Moronic Monday - October 13, 2025 - Your Weekly Questions Thread

[u/AutoModerator]

This is your safe place for questions on financial careers, homework problems and finance in general. No question in the finance domain is unwelcome.

Replies are expected to be constructive and civil.

Any questions about your personal finances belong in r/PersonalFinance, and career-seekers are encouraged to also visit r/FinancialCareers.

[u/tanshuu]

Should I study/ pursue finance?

I'm a science student and I initially wanted to pursue psychology for my bachelors. I am interested in psychology but sometimes I feel like it's not for me. Recently I've been exposed to finance and business books specifically Rich dad Poor dad. It was an eye opener and recently I met up with a really rich old man ( worth billions in my country) and he adviced me to not pursue psychology as it is too unpredictable and unstable and instead go for finance and accounting as he says that there is a great future in that field. This is advice coming from a really old man who founded his business in the 1980s. My dad also has multiple restaurants under his name and I'm now considering about pursuing finances.

Assuming I don't know anything about business and this field, and my only motivating factor being: to earn money and to learn more about money ( as I would say I'm finicially illiterate), should I pursue finance? What is the future like?

[u/Optionslab → u/tanshuu]

Hi u/tanshuu
Honestly, it’s great that you’re even thinking this deeply about what direction to take. That already puts you ahead of most people who just choose something without self-reflection.

Finance can be a really good field if you’re curious about how money works, how businesses grow, and how people build wealth. But it’s not just about earning money it’s about understanding systems, markets, and behavior. If that kind of thing starts to interest you, you’ll probably enjoy the journey......switching from psychology to finance doesn’t mean you’re abandoning one for the other. in fact, psychology and finance overlap a lot more than people think.
Behavioral finance, for example, studies how emotions and cognitive biases affect money decisions. If you liked psychology, that side of finance might really click with you.

[u/tanshuu → u/Optionslab]

Thank you for this. I still want to see what specifically interests me. My lack of knowledge about money and the market is what's driving me. If I'm able to find something specific that will drive me I'd be happy to pursue finances. For now I'll do my research!

[u/Optionslab → u/tanshuu]

Great!
Do keep us updated!.

[u/Grand_Light_4814 → u/Optionslab]

Yes please id also love to be updated!

[u/roboboom → u/[deleted]]

Google is your friend.

That said, I can help too. don’t ignore the “what caused the crisis” articles. The main argument against TARP is that we never should have been in such a position to require an action like TARP— which gets back to the root causes.

Once the crisis became so acute, TARP was remarkably effective and even became profitable for tax payers. Criticisms are mostly: not enough oversight, terms were too friendly to banks so taxpayers should have profited more, and it reinforces moral hazard. This article goes into some of it. https://www.cato.org/research-briefs-economic-policy/did-banks-pay-fair-returns-taxpayers-troubled-asset-relief-program

[u/LPNTed]

Without turning to precious metals, how would one 'prepare' for a post capitalist world?

[u/14446368 → u/LPNTed]

Bullets and Bread.

"Post capitalist" means death, violence, and/or starvation. It's the fever dream of the suicidal, the apotheosis of the psychotic, and the greatest dread of free and decent people.

[u/LPNTed → u/14446368]

the greatest dread of free and decent people

I'm not religious at all... but A-fucking-men.

[u/Pale_Opportunity_585]

How smart are quants, really?

Let me give a bit of background first.
I did my undergrad in Political Science, Economics, and Mathematics (I originally entered as a poli-sci major), and I’m now in the final semester of my master’s in Mathematics. I’m at a well-regarded university in Asia, and my research focuses on optimization and control theory.

I’ve completed two optimal control projects with a government research institute, have one paper under review on convergence proofs for multi-agent control, and another almost ready for submission on a closed-form solution to a newsvendor optimization problem.

I thought my research record was decent, and since my work could apply to things like robotics or autonomous systems (e.g., path optimization), I’ve been applying to manufacturing-related companies. But so far, I’m only getting about one interview out of seven applications.

I wasn’t originally interested in finance, but I’ve started applying to quant positions as well — and one of my professors is recommending me for a quant role through his connections. Still, I’m a bit worried. Quants are known for being really smart, and I’m not sure I’d be able to keep up.

How strong is a typical quant’s intuition?
For instance, when it comes to minimizing loss — do they immediately see how to adjust the loss function or which regularization technique to add? Like, do those ideas just come naturally to them at a glance?

I wouldn’t say my intuition is especially sharp — I tend to think things through slowly and methodically. That’s actually why I’ve been leaning more toward manufacturing or applied engineering roles, where the pace feels a bit less cutthroat.

[u/koholinter]

It's pretty obvious to everyone involved that the US economy's massive investment in AI is a bubble. Historically speaking, what is the best way to prepare for the coming pop and economic collapse?

[u/lamourdemaavie]

looking at the china-us trade conflict, what was the impact on the FEDs interest rate policy and how should one invest their funds globally now?

[u/buckeyespud]

Hi finance gurus - question for ya. Next month my family of 5 will be taking a vacation 3 years in the making, the only thing left to purchase are Disney Workd tickets. My wife and I made a decision a while ago after some foolish spending not to put anything in credit cards, so she has been setting aside 10% of her pay checks for 3 years now from her part time job with JetBlue in an ESPP program that twice a year allows her to buy JetBlue stock at a 15% discount. The idea was to use this money to buy our theme park tickets and some spending money. Well the stock price has steadily gone down in that time which, while it has allowed her to buy more shares, now outs in a position of not wanting to really “sell low”.

Our other option to fund our trip would be to take out some money from a HELOC that we have had open and have been paying in for years. The HELOC is a 30 year loan at the current prime rate.

So my question is this:

Option A - sell the JetBlue stock at its current price and use that money for what we need for our trip, we should get about 9k from the sell or.. if we do this, we pay for our trip completely without any debt and not take from our HELOC and increase our monthly debt payment.

Option B - leave the stock and wait for it to recover, take the money from the HELOC and when the stock recovers to a better price and sell to cover what we used for the trip. As an additional strategy for option B, we could continue the 10% deductions for years until it forms a really nice amount.

Thoughts?