Finance Guys are Trending, Again.

This past weekend, I went on a long, morning run down Lake Shore Drive, along the concrete beaches of Lake Michigan. Towards the end, gassed and drenched in sweat, I turned a bend onto a long, well-maintained pathway filled with very fit and happy joggers, nary a pothole or patch of cracked asphalt in sight. All along the path were mile markers to tell you how far up or down the lake you were, with a small description at the bottom, saying that these trails were generously funded by Ken Griffin. Griffin, founder and CEO of Citadel, donated 12 million dollars to the city of Chicago in 2016 to create path separation for pedestrians and cyclists, making a safer journey for all. In exchange, his name is slapped on every single mile marker to remind you who’s paying for your pleasant jog.

You might know Griffin from a June 2026 profile in the New Yorker, or his recent spat with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani over his proposed pied-à-terre tax after he called attention to the $238 million penthouse that Griffin doesn’t actually live in. Regardless, we seem to be paying more attention to men in finance than we have in the past. Those of us who might’ve seen them as nothing more than some abstraction have taken an interest in these people as personalities, or objects of fascination. In March 2026, Interview magazine ran a story accompanied by a photoshoot of the “Finest Boys in Finance”, setting off a long media cycle of hatred from online burner accounts, and their employers having to confirm that these interviews were not approved beforehand. According to the Wall Street Journal, this summer has allegedly been the season of the “Private Equity Boyfriend”, or at least it’s been for Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman and Olivia Rodrigo. Every few months, Josh Kushner manages to find his way into the news, whether he’s buying the Lakers or being deified by suspiciously biased magazines. If you go back just a little further, our fascination with men in finance pops up on TikTok, and even the nonfiction section of the Paris Review.

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Go back even further, and you begin to realize that this fascination is quite cyclical. In the 1980s, there were satirical novels like Bonfire of the Vanities, journalistic deep-dives like Barbarians at the Gate and The Predator’s Ball, and cautionary tales like Oliver Stone’s Wall Street that end up getting taken too literally by a set of people who probably see Pacino’s Scarface as a kind of folk hero to aspire to. In the 2000s, there was American Psycho, the Wolf of Wall Street, and the works of Michael Lewis, from the Big Short to Flash Boys. While the fascination with the culture of corporate, finance types is as old as the rise of Wall Street, each iteration reflects the attitude of the times. Those early works critiqued the excess of a new, moneyed class of people who wanted to party like Gatsby and treat their hobbies as markers of status. Works like The Big Short and The Wolf of Wall Street came out in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, calling attention to the kind of greed that toppled these seemingly immoveable institutions. So what are we to make of this current version?

What’s fascinating about this recent obsession is that the overall attitude toward finance types feels less critical than it has in the past. It’s almost charming, even aspirational. The Interview magazine series views its subjects as harmless, dressing them up like dolls in their Armani suits, Rolex watches and Hermes ties. Elsewhere, the visual language of the rich has been in vogue for some time now. Any video, photo or moodboard that tries to capture the “old money aesthetic” will feature men who were likely bankers with second homes in Amagansett. The hostile, eat-the-rich attitude of millennials has declined in favor of something harmless at its worst, and aspirational at its best. As wealth disparities between the one percent and everyone else continue to grow, I wonder if some people believe mimicking the attitudes of the rich is a way of escaping the underclass. Sometimes, while scrolling through X, I’ll come across a piece of questionable financial advice from an anonymous account with more bookmarks than likes. Maybe they believe if you read enough tweets you can invest your way into a home.

Part of the reason our opinion on traditional, corporate types has shifted might be because there are more unpopular billionaires in our midst, who dominate headlines all the time. Every other day, the Elon Musks and Sam Altmans of the world appear on podcasts in bad outfits to make grand proclamations about the arrival of artificial superintelligence and data centers on Mars to inflate the valuation of their companies. They’ve shown little interest in investing in culture, unless you consider Gwyneth Paltrow hosting a dinner with Sam Altman to be evidence to the contrary. At least the finance guys have no illusions about the work they’re doing, and that maximizing profit to shareholders is a means to an end.

What’s funny about this nostalgia for the finance lifestyle is that these ways of being aren’t that old at all. Dylan Gottlieb’s book Yuppies, released earlier this year, breaks down the rise of this social class, and explains that the ascent of urban professionals and defining themselves through consumer experiences is a product of the financialization of New York City in the wake of the 1970s fiscal crisis. Economic and regulatory changes led to an explosion of opportunity on Wall Street, drawing in thousands of people who were making more money than ever, and looking for ways to display that newfound wealth, shaping the kind of culture us city-dwellers live through today.

When thinking about the current reputation of men who work in finance, it’s important to remember that the strain of fraudulence that we associate with those who work in tech and other fields is just as prominent on Wall Street as well. Michael Milken, Bernie Madoff and Jordan Belfort all went to prison after making their millions, and all eyes are on Mark Walter and his shaky insurance empire after his sale of the Lakers to Josh Kushner and Bob Iger. Just because these guys are parking their money in the sports teams you root for doesn’t make them any more noble.

That said, at least some of them look pretty stylish while doing it. The devil you know…

For further finance guy reading/listening/watching, see:

Books

Barbarians at the Gate (on the hostile takeover of Nabisco)

Predator’s Ball (story of the rise of Michael Milken in the 1980s)

Pods

This episode of the Odd Lots podcast has a great breakdown of the private credit industry and its ties to insurance, great to understand what’s happening with the Mark Walter investigation:

TV

Industry continues to be snubbed by the Emmy’s despite being the best show on television.

MOVIES/STREAMING

Margin Call

Meet your guide

Minh Tran

Minh Tran began his career in the literary department at ICM Partners before transitioning into late night television at Desus and Mero on Showtime. He now produces the podcast Victory Light with The Kid Mero, and writes the Substack “coulda been at the club.”