> I don't understand higher-order financial engineering except as presented in pop culture references such as wolf of wallstreet
The Wolf of Wall Street wasn't doing any sort of financial engineering in the real sense of the term. They were just committing fraud with pump and dump schemes. These guys had no actual quantitative or mathematical modeling abilities whatsoever that would be required for financial engineering and modeling. They were salesmen who swindled a lot of clueless people out of their money through illegal means.
The Wolf of Wall Street wasn't doing any sort of financial engineering in the real sense of the term. They were just committing fraud with pump and dump schemes. These guys had no actual quantitative or mathematical modeling abilities whatsoever that would be required for financial engineering and modeling. They were salesmen who swindled a lot of clueless people out of their money through illegal means.