alt Hacker News> The salesman can't tell you how to hedge the product. If you can't hedge you will lose that 5% upfront pretty fast.
> You need quants and sales and trading. Which is why all banks have all three.
I don't think anybody said you can just run without one of those. But it seems the magic is in spotting the fish, not hauling it in.
Spotting fish who you can overcharge is not really a sustainable business model. You can do it once but your colleagues will find out, move to a competitor, and next time they'll rip them off a bit less than you did and you'll have to rip them off less than that.
There is, eventually, a shortage of dumb money. The sustainable way of making money involves competition, and this involves knowing the "right" price within a tight tolerance.