I still don’t understand the derision. An athlete is indeed a useful analog. They speak of ‘winning,’ but we tend to assume they mean ‘be the best at the sport,’ not ‘be the most valuable human being’ or ‘dominate other people’, a sentiment I didn’t automatically project onto OP. Even in a real life arena where wealth isn’t conserved, you can still ‘win’ in the sense of increasing it faster than anyone else, and I didn’t automatically assume OP meant otherwise. Finally, I don’t understand why it’s wrong let alone distasteful for OP to form a psychological relationship to his labor similar to an athlete’s, even if his work isn’t a game, if that works for him; how is he beholden to anyone else’s idea of what ought to make him happy? Your point of view appears to me to boil down to “I specifically don’t like derivatives traders,” or some other gut-level attitude, which would be fair enough on its own and might find easy agreement with me were it not being rationalized in this way.