A question and answer from a recent Trader Monthly interview with David Harding:
Q: Do you have strong opinions about the differences between money managers educated in mathematics versus those with liberal-arts degrees?
David Harding: Investment management has been, for years, run by arts graduates. That has been the tradition. We’re on the cusp now of it being run by science graduates. For a long time in the investment-banking business in England, you needed to go to one of the top WASPy, blue-chip institutions to find your way into the money world. This was equivalent to your Ivy League in the U.S. But George Soros went to England after the war, looked around after getting a job in banking and asked, “Who are these f—wits?” before heading to America. In America, he found a small number of clever people in finance, and that’s why he started a hedge fund there. I don’t know if America is better overall than England, necessarily, but it certainly is more meritocratic.
