, and none of them attended Ivy Leagues nor were star athletes; but what they had in common was that trading was never meant to be their primary profession. Trading was their Plan B, and somehow, they found they were extremely good at it.
Did Wall Street take away our best scientists, artists, musicians, writers, engineers, editors, lawyers, doctors and make them into financial analysts, traders and investment bankers?
Perhaps. In the United States, we live under neocapitalism. One could no longer have the freedom to do what they wanted in life unless they were somehow involved with the financial market.
Wall Street was our new religion. But part of the joy was discovering that path itself. This is what always separated the bulls from the bears. One had to always take a stand.
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