‘Unproductive' financial sector gobbling up our best? (2013)

It turns out the "best" love wide picture concepts such as predicting interest rates, recessions, GDP projections, natural resource shortage/abundance, large scale political and military outcomes influencing all the above etc..

And they also love being diversified and not tied to a single sector or asset so they can change allocation of the portfolio they manage according to all the aforementioned variables and their prediction about them..

Who'd have thought the "best" would love a global scale Poker game?

It’s not unproductive. Trading firms provide information to the market and society. They are the institutions that control entry and access to markets—- as well as the flow of information that is critical to a healthy market. If you work for a trading firm you’re probably doing the highest impact work you could be doing. The hours are long and you’re on your feet. You’re dealing with the most important decisions in the world. The stress is intense. I mean, imagine it’s your job to price gigantic numbers of options far beyond what normal people can handle. It’s fiendishly difficult work but beats the impacr of anything else you could be doing.