Finance Is Boring, Admit It

Yesterday, at a party, I was cornered by a man with fancy pants who found out that I was a trader. He started to talk to me about all kinds of "economic theory" and "exotic financial instruments." He was in his mid 40s and retired.

Now, I have no financial background and I'm just not interested in financial talk, unless it's from a human perspective. Like, I enjoy talking about how people react to crazy news events, depressions, etc.

People who jump out of windows and horde food supplies and gold... that makes for good conversation. Talking about how one financial instrument influences another is not.

So anyway, after listening to this guy for probably 15 minutes and retaining absolutely nothing, minus some interesting tidbit about the government banning the purchase of gold in 1931 or something, he started asking me questions about stuff.

Without being a dick about it, I just said that I knew nothing about finance, and didn't care to clutter my head that sort of knowledge.

"In fact," I said, "if I knew too much, it could hinder my ability to trade, because I might come up with bad reasons to stay in trades that were going against me," and I cited the famous quote from John Maynard Keynes about "the market staying irrational longer than you can stay solvent."

He liked that. Happily, we moved on to discuss something more interesting, like "how to manipulate people." Still, in the back of my head, I felt a little guilty, being a writer for a blog that's somewhat about finance, while knowing nothing about it.

So, in order to feel better about this situation, I spent a few minutes this morning reading an article about Fannie Mae. It's a good one, and I suggest you check it out, so that you too can bore people about your "financial knowledge" at dinner parties.