Documentary: Quants – The Alchemists of Wall Street

Quants are the math wizards and computer programmers in the engine room of our global financial system who designed the financial products that almost crashed Wall st. The credit crunch has shown how the global financial system has become increasingly dependent on mathematical models trying to quantify human (economic) behaviour. Now the quants are at the heart of yet another technological revolution in finance: trading at the speed of light.

What are the risks of treating the economy and its markets as a complex machine? Will we be able to keep control of this model-based financial system, or have we created a monster?

A story about greed, fear and randomness from the insides of Wall Street.

0:47if you’re close to the money you know it like you’re always too far I E
0:52100 always use every week how many people had a hundred voices week well
0:55I am because under there if your touch if you’re in the business
0:58a making money in moving money around in county money is in the units have
1:03trillions
1:04a course your gonna make more money sleep
1:13and then you become so isolated from the real working world to the average person
1:19who doesn’t have the same ability and is struggling to make it to keep his job to
1:25pay his mortgage to
1:26you know feed his kids and send them to school best part my job
1:42clean
1:42the white shell no disease
1:48making a lot of money is like taking a drug
1:51you feel good head to toe it’s like it is very similar to a drug
1:56when somebody hands you a million dollar check your five million dollar check
2:00you want more yes i know i by making five million oh and I should be making
2:04fifty because
2:05I’m a genius no question in your mind that you are a genius
2:08and that the rest of the world does you know you’re just so much better than
2:12everybody else
2:13gonna the
2:17the net
2:29a bottle beers a pound
2:30be having a party see need to have a hundred bottles
2:34be a so how much is a hundred bottles beer one bottle is a pound
2:38time how much as 100 bottles at their up hun