I watched The Big Short last night. It wasn't very good. In addition to being really shitty storytelling, it also flat out incorrectly explained a lot of the brilliance of the book, which gives you a very clear understanding of the mortgage crisis and its makings. However, it did outline (in a crude and clumsy manner) that Wall Street is largely populated by business majors that have little understanding of algebra and above and that the overwhelming majority of the confusion related to money is due to obfuscation by an industry that substitutes opacity for acumen. It would not surprise me if financial managers, at least at the IRA level, abide by the "Nigerian prince" model of customer service - do deliberately dumb, sloppy shit so that the smart ones leave of their own accord before they can hassle you and drag down your efficiency.
That much is clear to me. I am sure that some rare managers have a clue, but unlike many scientific, technical, and trade disciplines, in the realm of gambling, it takes time to distinguish talent from imitation. If you load up on a bunch of financial terms of art, you can create a pretty good screen. If you do well for a time, you will likely even convince yourself of your acumen. My wife and I still laugh about a time that we listened to a FM pitch for about an hour until he said "1 million", and we both corrected him at the same time with: "No, you mean 100 thousand". I haven't read the book, but I found the movie entertaining. The celebrity explanations were terrible and unnecessary, however. Also, the narration and the talking to the camera. ...I guess my bar could be higher.Wall Street is largely populated by business majors that have little understanding of algebra and above and that the overwhelming majority of the confusion related to money is due to obfuscation by an industry that substitutes opacity for acumen.
Jared Dillian pointed out that the ones that are any good at it have no reason for you to know they exist. They play with their money, make more of it, and have little reason to involve you in the equation in any way shape or form. In fact, considering how much obfuscation is going on, your awareness of their presence and actions substantially hampers their success. The movie was entertaining, to a point. The book was orders of magnitude better.