If you get your news from Politico, you are a strange person, but they have been pushing the line for months that Wall Street likes Hillary Clinton and also Jeb Bush.  The line is that anonymous financial services types find both acceptable.  The inference for liberals is that this means Clinton is as much a tool of the financial industry as a member of the Bush family.

I think that's the wrong inference, based on experience working in that industry.  What I have heard from otherwise informed people is that voting for Clinton this time around is a definite vote against our own interests as she is likely to amend the capital gains tax schedule in an unfavorable way. They also fear increased income taxes, increased regulations and the increased possibility of a financial transactions tax.

This is not to say that they'd prefer, say Bernie Sanders to Hillary.  They don't.  They see a serious Sanders candidacy as a bad sign for where the industry stands in the public's mind. That's also how they see the existence of Ted Cruz.  They definitely don't want to see President Donald Trump.  From a banker's perspective, it would be awkward to have a president who owes you money.

Point being, people in the industry don't see Clinton as any sort of tool, any more than they've seen Obama that way.  From the outside, the perspective is that bankers didn't go to jail after the Financial Crisis and that big banks weren't broken up.  From the inside, a lot has changed. People may not have gone to jail, but many were driven from the industry.  Banks may not have been split up, but the proprietary trading desks of old are all gone (ironically, mostly spun out into hedge funds that contribute to an even less regulated shadow banking system). Point being that insiders have had their cheese moved since 2008 and they tend to blame Democrats.  They are not excited about a Clinton presidency, they merely acknowledge it as likely.

That said, there are warm feelings for Clinton that go beyond raw economic interest.  Clinton is correct, for example, that as a NY Senator during 9/11, she acquitted herself well and is remembered for it.  She should have expanded that to say that New Yorkers were generally quite satisfied with her senate term.  She has always been popular in the state and especially the city.

On a personal level, Clinton's story -- one of social and economic climbing, does tend to resonate with individual workers in the financial services industry.  That's why otherwise normal people get into that line of work.

Related -- Clinton is kind of a Davos/TED talk style celebrity -- a popular type in these circles.

Also, Clinton inspires and delights women on the professional rise and this is a huge, changing component of financial services. Clinton cited her support from women, I wonder how many of those women have financial services jobs.

Finally, this is an industry where people have extra money to donate to politics, so it will always have a collectively larger effect on donations.  Excess pay is concentrated at the top but even among the rank and file, people tend to make more working for a bank than they would working for other types of businesses.

But from what I hear, people doing those jobs actually fear Clinton will harm that.