I'm sure I'm not alone, or even remotely unique, with regard to my explicit decision to move as far away from finance/investment banking as was humanly possible when I began my education and career.

I knew I could make more money with less effort if i went into it and I watched a bunch of acquaintances do exactly that.

I'm not trying to say I was morally superior to them or whatever, because morality isnt really why I made that decision. It was more because, even though I could tackle the coursework and the grades and everything necessary to get there, and I did grasp the basics of most financial instruments like futures, for instance, the more derivative it got, the less comfortable I was with it. To me it looked like a way of creating "wealth" that was purely theoretical and was so far removed from the actual value it was based on...

Like say some developers plan to build 200 houses some place--so there's value in the future homes, and the builders will need to borrow capital, and there's value in the interest payments theyll make... let's sell people financial products that exist on the basis of interest on loans that havent been made yet, for materials/labor for a development that hasn't even broken ground yet.. and ones based on the 200 mortgages and projected house prices, and on the projected price of lumber, and every other value we can derive in theory.

It's so far away from the value of the real estate, the building contracts, their suppliers, labor, the stuff that actually provides a thing or a service for the money

It gets so far away that no amount of explaining can make me comfortable with it. Basic securities im fine with, but I don't even like the idea of generating value through selling futures or options on commodities.