For all the aspiring billonaires

True, but no one can know if they will become the next Zuckerberg and wall street is the surest way of at least becoming wealthy.

No one can know if they are going to be the next Ken Griffith either. In fact, there's a strong likelihood that nobody who reads this will become a billionaire during their lifetime.

And that's fine. My goal is to pick up $2.5 million, buy a 40-acre farm on Lake Michigan, and spend my weekends hang gliding.

i heard ws can make me rich. now i find out its not always the case. then i realize i can do nothing else. im stuck.

These posts are stupid. Every week someone brings up the same shit. Tech vs. finance. Look, tech is in a bubble, finance is in a depression. If you counted (I'm too lazy -- you do it), you would see that a huge number of people on the Forbes 400 are from finance / real estate. The guys at the top of the list are mostly tech because they caught a once in a 100+ year game changing technology trend and were the huge winners out of thousands.

Finance still provides excellent upward mobility -- we live in a capitalist economy and knowing how capitalism works and how to profit from it is one of the best skills anyone can have, hands down. That is never going to change. If you "only" make 10 or 20 million in finance (I know plenty who have done that), then you can have a very satisfying life style. Even 5 million is plenty to live like a king. There are not that many jobs in the world that afford someone of reasonable intelligence and above average work ethic (i.e., 95% of target kids) the ability to do that.

Hell, give me 10 million and I could retire. Err, make that 11 million - 1mil to finance my heroin addiction.

Target/T20 kids in general are not of "average" intelligence, the average ACT score nationally is 21, I am sure all of us are in the 30s, hell a 33 gets you into the 99th percentile. I am sure many of us have that.

Sure the average IBer isn't as smart as Zucks but still a hell of a lot smarter than some retard working at a McDonalds in Cleveland.

FusRo, you think "many" on WSO are in the 99th percentile? I highly doubt that. There's a lot of smart people here, sure, but I doubt more then a handful in the 99th percentile.

The thing is, most people aren't looking for a Bill Gates level of wealth. Most people would be fine with $20 million. Hell, at the end of the day, most people would be fine with $200k/year. Quite a big difference there.

Also, EQ and IQ are bullshit. All that matters in this world is what you do with what you have, not some arbitrary score on an exam.

I'm only looking for $100mm

Regardless, beyond the 90th percentile, the correlation between intellect and wealth gets very weak.

And at the end of the day, intellect and wealth aren't what makes you happy. In fact, the correlation between insecurity and intellect seems to be positive rather than negative. Instead of looking at everything we have and being happy, we focus on who has more than us.

I work 60 hours/week. I have my own apartment in Manhattan. I can put food on the table. I've got some awesome friends. I get to spend my weekends going hang gliding. I have a framework for understanding my purpose in life even if I don't know exactly what it is yet. Things could be better, but I'm pretty darned blessed as it stands with a six figure net worth and a five figure lifestyle (post-tax).

Once I get that retirement fund and a farm on lake Michigan, I have all of the material needs I could ever want.

On the ACT, the 91st percentile is 28. I know plenty of retards at my high school who managed a 28.

The intellectual difference between a 28 and 33-36 is enormous.

Maybe the correlation between ACTUAL wealth and intelligence seems pointless but many super geniuses go into research or academia where they don't make that much. The ABILITY to earn a lot I'm sure is much higher.

I didn't say average, I said reasonable. Most people at T 10, 15, 20, whatever are not at the genius level. Most of them had good starts in life, are pretty smart and work hard. Compounding is an incredibly powerful force. If you get on the track early in life for academic success, it's yours to lose. That doesn't automatically mean you are going to be successful in other areas of life, and in fact, many such people are not. The point is that you don't need to be a rocket scientist to make good money on Wall Street -- you need to be merely "pretty smart" (at a competitive level, not relative to some random tard off the street) and extremely hard working with a sound approach. Most of the best investors in the world if they were being honest would tell you they are not the smartest people in the room, but they are smart and experienced. That's enough if you stick to it over a significant period of time. People tend to over weight this idea that high intelligence is the key to success when in fact it's hard work that is key, provided your intelligence crosses some minimum threshold -- we can debate what that is, but the number we reach would be arbitrary in the end.

article mentions billionaires and then just forgets buffet lol.

let us just ignore inconvenient data points like every other retarded journalist yay!

What is the quote about A-students teach, B-students work, and C-students get buildings named after them?

People shouldn't focus on billionaires as they are such outliers...there is a ton of luck involved. Many super smart people aren't well enough adjusted to succeed at a Zuckerberg level.

I have helped sell way too many companies that were founded by complete morons; they are all now super rich. Entrepreneurship is the best way to become extremely wealthy, but it isn't a logical decision so many people who succeed are those willing to risk it all and make irrational decisions. A lot of very smart people end up in finance because it is a rational decision. You are guaranteed to do well in life. It has the highest present value and least volatility of high-paying options.

Several billionaires at the top of the Forbes list have backgrounds in some kind of engineering. I think that says a lot.