Personal Narrative: Occupy Wall Street

Wall Street is evil and corrupt… or at least that's all I hear from news headlines and organizations like Occupy Wall Street. After consistently hearing about corrupt brokers and managers like Bernie Madoff and Jordan Belfort, I began to buy into this facade. I enjoyed following the stock market, but I didn’t want to pursue it as a career out of fear of social repercussions. Last summer, this all changed. A few of my friends and I were awarded a free trip to Washington D.C. for placing fifth in a national stock market competition. While there, my views did a complete one-eighty. I met traders and managers from big investment banks such as RBC, Morgan Stanley, and UBS. They talked to me about what they do, and how it ties into the rest of the stock market. I anticipated them to be cold, arrogant, and disdainful.Yet, to my surprise, not a single one of them seemed to be evil, corrupt, or in possession of a single malicious thought. They were delighted to share their career with a group of high schools students. Of all the people I met, Mr. Marshall, a senior portfolio manager from Morgan Stanley, stands out in my mind; he was extremely humble and spent extra time talking to me about trading strategies, such as technical analysis.
My experience has lead me to realize that the so called “1%” is really the victim of its nature.
After any catastrophic event, minority groups become the target of nonsensical hate based on the actions of a minority of the minority. Just as police officers have recently received bad publicity for the actions of a few, the 2008 “Great Recession” has lead to big banks and hedge funds becoming the scapegoat for the frustration of the masses. The good people who “work on Wall Street” are the reason that putting money into a 401(k), IRA, or other retirement account is better than just having liquid assets sitting in a bank account growing at today’s near zero interest
rates. Contrary to what politicians like Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump say, I don’t think the big banks are the physical manifestation of Satan. It is perfectly acceptable to associate oneself with a legitimate industry. Like every other sector, it has flaws, but it also has regulators like FINRA, the Fed, and the SEC to help account for these, and the only reason one hears about Jordan Belfort and Bernie Madoff is because they got caught, meaning that these regulators actually do their jobs. While there are a couple of small, nitpicky things, that could be slightly revised, such as how hedge funds managers receive performance based compensation relative to indices, I do not think it was necessary for thousands of people to take to the streets.