OldReform

What's the most unnecessarily complex finance Gyan you ever got? By whom?

My thesis has been that finance has been made complex deliberately and it isn't rocket science.

Would love to hear some madeup complexities.

14mo ago

majboormajdoor

For a regular Joe, most finance & instruments are complex and unnecessary. But for some institutions with specific operations exposed to very specific type of vagaries, even the most stupidly complex structured product CDO squared will be a life saver.

BUT, the risk takers like IBs selling that product often find the Unit economics for a single niche client (such as dealing in weather derivatives) very subdued, so they MIS-SELL. ie find some unsophisticated Joe and stick him that. And that's why a relationship manager is selling a ULIP/Life insurance to some 80yr grandpa in a Tier 3 town or the Pension funds of US got sold those CDO squared.

majboormajdoor

Stealth14mo

Also, I recently read that accounting/ledgers were the PROBLEM that the written script and our numeric systems were invented to solve. The numeric systems (Roman/Indo Arabic) started to note who owed what to whom. Our entire measurements and science came from finance. That was very interesting.