Why We All Love Rivalries

A lot of the story of modern finance is that it keeps getting more boring. Finance looks like, and wants to be, a very rational activity. There’s a thing that you want to maximize—usually it’s money—and you go measure it and figure out how to maximize it. And the world being what it is, we keep getting better tools to measure and math to maximize. So the trend, as in much of modern life, is toward more science and less instinct.

Investors once sought out star mutual fund managers for their wisdom and folksiness. Now they index. Actual human traders once roamed the floor of the stock exchanges, shouting and gesturing and eating cheeseburgers for breakfast. Now computers do the same work faster and more efficiently. Bank CEOs once fought to dominate every business. Now they have scaled back their ambitions, focusing on what they’re good at and just trying not to pay too many fines. Everywhere, freewheeling gut instinct and personal charisma are losing out to boring rational calculation.