Weekend Wars: Meat vs. Meet
From time to time I find stories in the news which fascinate me. They are often not pertinent to the daily grind of the financial community. Life is so much bigger than what we do for our daily bread, that it is hard to get excited about a basis point spike or derailed merger. That said, some of these impertinent stories really get me thinking about the way business is done on Wall Street.
One such story is the seeming pop culture fodder of Mark Zuckerberg’s new diet. For those who are not up to speed, the Facebook founder has decided to only eat animals which he personally kills. This in turn leads to a lot of vegetable eating for Zuck, but my musings on the subject are not the least bit dietary.
What I am wondering is.. does Wall Street really it what it kills?
The Meat of the Matter
I am not quite sure what the image of the investment banker is anymore. We have seen the shift from backroom bean counter to master of the universe BSD to everyone’s favorite villain and reason for all that ails the world. I have never really thought any of the above to be accurate. My view is that investment banking and the Wall Street community, as a whole, is simply a service industry centered around a large ecosystem which cannot thrive without being picked and plucked to remain vibrant.
Since valuation remains at the heart of the game regardless of whether you’re on the buy side, the sell side, prop trading or derivative peddling the Wall Street professional is constantly in a judgmental state of mind. After all, when you see a million and one DCFs, 10 Ks and Sharpe Ratios you quickly forget that the products you are dealing with are inevitably backed by the efforts of people you will never meet.
The buy, sell or hold designation of a financial analyst is a direct judgment passed on the work quality of someone somewhere doing something. Though you may see them as merely the 4th quarter earnings, when you make that recommendation to bid or pass you are in fact grading someone personally.
In this regard, I find that there is a large disconnect between us and them, which (again, just my opinion) is at the backbone of the class warfare we currently have going on between institutional global finance and pretty much everyone else.
I am curious to hear how many of you guys have ever run across people from companies or businesses which you have valued on some level. How did they respond to hearing what you do? Did you even tell them?
I bring up this point because even though eat what you kill is very much a Wall Street mantra, I am not sure that it really does apply in the sense self evident in The Zuckerberg Diet. It is pretty easy to call out a company for being a dog with fleas based on their balance sheet. But how many of you guys would still shit all over some potential acquisition, investment or asset if you had to give your opinions to the masses employed at said firms and companies?
Would mergers and acquisitions, pump and dumps, arbitrage and pairs trading go on as easily and effortlessly if we had to look our dinner in the face?
This of course is mere metaphorical musing. I’m in that sort of a mood today, so that’s what I am wondering about. I would certainly love to hear about any thoughts or experiences on this subject from you guys. Naturally, anyone who actually wants to tell me that they go hedgehog hunting in Central Park in lieu of grocery shopping for the Sunday BBQ will automatically become my favorite board member and immediately be rewarded with a Silver Banana stub bonus.
Cool story bro
I have eaten plenty of rabbit, dove, quail, duck, etc. That I looked straight in the eye before sending them to a better place. That being said it's a product of hanging out with the older harvard law school peeps (the wasps). It's not done for survival but if you kill it you eat it. I could see how it relates to Wall Street but then again it does not. Business is never personal remember?
pretty interesting food for thought midas.
On the more literal point of eating what you kill I have a friend at the buy side firm I work at that has never, in his life, purchase meat. Every animal he eats (aside from at restaurants) he has physically dispatched himself. This guy a 2nd analyst and goes hunting every weekend in the woodlands of Scotland about an hour outside of Edin. He is also a really good guy, which in my opinion is at least partially derived from his respect for all living things. Killing bambi's father to put 50+lbs of meet into your own freezer provides one with a unique perspective of being able to unravel the somewhat convoluted supply chain/ balance and management of resources that exist in our modern world of convenience.
Applied to finance, its interesting to think about this concept particularly as it relates to commodity markets. Spread trading on futures for say copper could at times be boiled down to speculation on whether some 10$/day miner in Chile will go on strike, foregoing work for better quality of life/benefits/pay. If the speculators had to sit down with the union of workers who are from an economic perspective simply grinding the gears of the supply chain, would they really have the nerve to encourage these people to get their asses back to work to relieve supply concerns and ultimately support their short positions? Just like midas suggested, looking at a price on a screen and then looking at a producer in the eye are two very different things. From a PnL perspective if simple to know where one's interests lie, but separating yourself from the blinking lights on the screen and re associating oneself as a member of society of people provides a different perspective for sure.
Interesting post MMM.
Great perspective +1 ^^^
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