i think you underestimate the draw of finance. there are many very smart people who also like to make big bucks. the easiest way to do that is in this business. there’s almost no money in academia or research compared to being a quant PM at a hedge fund or even a hacksaw PM at Podunk Wealth Management. i know a Ph.D in physics who’s a financial advisor. i know people with Masters’ in Mechanical Engineering from big schools that are advisors. these people make 2-3x what they’d make anywhere else and all they have to do is talk $hit all day, exactly what smart people like to do. why do you think we’re all loading this forum up with garbage every day?
Perhaps we can use a uniform exam that we’re all familiar with. The CFA exam.
To start, those who did not go 3/3 on the exams are off the list. Those who did may continue with further scrutiny.
Perhaps next, the number of topics scored >70% are summed.
Obviously, this method would only really measure test taking ability and efficiency, but it’d be something.
I already figured that out from posts. 
Finance is just TVM, not very interesting patterns. Markets are interesting, there are no doubt some genius quants and hedge funders out there. Uhh, but NOT Ackman.
Also, what’s with finance people thinking that GMAT or whatever = IQ? Those are just study and learn tests, higher IQ means you can study and learn faster. But proper IQ tests cannot be studied for or learned. If you can get your hands on a test specifically for 160+ IQ you’ll see what I mean. It’s game fu@#$n over the minute you look at the questions, just an alien language, except for people with seriously strange pattern recognition skills.
lol Ackman is a multi billionaire, and has earned his investors more in the process.
But really when it comes down to it, PA is the smartest most non-biased person to ever walk the face of the earth. No once can compare to his ability to rip the face off of the machine and expose to all of us plebs it’s true inner workings.
Yes, but I think we are talking about genetic intelligence. He’s like a 130, that’s all you need to make it in finance.
No on smartest, perhaps on non-biased. I think you are combining a bunch of unrelated things, yes?
Just mocking the fact that you always assume how unbiased you are (which is in itself a bias) and your assumptions that you are always correct.
Well, I am correct a lot.
Should I dumb it down? Be wrong more often?
Your freakish ability to randomly guess so successfully brings your life accomplishments into question 
I think that in finance (outside of quant strategies) it’s better to be above-average intelligence but not too far above average intelligence. You want to be smarter than the pack so you can outwit them but not so much smarter that you can’t relate to how they think. In that sense, being too smart can be a drawback. Again, if you’re a quant, it may be different, although that’s a very specific type of intelligence, as well.
It also helps if you don’t mind being an asshole.
I feel like the correlation of IQ to monetary success is high, but by far from definite.
BChad quite accurately defined “optimal IQ” for (non-quant) finance, there’s a sweet spot.
I guess you were expecting many people to name you?
Relating to how something thinks and understanding how they think are different. IMO, the definition of “smart” is understanding how things (including people) work.
Keep in mind that plenty of ultra-high IQers understand how primates work, and they are incredibly bored by these simple repetitive patterns. They judge it a better use of their time to focus on music or physics, or something interesting.
When I guessed “A” on every one, I got a 74.
When I took it “for real”, I answered 18/20 correctly and got a 142.
Try guessing random ones. I think it detects when you’re gaming it by just selecting the same answer because when I do that my score drops but if I guess random answers it jumps.
Guessing the third option every time gave me an 80 but randomizing it without reading the questions gave me a 154.
The questions on those types of tests aren’t difficult enough to gauge IQ above like 130, it’s just online entertainment.
This one goes up to 170, no multiple choice. You have to submit your email at the end to get the score, but you can just scroll thru the questions to get an idea of what 170 looks like. They used to have a really cool visual test with 100-sided objects etched with alien symbols, but now it’s just this boring mathy stuff…
for an iq test to have any validity, there must be a time limit attached. take a Wonderlic if you get the chance. smart people aren’t used to not getting through a test so the Wonderlic just $hits on you like that.
Yes, God-like intelligence would include knowing and understanding all things, including what it’s like not to know and understand all things, but in practice, the things that we measure as “intelligence” do not tend to measure what has come to be known as “emotional intelligence” (which is why there is such a term). We tend to call an understanding of people “wisdom” or “street smarts”.
A lot of people believe in a general intelligence factor (g-factor) which is basically the idea that all forms of intelligence are correlated. I partially believe this, but it is intersting that the (very small number) people who graduate with Ph.D.s in math or computer science or physics at age 15 are virtually all socially awkward, even years later when they are in their 20s and 30s. It’s also true that virtually no one graduates with a Ph.D. in history or even psychology at age 15.
I do believe that there may be a G-factor in intelligence, or rather, the G-factor reflects the fact that things that impede the development of intelligence in one are likely impede multiple forms of intelligence. There is still quite a diversity of intelligences at the top end. My father was brilliant, near-Nobel-prize-winning intelligence (physics, related to the J/psy meson), but couldn’t figure out people worth a darn.
I am not as bright as my father in that stuff, but I do understand people better. However, it’s still very difficult for me to understand what the world looks like when you can’t see connections between things. I realize that a lot of people can’t, whether for ability, experience, or the fact that sometimes seeing connections between phenomena is inconvenient, but it is hard to figure out (in many cases) what model of behavior to use. I’m getting better at it, because people generally substitute emotional logic to fill in gaps in information, but there are still times when emotions dominate, and people sometimes substitue different non-emotional-yet-less-complete-logical models instead. So trying to figure out what the crowd is going to do can still be very difficult, and that’s why being able to relate to the crowd is perhaps more important (or at least more realistic/informative) than trying to model the crowd.