An odd thing happened last month when, stumping just before the midterms, Hillary Clinton came in close proximity to the woman who has sometimes been described as the conscience of the Democratic Party. Speaking at the Park Plaza Hotel in Boston as she did her part to try to rescue the failing gubernatorial campaign of Martha Coakley in Massachusetts, Clinton paid deference to Senator Elizabeth Warren, the anti-Wall Street firebrand who has accused Clinton of pandering to the big banks, and who was sitting right there listening. “I love watching Elizabeth give it to those who deserve it,” Clinton said to cheers. But then, awkwardly, she appeared to try to out-Warren Warren—and perhaps build a bridge too far to the left—by uttering words she clearly did not believe: “Don’t let anyone tell you that it’s corporations and businesses that create jobs,” Clinton said, erroneously echoing a meme Warren made famous during an August 2011 speech at a home in Andover, Massachusetts. “You know that old theory, trickle-down economics? That has been tried, that has failed. It has failed rather spectacularly.”

The right went wild. See? Hillary Clinton has finally shown her hand. After having sat out the financial crisis and all the economic turmoil that has followed in the past six years—and with good reason, since for most of that time she was tending to the nation’s diplomacy as secretary of state—she is proving to be an anti-Wall Street populist too, and as much a socialist as her former boss, President Obama.

But here’s the strange thing: Down on Wall Street they don’t believe it for a minute. While the finance industry does genuinely hate Warren, the big bankers love Clinton, and by and large they badly want her to be president. Many of the rich and powerful in the financial industry—among them, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman, Tom Nides, a powerful vice chairman at Morgan Stanley, and the heads of JPMorganChase and Bank of America—consider Clinton a pragmatic problem-solver not prone to populist rhetoric. To them, she’s someone who gets the idea that we all benefit if Wall Street and American business thrive. What about her forays into fiery rhetoric? They dismiss it quickly as political maneuvers. None of them think she really means her populism.

Although Hillary Clinton has made no formal announcement of her candidacy, the consensus on Wall Street is that she is running—and running hard—and that her national organization is quickly falling into place behind the scenes. That all makes her attractive. Wall Street, above all, loves a winner, especially one who is not likely to tamper too radically with its vast money pot.

According to a wide assortment of bankers and hedge-fund managers I spoke to for this article, Clinton’s rock-solid support on Wall Street is not anything that can be dislodged based on a few seemingly off-the-cuff comments in Boston calculated to protect her left flank. (For the record, she quickly walked them back, saying she had “short-handed” her comments about the failures of trickle-down economics by suggesting, absurdly, that corporations don’t create jobs.) “I think people are very excited about Hillary,” says one Wall Street investment professional with close ties to Washington. “Most people in New York on the finance side view her as being very pragmatic. I think they have confidence that she understands how things work and that she’s not a populist.”

The bottom line for Wall Street, says this executive—echoing many others—is that Clinton understands that America’s much-maligned financial industry wants to be part of the solution to the country’s problems. “Everybody who makes money feels a shared responsibility,” he continues. “Everybody sort of looks at her with a lot of optimism because they feel she doesn’t mind making hard decisions. She’ll do what she needs to do, but it’s not a ‘Let me blame you.’ It’s, ‘Hey, here’s what you’ve got to do.’ And I think that’s very different.” During a speech last December at the Conrad Hotel, in New York, her message could not have been more different from Obama’s hot, anti-Wall Street rhetoric: “We all got into this mess together, and we’re all going to have to work together to get out of it.”

During the 2012 presidential election, Wall Street felt burned by Obama’s rhetoric and regulatory positions and overwhelmingly supported with their money Republican candidate Mitt Romney, co-founder of private-equity firm Bain Capital. Now, though, there’s a significant momentum back behind the Democratic contest. “The money is already behind her,” the Wall Street money manager says. “I don’t think it’s starting to line up behind her: It’s there for her if she wants it.”

The informal head of her informal Wall Street outreach effort for her informal campaign is a finance executive she knows well—and recruited to work for her at the State Department. Tom Nides, 53, the Morgan Stanley executive, knows both New York and Washington intimately. Today he speaks with Clinton regularly and has begun to play the role of gatekeeper on Wall Street to her embryonic campaign. He also has been known to run interference between the Obama administration and the leaders of the Israeli government, in order to try to patch up their dysfunctional relationship. “Tom at the end of the day is the guy—she trusts him, she knows him,” says the Wall Street investment manager.

Nides returned to Morgan Stanley in 2013 after two years working for Clinton at the State Department as deputy secretary of state for management and resources. Nides (with whom I once shared a one-week summer rental on Nantucket) epitomizes the revolving door that has long existed between Washington and Wall Street. Born in Duluth, Minnesota, he served in a senior leadership role for a diverse group of Washington politicians, from Representatives Tony Coehlo and Tom Foley to, as chief of staff, Mickey Kantor, Bill Clinton’s U.S. trade representative. He worked at Fannie Mae for six years, ran Joe Lieberman’s 2000 vice-presidential campaign and served a brief stint as CEO of Burson Marsteller, the public relations firm.

In 2001, Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack took Nides under his wing. When Mack was named CEO of Credit Suisse, Nides went along with him as chief administrative officer. When Mack returned to Morgan Stanley as CEO in 2005, Nides accompanied him again as chief operating officer and then stayed another year serving in the same role for James Gorman. Then Nides returned to Washington to work for then-Secretary Clinton at the State Department, replacing Jack Lew, who became head of the Office of Management and Budget. Many thought Nides’ time at Morgan Stanley was over, especially with Mack’s retirement at the end of 2011. But Gorman—also a Hillary supporter—surprised people by bringing Nides back to the firm as a vice-chairman.