Harvard Business School Spells Doom for Wall Street

Everywhere we look, there’s proof the economy is not doing well. While we toil for our pittance (writing is its own reward), Harvard Business School graduates head off to New York to earn their fortunes. But retired banking executive Ray Soifer claims that the proliferation of Harvard MBAs on Wall Street means the rest of us should probably continue to cut back.

Here’s Soifer’s theory. [via NY Mag’s Daily Intelligencer]

. . . [W]hen 10% or less of a [Harvard Business School] graduating class take Wall Street jobs, it’s a long-term buy signal. When 30% or more take market sensitive Wall Street jobs, it’s a big flashing sell signal.

If you’re anything like us, this didn’t quite make sense, so we called Soifer to get the finance-for-dummies breakdown.

In essence, the Harvard grads are like the stocks they trade—the best time for them to get ahead on Wall Street is when there’s less interest. Paraphrasing advice that Harvard professor Sam Hayes gave his students, Soifer explains that, “Wall Street may be making [students] very attractive offers now, but in a few years as the cyclical markets inevitably turn they may be laying [them] off,” which would signify a downturn in the market.

How big a percentage of this year’s Harvard MBA class went to New York? A whopping 40 percent of the 2007 class. Maybe it’s time for us to cash out that Yahoo! stock grandma bought us and take our chances at Foxwoods. Sell, sell, sell!