I have a hard time feeling bad for companies who choose to be "taken in" by a pitch like Barclays'. The complexity that exists in this small corner of the acti

I have a hard time feeling bad for companies who choose to be "taken in" by a pitch like Barclays'. The complexity that exists in this small corner of the active financial markets defies simple explanation even by some of the most articulate translators of this sort of stuff (I'm talking about Michael Lewis, who wrote Flash Boys, which reads like an advertisement for IEX, one of the "dark pools" talked about here who has to let in HFTs to make markets). This level of complexity exists across all corners of the market, whether you're talking about derivatives contracts, shorts, HFTs, or any other niche. Working in this field is not like doing your taxes, where you can hire a professional accountant, and they'll reliably produce a close-to-optimal output given clearly stated IRS rules. It is also not like doing physics or math within bounded contexts with repeatable, testable, and measurable outputs. The closest thing I can think of to doing business in high finance is building a scalable, adaptable model of a human brain - one that can predict what you'll say or think before you do so. Anyone who presumes to know how the market moves, or promises to hedge against all risk, is just blowing smoke. If you're not ready to "read the fine print" in this industry, you're just putting yourself at risk.