A pretty common topic of conversation on Wall Street is how Wall Street is depicted in popular culture. This is possibly because the broadest appeal of the industry comes from glamorized tragicomic figures, and movies like The Wolf of Wall Street quickly become shorthand for the culture of Wall Street.
This is bad for several reasons. One is that it is inaccurate. In the case of the Leonardo di Caprio film, The Wolf of Wall Street had nothing to do with Wall Street at all—as prosecutors and the SEC itself said, the firm that the movie was based on “was not a real Wall Street firm, either literally or figuatively,” and the culture of the movie, like the famous “sell me this pen” scene, are not things one will typically find in a real, serious Wall Street firm (and if you do encounter something like this at your firm, it’s time to get a new job fast!).
That begs the question of what Wall Street really does. The boiler room pump and dump strategy that is depicted in this movie doesn’t exist in legitimate finance, having migrated to the world of cryptocurrencies, particularly meme coins and other Ponzi-esque schemes. Even if the regulations didn’t make it extremely risky, the fact is there isn’t enough money in such a scam to make it worthwhile for a stockbroker, regardless of his or her moral qualms with the fraud.
Instead, Wall Street now depends on a lot of technology and computers, which makes people think that finance requires an IT or mathematics background to get in the door. For quant traders and support personnel, that is true. Such a digital market has little room for the kinds of phone scams of the past.
If you aren’t a tech or math person, you might feel excluded and worry that finance is an impossible career path. That would be wrong. Quants are a small portion of the finance world. People skills are very important for wealth managers, who interact with wealthy clients on a regular basis tailoring both portfolios and investment strategies to maximize returns and minimize risks and tax consequences. The math to do that is basic algebra, and wealth managers excel if they are good at talking to people.
Asset managers, similarly, have to have some people skills to attract assets from institutional investors, and they rely on analysts who need the analytical skills necessary not only to analyze quantitative metrics but also qualitative as well. This is so often overlooked it’s quite astounding; for instance, Warren Buffett has frequently discussed the value investor approach as a simple mathematical analysis of cash flows according to an assumed discount rate. But he doesn’t talk publicly about what that assumed discount rate should be or how you get to it. The reason is that this is a very qualitative question, demanding a lot of analysis beyond solving math problems. That requires a broad skill set that the industry typically claims to build during the two-year investment banker starting-off point for most financial careers. In reality, however, you probably developed much of that skill set at university, and the experience of applying it to actual financial transactions will help you hone those skills to get better at your job.
This scratches the surface—remember that Wall Street is separated into three primary divisions: front, middle, and back office, with the former demanding people skills and the latter requiring technical prowess and mathematical acumen. But in each division there’s a lot of room for people who aren’t PhDs in applied statistics, and in reality the vast majority of financial professionals don’t need or rely on that much math.
If you want a job on Wall Street, don’t think you are going to be Jordan Belfort or a lonely quant in a cubicle doing the hardest math problems in the world. The former is illegal, the latter is rare, and the middle ground between the two extremes is full of legitimate value-add jobs that remain in demand. And if you want one of those jobs, it’s a good idea to have a genuine enthusiasm for the industry so that you can learn its large, labyrinthine makeup and where you can start and build a legitimate career of providing value to customers so that you can build your own wealth sustainably and for the long term.