For Wall Street Bankers, the Thrill Is Gone

[Andy Nguyen]

A recent BusinessWeek article claims that given the new reality on Wall Street that requires more rules and less risk-taking, the thrill of a job in finance is gone. The article interviews many who claimed thrill is what draw them to Wall Street in the first place.

Risk is what drew George and the colleagues he respects to Wall Street, he says. At his peak, he could bring in millions of dollars in a single month. Trading was intense: During one credit-default swap deal he smashed a phone against his desk, sending part of it three rows away—“one of the records for the best break,” he says. Sam Polk, 32, who traded credit derivatives at Bank of America (BAC) and King Street Capital Management, a New York hedge fund, described the lure of Wall Street before he left in 2010: “You could be a twentysomething trader three years out of school, able to go to any restaurant or club or ballgame on any night that you wanted, and it was totally paid for,” he says. “It was a tremendous feeling of power.”

Now, what will happen to Wall Street if the industry is no longer attractive for twentysomething just out of school?

Another former Goldman Sachs partner, Robert Jones, mourned the loss of experimentation. “You’re not going to be able to attract the same kind of creative people that are looking to develop innovative new strategies in an environment where innovation is frowned upon,” says Jones, 55, who helped found and lead the bank’s quantitative equity fund management unit before leaving in 2010. Increased regulation, he says, “has taken a lot of the fun out of the game.”

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What will happen to these old-timers?

For George, the Muay Thai fighter, fulfillment is less about the money than the excitement. “People are sad,” he says of his colleagues on Wall Street. “They don’t have any risk. There is nothing to be stressed about.” George says he likes working at Jefferies, which is less regulated than the biggest banks. Even so, he says, Wall Street is “not the same industry that drew me in.”