Hedged Out: Inequality and Insecurity on Wall Street

A former hedge fund worker takes an ethnographic approach to Wall Street to expose who wins, who loses, and why inequality endures.

Who do you think of when you imagine a hedge fund manager? A greedy fraudster, a visionary entrepreneur, a wolf of Wall Street? These tropes capture the public imagination of a successful hedge fund manager. But behind the designer suits, helicopter commutes, and illicit pursuits are the everyday stories of people who work in the hedge fund industry--many of whom don't realize they fall within the 1 percent that drives the divide between the richest and the rest. With Hedged Out, sociologist and former hedge fund analyst Megan Tobias Neely gives readers an outsider's insider perspective on Wall Street and its enduring culture of inequality.

Hedged Out dives into the upper echelons of Wall Street, where elite white masculinity is the standard measure for the capacity to manage risk and insecurity. Facing an unpredictable and risky stock market, hedge fund workers protect their interests by working long hours and building tight-knit networks with people who look and behave like them. Using ethnographic vignettes and her own industry experience, Neely showcases the voices of managers and other workers to illustrate how this industry of politically mobilized elites excludes people on the basis of race, class, and gender. Neely shows how this system of elite power and privilege not only sustains itself but builds over time as the beneficiaries concentrate their resources. Hedged Out explains why the hedge fund industry generates extreme wealth, why mostly white men benefit, and why reforming Wall Street will create a more equal society.

Author: Megan Tobias Neely
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 01/25/2022
Pages: 336
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.35lbs
Size: 9.06h x 6.14w x 1.26d
ISBN: 9780520307704


Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 11/15/2021

About the Author
Megan Tobias Neely is Assistant Professor in the Department of Organization at Copenhagen Business School and coauthor of Divested: Inequality in the Age of Finance.