Exactly! Over the years, I’ve come to the conclusion that most traders are no different than the professional poker players in Vegas. They just wear suits, instead.
One more thing that really surprised me was the inability/unwillingness of these Wall Street types to see the financial world and economy in a holistic way. I had always thought that traders on Wall Street would be totally knowledgeable about all things financial: accounting, economics, history/socio-political aspects of the economy, etc. During my discussions with some of these higher-level traders, I discovered that they didn’t know any more about these things than some hairdressers do. They only knew about the one asset class (or classes) that they traded, and that was it; they were not “intellectuals” who grasped how their actions could affect other economies or the potential socio-political ramifications of their actions.
While I do believe that some at the very top have a better understanding of the interconnectedness of markets and societies, our global economies are, for the most part, being run by rather ignorant cowboy traders who haven’t the slightest regard for how their actions might affect the rest of the world. It’s pretty frightening when you think about it.
