Danielle Chiesi: Greed or Worse?

Yesterday’s plea agreement by former Galleon Group consultant Danielle Chiesi who admitted to being involved in insider trading raises an important question….

No matter how you slice it, trading is a game. It has rules, lines and boundaries. Some are clear and some, not so clear. Unfortunately, when playing a game, the people looking to win, sometimes lose sight of where the lines are.

Commonly, the outside observer assumes that because trading involves money (and sometimes large piles of money) that it has to be about greed. Well, I don’t believe it is. I believe it is about winning. About competing. About finding an advantage and beating your competitors. The money is just a way of keeping score. It is a byproduct of the function of the markets.

Machines produce things. Markets produce money.

And the traders and hedge funds that are looking to get the machine to produce the most it can possibly produce are not focusing on the money, they are singularly committed to winning and that can mean winning at any cost. Sometimes they forget where the boundary lines are or ignore them all together. Athletes (Marion Jones), coaches (Bill Belichick) and politicians (take your pick) have been known to skirt boundaries from time to time as well.

Are those who cross the lines or even flout the rules evil? Maybe, but it is not my place to judge. I am not defending those who break the law or operate in grey areas.  I am simply trying to shed some light on what really goes through their heads. Is it greed? Maybe, but I’m inclined to think that some of these people are trying to compensate for something that’s missing in their lives. Love, respect, fulfillment? In my opinion, that emptiness is something much worse than greed.