Wall Streeters like conspiracy theories. Always have

Felix Salmon, after previously describing the readers of the blog sensation Zero Hedge as loser day traders and getting called out for it by my old friend The Equity Private (now blogging at Zero Hedge as Marla Singer), reconsiders:

Far from reflecting the conspiracy-minded and often-disjointed ramblings of harmful-only-to-themselves retail day-traders, could ZH actually be holding up a mirror to what the market’s really like, once you strip away the artificial polish of the PR departments and the urbane investment-banking types?

Uh, yeah. And this is a surprise why? Wall Street traders are among the most conspiracy-minded group of people on the planet. Always have been, as far as I can tell.

That’s because (1) some financial market conspiracies are real and (b) without theories of some sort to grasp on to, you’re going to get completely lost in the chaos of the market’s day-to-day movements. The same goes for technical analysis, a.k.a. chart-reading. Most of it is nonsense, some of it isn’t, and without it a lot of succesful traders would be completely lost. Ditto for Austrian economics.