Silly Wall Street Interns Need to Realize That Market Perfection Has Been Achieved

July 14, 2015
This is the new brag among Wall Street interns

Another noted that while some schools offer courses on things such as financial derivatives, students don't learn anything beyond basic pricing models that would work only in a perfect market.

You just gotta laugh at the things some naive interns worry about.

1. Over the past 6 years, does the stock market not always go up?

2. Over the past 6 years, have short-term interest rates gone up?

3. Over the past 6 years, have there been any failures of the banks that are too big to fail?

4. Over the past 6 years, has the unemployment rate ever gone up?

5. Over the past 6 years, has the Fed ever allowed a recession?

6. If we simply extrapolate this rich and extensive history well into the distant future, can we not see that the markets are perfect and always will be?

In summary, we now have six long years of historical "proof" that the markets are perfect. The stock market can only go up, short-term rates will never rise, our banking system is permanently stable, unemployment can only fall, and the Fed has permanently put an end to all future recessions.

So why worry about how derivatives will behave in imperfect markets? It's like worrying about Shingles just because you've had Chicken Pox. Currently have Shingles? Didn't think so! Like mine, your body is the perfect temple and no harm can ever come to it.

Granted, I had Chicken Pox when I was a kid and then had Shingles during our (economic) recovery. Oh, the irony. Didn't see me worry about it one bit beforehand though. The worrying didn't really kick in until I was working through the third Vicadin prescription. I was like, "Holy f^*k! What is happening to my perfect body!"

I was thinking like an intern though. There wasn't one bit of rational thought. It was panic mostly. I just got caught up in all the negativity. It's no way to live. Once sanity prevailed, I once again realized that I was immortal. No harm could ever permanently come to my perfect body. Well, once I drop a few pounds and start eating better anyway.

If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn't. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism. - Oscar Wilde

One need only listen to a few presidential candidates to realize that Oscar Wilde was an idiot. These people aren't pretending to be good. They are good, which is why I take them very seriously, especially that Trump guy. If anyone can protect my perfect body, it's him. He's got my back.

Look, all I'm saying is that if it was just him, me, a billion dollars, and a knife on a deserted island, then no harm would probably come to me. That's assuming we do a deal where I stay away from the money and the knife, refer to our shared location as Trump Island, build a wall around it, and stay just outside that wall, presumably on a small make-shift raft anchored in the island's cove. That's all.

Like the perfect market and the perfect body, it would be the perfect island paradise.

Too much sarcasm? Seems excessive again.