> In other words, we need to increase the supply of these research jobs, and make them more attractive then working in finance. That's a fair summary. My core

> In other words, we need to increase the supply of these research jobs, and make them more attractive then working in finance. That's a fair summary. My core point was that it's far more a matter of constrained research positions rather than finance being so alluring. It's not hard to make a research position more attractive to most bright minds than finance: you just have to offer autonomy, a bit of prestige and working conditions that aren't absolutely terrible. > certain jobs like proprietary trading are the equivalent of gambling The proprietary trading firms I'm familiar tend to be risk averse and specialize in things like market making and arbitrage. This is probably some of the most unambiguously useful activity on the markets: it's companies like that that make things like ETFs and less liquid securities work efficiently. Without market makers, various useful but niche securities would be significantly more painful to trade in practice.