Thanks SIg but I think you'll find most banking institutions cross collateralise and are thus engaged in all 3 activities. FYI in the long run, banks, despite getting their product for free, barely make money. Who is the pontificating idiot here? The smug institutions, propped up by my taxes, who had no clue about risk, or the humble retail trader who makes real money?
So either cross collateralization doesn't mean what you think it means or you're stretching the term "engaged in" to ridiculous lengths....as in your logic would say that most Americans are "engaged in" profiting from tobacco because Altria and Philip Morris are part of the S&P500 and most people have some ownership of the index. As I've pointed out here on this thread, to you several times, i-banks make their money from underwriting, advising M&A, structured products, market making, and other like activity. Why you can't comprehend this is beyond me. They don't make money from prop trading post Volcker Rule, they certainly don't make money from people depositing their saving into a savings account at the local branch, and to the extent they make money from hedge funds it's from providing them services, not making trading decisions for them. You trade options, good for you. I'm going to call complete bullshit on the assertion that "you've met many" who trade options professionally and "cannot even understand the basics". Perhaps you met someone who worked in a back office somewhere who didn't know much about options because it has nothing to do with what they do, and then, as it seems you're want to do, you extrapolated that into much more than what it is? You're going to have to provide a little more evidence than your unsubstantiated assertion if you want anyone to believe that someone who works in options for a living for a major i-bank, "cannot even understand the basics", especially when it appears you "cannot even understand the basics" of how an i-bank works! I'm guessing the sum total of your conversations with i-bankers consist of reading posts by folks here like @sle, @boone, and @FSU, who are representative of banking professionals and who clearly run circles around your "understanding of the basics". While we're talking about absurd assertions, in 2018 GS had an EBITDA of $13.8B. That's "barely making money" in what universe? Meanwhile, we're to believe "humble trader" here has never suffered a loss, because he's so "street smart" and doesn't have that "dangerous" intelligence thing going on. Yeah right.