re: Economics Book Club (EBC): Book 4 Starts Aug 21 (The Smartest Guys in the Room)

There's a lot of black and white in finance, but the best financial practitioners are the ones who learn to operate within the grey, particularly on the deal-making side of the business. That's where the most inefficiencies (read: opportunities to make money) are. You'll never have perfect information or a riskless transaction, so the ability to use your experience and intuition to take a calculated risk is a skill that can't be taught in the classroom and that some people simply can't be taught at all. Similar to law, "getting to maybe" needs to become an area of comfort and perfect is often the enemy of good.

Which field to pursue really depends on who you are and what you want to do. Do you want to crunch numbers (which is more of a quantitative skillset) or do you want to do deals (which requires a certain level of quantitative proficiency but is more art than science)? The answer to that question may dictate which direction you decide to go.