Taking Stock of Bonds

December 3, 2007

Artists and Bankers

Monday's Wall Street Journal feature about Philip Knight's - yes, he of Nike fame - secretive efforts to learn about the process of writing a novel at Stanford should be required reading for all business professionals - those on Wall Street and those in other areas of corporate America.

I have to admit I once shared that stereotype, but after covering Wall Street, and meeting and learning about its people, I have come to realize that there are many talented folks within the investment banking world. They are passionate about sports or culture and, given the limits they have on their time that passion is not always obvious to those outside of Wall Street's investment banking world.

In the nearly two decades that I have covered Wall Street I am routinely surprised by the secret passions and artistic aspirations of people in banking. There have been source meetings at jazz clubs with economists who have let on that they have toyed with the genre, and I've sat in a mortgage banking professional's music room to hear strains of Mingus follow a Beethoven brief recital. Here at IDD we found out about some hedge funds that put on rock shows for charities and we discovered some Wall Street bankers this summer who have written fiction and gotten it published successfully.

And, let us not forget that Gaugin was a stock broker before he picked up the brushes and painted full time.