Part of Ronan’s problem was that he didn’t look like a Wall Street trader. He had pale skin and narrow, stooped shoulders, and the uneasy caution of a man who has survived one potato famine and is expecting another. He also lacked the Wall Street trader’s ability to bury his self-doubt, and to seem more important and knowledgeable than he actually was. He was wiry and wary, like a mongoose. And yet from the moment he caught his first glimpse of a Wall Street trading floor, in his early twenties, Ronan Ryan badly wanted to work on Wall Street—and couldn’t understand why he didn’t belong. “It’s
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