In general, your comments are very reasonable.
But, working in Wall street could be different.
Based on my limited knowledge to that industry, the workloads of some analysts could be very demanding, because
1) their operations/tranactions are globally, the job nature needs instant information, which may require analysts update their analyses based on the latest data from Asia, Europe, Africa, Austrilia, etc. For example, people can use data (from different time zones) to predict daily foreign exchange fluctuations to make money. Many years ago, when I was in one of small european countries, i used the time difference to make pocket money:)
2) Firm brokers are very stressing, tend to be very arrogant and demanding.
I guess that the best guy to answer LZ's question is from that industry.
Unfortunately, I am not.
